![landfills_source]()
![landfills_source]()
A dump is either my room or a place where all of a town’s trash goes. However, only one of those places also could be described as a landfill. What’s the difference between a dump and a landfill? Waste management agencies use “landfill” to describe the
modern method of disposing refuse – pile it all in a big hole in the ground and cover it with dirt. A “dump” basically is the same thing, except without the hole or the dirt.
This summer, I got a bird’s eye view of an active landfill at the bottom of a quarry in Champ, Missouri. As the quarry is mined out, the trash is filled in. Huge trailers hauling about a dozen trash trucks of garbage line up to dump their loads for bulldozers to push into organized piles. Special linings and the natural rock surrounding the garbage tends to retain water, meaning no nasty trash juices leak out into the surrounding soil.
As dirt is filled in over the trash, pipes are installed to siphon away gases emitted by the decaying matter. This is an important step for reducing unpleasant odors and preventing minor safety hazards — you know, little things like underground trash fires that burn for years and
threaten to ignite the radioactive material in the landfill next door. Boy, the things people dump out.
The sheer scale of these operations boggles my mind. The quarry I visited was nearly a mile long and about a third as wide. In a relatively small corner, a lone little bulldozer tirelessly pushed newly dumped trash up a slope of garbage large enough to bury Baldwin Hall. Based on the steady volume of trash deposited as I watched, I assumed this vast pile of rubbish represented only a few days’ work. Five years from now there might be enough to engulf an entire
baseball stadium without much trouble.
What really blew my mind was finding out the pastoral green hill just south of the quarry actually is a landfill that was already “finished,” and now looks like it could be developed into a park or a neighborhood. It makes me wonder what other scenic landscapes secretly are the buried dump sites of a million discarded Wal-Mart bags and last decade’s leftover tacos.
My final thought on the matter is this — if you were living atop a literal mountain of trash, would you want to know about it? Or would you prefer to think the only dump in your life is the mess you make in your room?
A dump is either my room or a place where all of a town’s trash goes. However, only one of those places also could be described as a landfill. What’s the difference between a dump and a landfill? Waste management agencies use “landfill” to describe the modern method of disposing refuse – pile it all in a big hole in the ground and cover it with dirt. A “dump” basically is the same thing, except without the hole or the dirt.
This summer, I got a bird’s eye view of an active landfill at the bottom of a quarry in Champ, Missouri. As the quarry is mined out, the trash is filled in. Huge trailers hauling about a dozen trash trucks of garbage line up to dump their loads for bulldozers to push into organized piles. Special linings and the natural rock surrounding the garbage tends to retain water, meaning no nasty trash juices leak out into the surrounding soil.
As dirt is filled in over the trash, pipes are installed to siphon away gases emitted by the decaying matter. This is an important step for reducing unpleasant odors and preventing minor safety hazards — you know, little things like underground trash fires that burn for years and threaten to ignite the radioactive material in the landfill next door. Boy, the things people dump out.
The sheer scale of these operations boggles my mind. The quarry I visited was nearly a mile long and about a third as wide. In a relatively small corner, a lone little bulldozer tirelessly pushed newly dumped trash up a slope of garbage large enough to bury Baldwin Hall. Based on the steady volume of trash deposited as I watched, I assumed this vast pile of rubbish represented only a few days’ work. Five years from now there might be enough to engulf an entire baseball stadium without much trouble.
What really blew my mind was finding out the pastoral green hill just south of the quarry actually is a landfill that was already “finished,” and now looks like it could be developed into a park or a neighborhood. It makes me wonder what other scenic landscapes secretly are the buried dump sites of a million discarded Wal-Mart bags and last decade’s leftover tacos.
My final thought on the matter is this — if you were living atop a literal mountain of trash, would you want to know about it? Or would you prefer to think the only dump in your life is the mess you make in your room?