Trash Dump Site Near Me

Trash Dump Site Near Me – Q: According to the EPA, in 2009 the United States generated 243 million tons of municipal solid waste, or about 4.3 pounds per person per day. That number has been rising steadily, but it appears to be leveling off.

Just like anything else, it reflects the economy. Historically, the production of solid waste has largely paralleled the gross domestic product.

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Question: More than half of the garbage goes to landfills, while the rest is recycled or goes to waste-to-energy plants. Are we running out of landfill?

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No, we are not. When I came into the business in 1966, we had about five years of landfill capacity. And it was a big deal. At that time, which is when the federal government first got involved in solid waste management, we had 200,000 or 300,000 open burning landfills in the United States. They are gone and we now have probably 2,000 plus sanitary landfills that have to meet the requirements of the EPA. We have plenty of land out there for sanitary landfills, and as we’ve increased our recycling rates and some industries have taken on the responsibility of trying to make their products more recyclable, I think landfill capacity has evened out. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of landfill.

Local authorities have traditionally been responsible for providing services for handling solid waste. In the early 1960s, many family-owned garbage companies were contracted to serve the collection side. On the disposal side, there were open dumps and quite a few poorly designed, poorly run and poorly managed incinerators, mostly owned by local authorities. There was no pollution control and no care in relation to the disposal of the ashes.

Solid waste collection was the second most dangerous occupation in the United States, after logging and ahead of mining. In 1965, the Solid Waste Disposal Act was the federal government’s entry into solid waste management. It accomplished three things: One, it addressed the open dumps. Second, it dealt with collection inefficiencies and occupational hazards. And three, it started programs at the state level in solid waste management. Overall, it financed the professionalization of industry, from garbage collection to solid waste management.

The largest part of the solid waste that goes to landfills now goes to privately owned landfills that have agreements with local authorities to take the waste. Owning landfills is where the big money is. But there are environmental responsibilities that come with landfills that require monitoring for contamination of groundwater and surface water, and natural gas emissions. Dealing with methane emissions is much easier with larger landfills. It is better to have one landfill with 10 million tons than to have 10 with a million tons, so that was a driver for consolidation.

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Where I live, in Ocean City, Maryland, solid waste is transported to a regional authority in Pennsylvania that burns it for energy. In 1970, the Clean Air Act closed almost all of the old incinerators. The technology was not used correctly. I remember standing in the back of an incinerator in Cincinnati and you could read the papers and the lettuce wasn’t even wilted after it passed. Today, the 110 or 115 waste-to-energy plants across the country are the most regulated and controlled solid waste incinerators in the world. They are effective, and the ash is now regulated.

Recycling now probably handles 20% of the waste stream. A problem we recognized from the start is that the markets are very difficult. Virgin materials are often cheaper than recycled materials because you have to collect it, which is probably the most expensive part of solid waste. You have to move it somewhere. You have to process it. No matter what product you end up making from recycled materials, it comes with a big price tag.

There are certain segments of the solid waste stream, such as cardboard and aluminium, which have always had a good solid market. But glass has no great value and mixed plastic is better but unpredictable.

If you could maintain markets for secondary materials, recycling would be far more successful than it is. We cannot control the markets. Many cities and counties pay for recycling, at least when the markets are down. There is that will because many people just believe that recycling is better.

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Q: What is the purpose of recycling? Is it to conserve resources, or to save energy? Or just to keep trash out of landfills?

Recycling can reduce the amount going to landfills and save resources. Energy saving cannot occur, as converting waste materials into raw materials or products also requires energy.

Recycling is really just another way of dealing with solid waste. It is as expensive, or more expensive, to recycle as it is to send waste to landfills and WTE facilities. For some materials, there is probably less environmental impact. Bottom line, there is no one answer: it all depends on location, energy costs, labor costs, environmental regulations, etc.

I am a pragmatist and I know many people have always argued with me that I am against recycling. And I say, no, I’m not against recycling. I see it as another way of taking care of solid waste. And if we have to spend money to do it, that’s fine. Now, when it starts to cost more than other options, you have to start saying, are we really doing good for the environment or natural resources by continuing with a recycling program

Landfill / Dump Site With Green Trees In Background. No Logos / Trademarks Visible On Dumped Garbage Stock Photo

Environmental control at a waste-to-energy plant is expensive, and that makes it more expensive than a sanitary landfill. In a landfill, many of the basic environmental controls come into play as the landfill is built, with the liners on the bottom and so on. But the monitoring costs are a very small percentage of the total tipping fee.

If you look at a budget by function for a landfill or a waste-to-energy plant, operations are the biggest cost, and of course that’s where all the labor is. We used to have four, five, six, seven people on a garbage truck. Now in many places we have automated collection with one person because the biggest cost is labour. A junk car can cost anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000, but you can drive it for 10 years.

We are a black-box country – we would like our rubbish to just disappear and not have to think about it. There is no magic black box to make junk disappear. You have to collect it. You have to do something about it. And every time you touch it, it increases the cost of getting rid of it.

Q: You’ve written that we waste a lot of potential energy—enough to heat four million homes a year—by sending solid waste to landfills instead of using it to generate electricity.

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We can do all we can with recycling, but we still put a lot of stuff in landfills that we can get BTUs out of.

It can be considered a renewable energy source. The Maryland legislature just passed legislation on renewable energy such as wind, solar, hydro, and that includes waste energy. It may have been possible here because on the eastern seaboard the biggest industry is poultry – the raising and processing of chickens. The organic runoff goes into the Chesapeake Bay, which is holy water around here. Perdue has shown that you can burn these things and generate energy. We have a viable waste-to-energy industry.

If the existing standards were reliably enforced, there might be less of a perception problem. Our biggest failure is enforcement. We established regulations, and then we spend no money on enforcing them. I am convinced that the closer you get someone to the courthouse steps, the more inclined they are to obey the law and comply with these regulations.

I think we can see a trend towards a single waste stream. The technology is out there to sort out some paper, sort out some plastic. Ferrous metals have always been easy to extract. Aluminum is not that difficult. But all of these things cost money, and we’re always going to be able to make paper from trees much cheaper than we can from recycled materials. So we have to make choices.

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California has long been at the forefront of solid waste management. That’s where sanitary landfills really developed. That’s where automated collection evolved. Now they are looking at “transformation”.

We can do a lot with solid waste. We can put it through a process where it will make Bunker C fuel oil. But when you get through, it’s $160 a barrel. We can process waste paper into alcohol, but that’s $5 per gallon versus alcohol made some other way for $1 per gallon. Some landfills recycle leachate to increase the rate of microbial activity which allows for faster decomposition and a longer life for the landfill. They call them bioreactor landfills. These technologies are emerging and may have benefits.

I don’t think there is some new magical way to make our waste disappear. I think there will always be landfills. And we miss the boat if we

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