HOW A LANDFILL WORKS BY TREVOR BEATTY
What is a Landfill?
There are two ways to bury trash:
Dump - an open hole in the ground where trash is buried and that has various animals (rats, mice, birds) swarming around. (This is most people's idea of a landfill!)
Landfill - carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is isolated from the surrounding environment (groundwater, air, rain). This isolation is accomplished with a bottom liner and daily covering of soil.
Sanitary landfill - landfill that uses a clay liner to isolate the trash from the environment
Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill - uses a synthetic (plastic) liner to isolate the trash from the environment
The purpose of a landfill is to bury the trash in such a way that it will be isolated from groundwater, will be kept dry and will not be in contact with air. Under these conditions, trash will not decompose much. A landfill is not like a compost pile, where the purpose is to bury trash in such a way that it will decompose quickly.
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TREVOR BEATTY
