Landfills, Bioreactors and Incinerators Are Garbage Destinations

What Doesn't Recycle is an Environmental Danger

Each American generates an average of 1,609 pounds of trash every year. According to EPA statistics, 32% of that total is recycled. Where does the rest end up? That is a lot of garbage that has to go somewhere.

William Rathje of the Garbage Project said, "Sorting garbage is the ultimate Zen experience of our society . . .". He believed that separating our refuse would bring us closer to each moment of our existence and strengthen our connection to the earth. 

We are embarrassed by our trash so our garbage bags and cans are made from opaque materials. Recycling at any level makes us proud. Containers and bags for cans, bottles and papers headed for recycling centers are usually translucent. One we hide, the other we flaunt.

The garbage we arenêt proud to call our own gets taken away by people in noisy, smelly trucks mostly in the wee hours of the morning. Most folks have no interest in knowing where the trash goes and have no idea the effect it has on the environment.

The most common destination for your garbage is a "sanitary landfill". The first landfill accepted trash outside Fresno, California in 1934. Early ones were gullies, ravines or swamps. Loads of refuse was trucked in, dumped and left for nature to dispose of. There was also trash incineration, where everything was set fire and whatever burned went up smoke, and what didnêt burn remained there charred, melted or unchanged. Both methods released toxic sludge to soak in to the ground or flow in to waterways.

The EPA recommended dry tomb landfills in the 1980s. The new landfills would have liners to protect the ground water from the leachate. The garbage liquid would be piped to treatment plants to be neutralized. Methane pipes drew away the gases produced by decomposing trash. Once full the landfill would be capped to prevent rainwater from soaking in.