What's in your landfill? Garbage 101
On the coldest day of the year, we went to Wellington’s Happy Valley landfill on Saturday with about 40 other parents and kids. What an eye-opener!
What we learned
In NZ, over one million tons of waste to landfill are generated by the household sector per year. That's an average of 260 kg (572 lbs) per person or 676 kg (1,487 lbs) per household. Over 44% of that waste is organic, with 25% of the total being kitchen waste, a huge proportion! Compare this with 11% for paper and 10% for plastics.
Canadians produce 2.2 kg of waste a day each. (Yes, I did the math... New Zealand's numbers are better, but that doesn't let us off the hook.)
North America only has 8% of the world's population, but consumes 1/3 of the world's resources and produces 1/2 of the world's garbage!
Methane production
Methane from the decomposing rubbish at the plant now gets used to produce electricity for 1,000 households. Even more methane is vented to atmosphere (what a waste!). Methane is a significant greenhouse pollutant and harnessing it to produce electricity makes good sense from both an economic and environmental viewpoint. There is enough methane being produced to run at least one other generator.
What was surprising
Here in Wellington the “solids” from the local sewage system (yummy...) get pumped across town to the landfill and dried out. They used to get composted and mixed with the compost produced by the landfill for sale. Bit of a problem though: the locals are building homes closer and closer to the landfill and have complained about the smell, so this great fertilizer is getting buried.
Most amazing rubbish!
The zoo buried both a giraffe and hippopotamus in the pet cemetery section of the landfill. Now that ought to stump some archaeologist in a few hundred years.
Mining in the future
The guide suggested that people in the future might start to mine landfills for metals. One day, we'll run out of good mining (and maybe stop cutting down mountains), and then it will be economical to dig all the metal out of the landfills around the world and use that. I remember reading that in the 1970s!
Interestingly, it's been shown that landfill mining is economically feasible, although market rates for plastics, metals, and fuels can also have an impact on potential profitability.
Things thrown into landfills take a long time to break down -- food can take from weeks to years; a plastic bag from between 50 and 500 years! We need to stop making so much waste!
- How can you find out where your trash goes?
- How can your family reduce what it sends to landfill?
- What can you do?
Cool resources if you want to learn more
- Check out the lovely new Rubbish and Recycling book from Gecko Press
- Great Canadian resource for kids
- NZ resource to learn about waste audits and NZ E-waste Day Sept 12
- Global Landfill Mining Conference
And make sure to let us know how you go in the comments!
This is such an interesting topic!
We play peek-a-boo with babies and think it's funny that they think we go away if they can't see us, but then we grow up and do the exact same thing with our trash. Once it's 'away', it doesn't exist anymore!
I found an interesting study from MIT on tracking trash -- it says the 'removal chain' is becoming as important as the 'supply chain'. Maybe one day we'll finally get to that cradle to cradle paradigm...
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/trash-0715.html
Posted by: Kaila Colbin | July 31, 2009 at 02:45 PM