Hey earth muffins! When you’re on a journey towards being more sustainable, one of the biggest things to avoid is creating excess waste. Being completely zero waste is often an unrealistic ideal; but, you should try to follow the waste hierarchy before tossing things into the garbage. Why are landfills so bad?? There are plenty of reasons why you should prevent items from heading to the trash heap. Let’s jump into a few major ones in this post!
#1 – Difficult for organic material to decompose naturally
The first negative to landfills is that they don’t allow organic materials to break down correctly. If food scraps are put into a compost bin, they decompose naturally and create nutritious soil… Unfortunately, this doesn’t occur in landfills. The lack of oxygen and light in trash piles results in food scraps either not breaking down at all OR releasing methane as they do. Methane is 30% more powerful than carbon, which makes it a much worse greenhouse gas. Definitely a huge reason we should all avoid sending organic materials to the landfill!
#2 – Leachate
When garbage piles up, there is a strong possibility that it will leak (at some point). Landfills are now regulated and required to have built-in linings to prevent against this… Unfortunately, these liners don’t last forever. Over time, water trickles through all the trash in a landfill and absorbs things from basically anything that has been sitting in the dump. This contaminated water is referred to as “leachate”; it is not good if it flows out of the landfill and into local water supplies!
#3 – Privilege
Another downside to landfills is that they are ugly, smelly, and take up land that could be used for something else. We already negatively impact Mother Nature enough, so adding excess waste to a landfill is a huge stab in the back. There is no doubt that living an eco-friendly lifestyle has privilege associated with it… Unfortunately, minority and low-income people are more likely to live near landfills or get one built in their communities. These areas often have fewer resources to oppose the placement of landfills too. Living by a landfill decreases the value of homes and land, which is another problem of landfills.
#3 – No accountability for people creating trash
The last thing I’ll discuss in this post is the fact that landfills (and trash pickup services) result in no accountability for people. Because most cities do not require citizens to come to the landfill and dump their trash themselves, they often forget about how much trash they (and their community) create. People give no mind to their trash because it miraculously “disappears” from the curb each week. In reality, it doesn’t vanish at all and sits in a landfill for hundreds of years.
Overall, there are plenty of problems with landfills. The negative impacts of methane and leachate are probably the biggest issues for the environment. But, there are also social concerns as well. While you might think landfills are ugly and smelly, just imagine if you are forced to live near one all the time. And don’t forget that people often forget that their trash ends up in a huge pile in the first place! Do you consider where your trash goes? Comment below and let me know what your thoughts on landfills are!
Love,
Jenna ♥
