How fast are landfills filling up

One word: space. Europeans incinerate most of their waste and use the resulting energy produced through this process to power homes and cities—a much more efficient way to turn waste into a resource. On a molecular level, a lot is happening beneath the surface of a landfill. Everything is decomposing breaking down or biodegrading breaking down via a biological action , but these processes happen very, very slowly, as landfills are designed to prevent biodegradation and decomposition.

If everything in a landfill biodegraded as quickly as it would if left outside in the sun, the landfill would sink and be unstable, making it less predictable and less viable as a way to dispose of municipal solid waste. The answer varies greatly depending on the type of material. Plastic bags can take 10 to years to degrade in landfills. Other plastic products can take as much time or longer to decompose in such an environment, where sunlight, air and moisture three key parts of facilitating biodegradation are scarce.

You might think there's no safe way to get rid of hazardous items, but toxic waste landfills are actually carefully designed for safe disposal. Find out where hazardous waste goes and how it's regulated. Need a Dumpster? Call Go. Depending on what the site was used for, there are two different landfill cap systems. For Hazardous Waste: Synthetic material covers the exposed hazardous waste.

The material is topped with two feet of compacted clay. A drainage layer safely gets rid of any contaminated liquids as the trash decomposes. A layer of dirt or topsoil completes the cap system.

For General Trash: A liner system sits at the bottom of the landfill. Layers of compacted clay and synthetic material cover the whole site. Along with industry involvement, waste management officials and experts say residents need to watch what they are throwing out. Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www. For example, three-quarters of plastics that should be recycled end up in landfills instead.

Other communities are scouring for solutions. Some are planning landfill expansions. Napanee's waste is trucked to New York state after the community's landfill closed in June. Owen Sound and Meaford have been sending some waste to Michigan since The Auditor-General says waste diversion rates are lagging because:. They also say it is 40 per cent cheaper to landfill materials that could be recycled.

There are five major residential diversion programs in Ontario. Report an error. Journalistic Standards. About The Record. More News. Through its oxygen-deprived breakdown, organic material emits methane as a byproduct, making landfills volatile and gassy. These toxins can seep into soil and groundwater aquifers and affect local ecosystems, animal-life, and our drinking water.

Electronic waste , for example, contains various types of dangerous chemicals, including lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, and brominated flame retardants. In , we sent 2. These fluorinated, harmful chemicals are used in a wide variety of products like Teflon frying pans, dental floss, and food packaging— and they never break down in the environment, ever.

And volume has created a crisis of its own. Collectively, the world produces two billion metric tons of solid waste per year, says BBC. From the same analysis, the U. Framed differently, of the 96, Olympic-sized swimming pools Americans fill per year with MSW, we send between M and M tons of it to landfills annually instead of recycling or reusing it.

So, the elephant in the room: How long until we run out of space to bury it all? When does the New York City Metro Area, home to a population of nearly 19 million people, start to look and smell like 15th-century Paris?

The answer is complex and speculative, but largely, it depends on where you live in the country.