With all the hype and media attention around global warming and carbon emmisions, many are over looking the threat of landfills. As with carbon emmisions, the United States and China landfill more waste than any other nations. These landfills are fed by large industry, as well as personal waste disposal. Without clearly safer and more environmental alternatives, landfills are continued to be used, atleast partially in nations across the world. Throughout the world, tens of thousands of kilometers are said to be used for landfills. In some cases this land has now become so deeply contaminated that it will never be able to be used for agriculture or even safe inhabitance. What is unkown to many is that landfills still emit greenhouse gases, and in some estimates are the leading emmiter of methane, a greenhouse gas is infact landfills.
Currently the United States is sending over half of its municipal waste to landfills with China not far behind sending about 43% of its waste to landfills. These landfills continue to build up without much end in sight. The United Nations Environmental Protection Programme has commented that the problem of landfills in the developing world is quite dire, with solid waste disposal often not meeting the minimum standards for the developed world. It becomes a very tricky situation in dealing with the developing world who may not have the political or economic means or motivation to safely dispose of their solid waste.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/eco.about.landfills/index.html#cnnSTCText
6 comments:
Keely Schneider
wow, I was not aware of the pollution of landfills or that the US relies so heavily upon them for waste management. Another important repercussion of landfills is space. With the worlds exponentially increasing population and productivity, waste is increasing like crazy while space is decreasing. I fear that we will hit a point where there is limited space left. Not only are the landfills creating pollution, but they are also utilizing valuable space while ruining the surrounding areas with the stench and contamination. Something really needs to be done about this problem.
Indeed, I concur that the solid waste situation is becoming increasingly more dire each passing day. Finally, countries are beginning to look for other ways to dispose of their waste, because people are realizing that landfills are becoming more and more precious. I think we should just send the trash into space, even though it would be costly, so is the price of saving our planet.
Alexa
I don't know Cameron...it costs a lot of money to send trash into space. Although saving the planet may not have a price tag, there might be less expensive, and more efficient ways to get rid of our waste. Bugs, and worms, as Keely and I discussed in class may be a viable solution to our earths problem. I agree that landfills are a problem because no one, (or few people as Mr. Cheever said), like to live near trash.
WOW, I wasn’t aware of the amount of waste, waste makes. Especially for Hawaii, this is a huge problem. In addition to the problems waste creates, Hawaii seems to have an n extra hard time with this problem because we live on an island. Many of us might not know about this problem because usually landfills are outside of living areas and cities. Last year, I went to Camp Timberline and in the morning when we were having reflective time, the tractors dumping in a landfill nearby disrupted it. It was interesting realizing how inconvenient this problem truly is.
-kelly
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