Please pass back the handout

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Welcome!

• Please pass back the handout Landfills and
  incinerators.
• Please read the board!

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Trash talk (Did I ever tell you I really like
yo mamma jokes?)
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Fresh Kills Landfill NY

• Can be seen from space!
• NY landfill 1948-2001
• At peak operation, 29,000 tons daily, 10 million
  tons/yr.
• Thats a major pile of junk!

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Landfills in Tejas

• About 2,000 in US
• 678 in Texas
• 21 operating in Harris county
• Average Texas landfill
• 172 acres
• 28 ft below surface
• 43 ft above surface

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Thats a lot of habitat!
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Oake Landfill Houston
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Largest landfill in Texas
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Sanitary Landfill?

• Modern Landfill design
• Developed on military bases during WWII as
  concentrated groups created lots of waste.
• Move to mechanized system.
• Looking at the diagram, what possible
  environmental damage could be caused?

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1. Leachate liquid collected at bottom of
landfill

• Acetone
• Benzene
• Lead other heavy metals
• Chlorides
• Liners plastic, clay
• Collection and treatment

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2. Methane collection

• Municipal solid waste is covered and compacted
  daily no O2
• Anaerobic respiration produces methane
• When decomposers decompose, theyre doing
  cellular respiration!

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Material is compacted daily
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Organic materials in a landfill do not decompose
at normal rates

• Prof. Rathje The Garbage Project at University
  of Arizona
• Archaeological study of landfills from 1973 to
  2005
• 21 landfills, 2 million items, 15,000 household

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Calendar dated 1976 dug up in 1988 how long was
it in there?

• Landfill in San Francisco
• Did this decompose?

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Methane collection

• Methane recovered through pipes
• Oake landfill methane sent to Budweiser plant to
  burn for electricity.
• About ½ of methane leaks into atmosphere

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Smart companies use methane as a resource

• Methane has 25x more greenhouse warming potential
  than CO2

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3. Clay cap seals landfill

• Reclaimed landfills can be used as
• Parks
• Golf courses
• Ski areas
• Wind farm/solar arrays
• Wildlife habitat
• BUT NOT homes, lakes, farmland
• Monitoring required for 30 yrs after closure

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What about incineration?

• Haverhill Resource Recovery Facility
• 1,650 tons-per-day of solid waste
• 40 megawatts of renewable energy sold wholesale
  on New England's power grid.Location 100
  Recovery Way, Haverhill, Massachusetts

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Pros? Cons?
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Eastern Garbage Patch

• Floats between Hawaii and California
• Twice as big as Texas
• Can be 30 m deep

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The Trouble with Plastics in the Oceans

• dont biodegrade like other debris
• break down over time into smaller and smaller
  pieces while still maintaining their chemical
  make-up
• As the pieces get smaller fish, mammals, birds
  and even plankton will consume the pieces which
  are not digestible
• While the plastics may not be visible to the eye,
  studies have shown that in some areas the
  concentration of plastics outnumbers the
  concentration of plankton by a ratio of 71

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• This Laysan Albatross chick has been accidentally
  fed plastic by its parents and died as a result.

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So what are our options?The hierarchy of waste
management

• Reduce (design products to be durable)
• Reuse (find a different use before disposal)
• Recycle (break down and reprocess)
• Incinerate
• Landfill