Please pass back the handout

1
Welcome!

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

2
Trash talk (Did I ever tell you I really like
yo mamma jokes?)
3
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!

4
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

5
Thats a lot of habitat!
6
Oake Landfill Houston
7
(No Transcript)
8
Largest landfill in Texas
9
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?

10
(No Transcript)
11
1. Leachate liquid collected at bottom of
landfill

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

12
(No Transcript)
13
2. Methane collection

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

14
Material is compacted daily
15
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

16
Calendar dated 1976 dug up in 1988 how long was
it in there?

• Landfill in San Francisco
• Did this decompose?

17
Methane collection

• Ferris, Texas landfill
• Waste Management Inc., the nation's largest
  garbage hauler and landfill operator, plans to
  spend roughly 400 million over the next five
  years building facilities at 60 landfills to
  convert methane gas to electricity, its most
  ambitious renewable energy project to date.

18
Smart companies use methane as a resource

• One of four engine that burn methane gas from a
  landfill in Ferris, Texas and turns it into
  electricity
• Environmental impact of methane going into the
  air?
• Is that problem solved here?

19
(No Transcript)
20
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

21
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

22
Pros? Cons?
23
(No Transcript)
24
Eastern Garbage Patch

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

25
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

26
(No Transcript)
27

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

28
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