WEBVTT - How Landfills Work 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house stuff 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:12.560 Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.319 Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:22.520 and this is stuff you should know. Hi. How's it going. 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:29.520 It's great? Good, Good to yourself. I found this topic 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:31.840 and I was starting to tell you before how interesting 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.600 I thought it wasn't. Yeah, you went it's awesome. I 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.000 was like, stop, it's gold. So now I'm going to 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:44.080 say it. It's awesome. And landfills, the concept of a landfill, 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.960 even though it ain't perfect, it's pretty neat. Yeah. And 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.320 even though we need to reduce the amount of trash, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.520 especially Americans produce. Yeah, um, there is still going to 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.200 be trash in the world and it needs to be 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:03.360 dealt with. And this is way better than the old days. Uh, 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.080 when in like pre nineteen thirty New York City they 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:10.279 would dump their garbage in the ocean. And then between 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.360 nineteen thirty and we still do that. You realize New 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:16.440 York City doesn't dump it right in the Atlantic Ocean, No, 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:18.959 but a lot of garbage is dumped in the ocean. Yeah. Well, 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.480 we talked about the Great Pacific garbage back um. And 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.119 then between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies they 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.440 had what they called dumps, which is a big hole 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.840 in the ground covered in rats and birds, and then 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.960 you would just dump garbage to leach into everything. Yes, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.039 which is messed up. And the e p A comes 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:41.760 along and I think the sixties, definitely the seventies, and 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.319 was like, uh, we need to do something better about this. 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:51.120 But so the the idea of the landfill was born 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.440 in about the sixties, I believe. Well, well, the first 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.400 modern sanitary landfill was ninety seven and Fries. Now, okay, 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:00.600 that's right, and it's like a national his or place 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:02.840 or something, because it kind of kicked off the whole thing. 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.080 But it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that they 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.799 started passing law saying that, like every state really needs 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.280 to start doing the same thing. Right, And like you 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.000 said before that they just dumped their trash in a pit, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.800 which people have been doing for millennia at least. Um. 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.399 They were burning their trash also, and it sounds mind 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:26.800 bogglingly awful and it is, especially from environmental standpoint, but 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.080 they didn't have the trash problem that we have now 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:36.320 in the sixties. Since the nineties sixties are trash generation, 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:43.160 municipal solid waste generation has um doubled, tripled, tripled, And 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.040 I was like, why is that? What's going on? Apparently 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:53.480 it's the advent of cheap packaging, Before styrofoam packaging, before plastic, 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.280 before aluminum cans, that everybody just threw away. Everything was 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.600 wrapped in a T shirt that you could wear exactly, 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.120 And like when you weren't carrying around a slab of 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.440 meat in the T shirt from the butcher to your house, 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:08.280 you wore your T shirt so you reused it, right, No, 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.520 but no, you would you would have maybe like, um, 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.160 do you remember when Sam the butcher brought Alice the 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:20.520 meat BC Boys reference about um Stone driving around with 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:25.240 two which is I guess a really weird way of 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:30.359 putting in his barefoot well that didn't rhyme bald feet anyway. 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:32.680 He would bring it to her wrapped in like white 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.560 butcher's paper, and she would throw it away and it 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:38.680 would really not take up much space to the dump. 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.560 It would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:50.200 fifty thou years, right, And so starting about packaging, especially 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:54.240 very non biodegradable packaging, took off like a rocket. Yeah 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.120 you could still go to the butcher though now you 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.280 can and you get it in paper, but you go 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.360 to that big chain grocery store and it's going to 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:07.320 be plastic and starmer foam. So between nineteen are packaging 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:12.840 waste increased. That meant that we had to do something. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.720 We had a lot more trash and we had to 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:17.800 take care of this trash and ways that we had before. 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:22.400 And so the modern landfill based on that Fresno model 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:27.840 uh boomed And fortunately that's right. But even now they're 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.960 finding we went too far in one direction. Now we 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.279 need to adjust it, massage it a little bit, refine it. 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:37.400 And we were we were coming up with a new 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.839 generation of landfills. That's right. So, uh, if you're talking 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.600 about a landfill, the goal of a landfill is not 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.600 to compost trash. And a lot of people probably don't 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.400 know this. It's not to compost trash such that it 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.279 breaks down super quickly uh and biodegrades. It is the 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:57.480 opposite of that. It is to keep it as dry 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.159 as possible in an air tight and and just bury 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:05.720 it lock it away from the surrounding world. That's right. 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.120 And so that's what a landfill is, a sanitary landfill, 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.479 municipal solid waste or MSW landfill. Um, they isolate the 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.560 trash from the environment. They don't just dump it on 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.520 the dirt and let things leach in. And this thus 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.120 begins the landfill podcasts. There are a lot of components 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.640 to that, but that's along and short of it. It's true. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.159 And um what what that's called. The whole idea behind 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:36.239 that landfill that was in reaction to that's one dry 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:41.120 tomb is the industry lingo for it. It's and it 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:45.640 it was created in reaction to trash just being allowed 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.800 to seep into the ground water and methane to just 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:53.280 leak out into the air blow up. Apparently houses that 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.920 have utility pipes that pass by old landfills, methane will 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.239 get into those utility pipes and like get in mixed 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:03.279 in with the electricity and when you go to plug 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.800 in your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really, yes, it's 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:10.560 a problem with old landfills because they were all idiots 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:16.360 with trash like up until the sixties, seventies, eighties, UM 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.880 and even still we have a big problem with trash, 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.839 but nothing like it was before. As far as taking 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:25.800 care of it, is starting to really get a handle 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.920 on it. Americans produce four point six pounds of trash 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:31.960 per day per person. Yeah, and you know what's crazy 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.680 is you think, well, America's probably like as bad as 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.760 it gets. Know, the UK is America is like in 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:42.919 the middle roughly for trash generation, and the UK is 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:47.279 the worst. They produced per capita, they produced the most, 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.279 and um, they also throw away the most. They have 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.240 the lowest recovery rate. Um, although it's gone up. I 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:56.800 believe I think they had like some sort of national 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.440 initiative because it says here that it won up from 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.359 thirty one percent recovery rate, which is like recycling and 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:08.240 that kind of stuff, um, basically diverting it from the landfill. 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.200 So it's actually better than America as far as the 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.120 resource recovery rate goes. Canada is the worst. I'm sorry, 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.840 Canada is the worst. Yeah, that's hard to believe. I 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.960 would think so too, but it's true. The standout is Germany. 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:26.440 Germany produces way more trash per person than any other 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.520 country per capita, but they also have the highest recovery 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:35.080 rate at like almost of their trash gets diverted from 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.720 the landfill. That's amazing, Actually that's efficient. What what's the 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.200 American number on that diversion? It hovers about a third 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.840 for at least a couple of decades, now, maybe three decades, 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.320 you could say Americans diverted about they diverted about a 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.600 third of their trash from the landfill. You'd like to 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.840 see that number get better in three decades for sure, 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.840 and it's always hovers around thirty three, and uh, it 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:03.840 should be a lot better than that. You know. That 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.080 sounds like to me, whoever is in charge of doing 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.840 that study is just like, let's just use last numbers. 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.720 We can all live with that, right, all right. So 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:17.080 if you want to landfill in your municipality, um, you're 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.480 going to have to start with a proposal by saying. 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.440 You can't just go start Yeah, you gotta look around 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:27.440 and say we need to landfill everybody. So let's uh 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.440 do an environmental impact study and let's let's find an area. 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.480 Let's find a lot of acreage. Um. Because I think 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.000 they use the North Wake County Landfill in Raleigh, North 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.600 Carolina as a their go to example, in this article, 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:44.560 so our how stuff work started two and thirty acres 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.880 of land, about seventy acres of which is the actual landfill. 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:49.840 So you're gonna need a lot of land, and you're 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.800 gonna have to do an environmental impact study to determine 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:57.080 a lot of things. How much land do you have, Yeah, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.320 if there's enough of it, sure? Um. What type of 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:05.119 soil you have and what bedrock is underneath it? Very important? Um. 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.240 How water flows over the surface of the site. Yeah, 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.079 does it flow right down into the river? Does it 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:14.600 perfully right right exactly? Um? And then the uh, the 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.560 impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure. And 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.200 if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site, yeah, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:23.560 you don't want to landfill on an archaeological site. What's 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.120 funny is if you, um, if you go back and 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.839 look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one of 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.160 the biggest in the world New York, right, Yeah, and 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.360 it wasn't even the only one for New York. Yes, 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:39.280 And the guy who created the high line, James Corner, 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.760 is um creating a park there out of it, like 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.439 a massive, massive park. Interesting. I think like three times 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.480 the size of Central Park are they calling it cancer Park. 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:52.960 I think they're avoiding that. Okay, I don't remember what 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.360 it's called. I wrote a really interesting New York Magazine 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.720 article about it, though. It really well written and clever 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:01.880 um where it's basically like, that's awesome, that's awesome, this 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.160 guy's got this great vision. And then but it's a landfill. 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:07.600 You know, I'm sure at the end of the day, 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.600 it's still buried garbage exactly. Um. Alright, So when we 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.360 talked about the bedrock, that's really important because if you have, 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:16.959 what would you really want to try and prevent when 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.360 you're building a landfill or operating landfill is um leakage 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.880 and seepage. That was like the that was the big 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.400 thing when the e PA came along and started saying like, 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.920 you can't just bare your trash anywhere there's groundwater, dummies, 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:34.000 and like, as trash decomposes, it's not just like old 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:36.880 coca cola and banana peals. When those things break down 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.760 instead of mixing together, some really horrific stuff like ammonia 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.720 gets produced and that gets into the groundwater, and all 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.000 of a sudden, you're drinking ammonia. That's bad for you. Yeah, 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.680 that's called the it's called leech eight is the liquid 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:53.520 um or garbage juice is another words that. That's a 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:55.240 better way to say it, because that defines it all 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.880 in one go, right and um, the whole point of 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:01.160 the of the dry tomb in fill was to do 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.640 everything you could to prevent this garbage that you're burying 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.679 from reaching the the water table. Right, So you study 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.040 that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's not gonna work 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.440 because it's going to seep into that junk. No mines, 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.360 no quarries, because they probably already have broken through the 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:20.880 water table before they were abandoned. That's right. But at 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:22.360 the same time, you also need to be able to 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.320 sink wells in various points, so you can't the bedrock 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:27.960 needs to allow for that as well. That's right. Like 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.240 you're really looking for a specific area when we talked 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:33.040 about the water flow, of course, you don't want it 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.640 flowing near wetlands or any kind of rivers or streams. 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.840 That's a no brainer. Fresh Kills is an old marsh 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.280 land that they just filled the marshes and lakes in 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.760 with garbage. What what did they name it? That is 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.240 that the area or like that kills is a Dutch 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.920 word for stream, Okay, because I was about to say 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:52.640 that's like the worst name for anything unless it was 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.960 a butcher. But it really means fresh stream, fresh kills, charcooterie, 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.880 fresh stream garbage, don't Yeah, that makes sense. Now what 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.360 does kill mean stream of old Dutch word because you've 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:11.160 heard of like bowery means yes, that would be fish stream. 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:14.760 That makes a lot more sense. Now fresh kills. I 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:20.920 wondered about that for years. Now, you know, all right, so, uh, 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.160 local wildlife they're going to really study that to see 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:26.679 what kind of um You know, it can't be in 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:30.480 the area of a migrate my migratory route for birds 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.240 or like a nesting area a k marsh like Fresh 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:38.679 Kills landfill. That's right. And then once you figured all 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:41.280 this out and they say, oh wait, wait, you skipped 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.000 over the historical or archaeological site. Well you already mentioned 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.400 that like Fresh Kills landfill. Okay, Apparently I think it 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.280 was stated at all wrong. Huh. Henry David Thoreau said 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.720 that um arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:58.680 the ground at Fresh Kills before it was a landfill. Yeah, 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:04.600 so our theological site wet land and very close to UM. 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:09.720 The ground water it's seeping right into it. Unbelievable. UM. 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.479 And I believe there was a large bunny rabbit population 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:17.840 that they just dumped it right on top of UM. So, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:19.960 once you figured it out, this is not fresh skills, 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:22.240 is actually a great spot. You're gonna get your permits, 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.320 you're gonna raise your money. Um. This one in North 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.960 Carolina costs about nineteen million to build cheap. That seems 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.000 a little cheap, but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.160 that's probably from the nineties. And then you probably have 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.240 a public vote because they're probably gonna be using public 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.679 dollars and no one will know that vote takes place, 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:46.280 and you're gonna get a landfill built. Yeah, they just 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.480 build it in the night. All right. So let's take 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.400 a little break here and we will talk about building 0:13:52.400 --> 0:14:12.560 that landfill right for this all right, So you've got 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.000 your permits, you've got your money raised, it's time to 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.400 build a landfill. Yeah, you've shouted down the old guy 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:24.280 at the Board of Commissioners meeting, who objects, old man? 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:31.560 McLean the tree hugger. Let's recycle all our garbage, crack pot. 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.840 So we will list the basic parts of the landfill 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:37.640 and then go over them in detail. Hows that sound 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.920 It sounds like a bulleted list. You've got the bottom 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.640 liner system, You've got the cells, you've got the storm 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.080 water drainage, you've got the leech eight collection system, ok, 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:52.560 garbage juice methane collection system, and you've got the cap 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:57.640 the covering boom. Actually, that's the opposite of what you 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.400 want to happen with the cap covering system. You don't 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.760 want a kaboom, So start with the bottom liner. Man again, 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.560 this is the original purpose of all landfills that are 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:13.120 in use today, unless they're bioreactor, although it's it's part 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:18.160 of it. But this dry tomb landfill, uh, it's the 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.200 main part is the bottom liner. So they use a 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:26.120 very thick like um sometimes a hundred million millimeter thick, 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:32.640 very sturdy like polyethylene liner synthetic plastic that they line 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:37.720 the whole place with, puncture resistant, strong, able to withstand 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:39.560 a lot of trash being dumped on it. And just 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.520 to be a certain, they'll often use some sort of 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.760 like um fabric matt that they'll lay down first and 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.640 then put the the the liner on and then put 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.960 another mat on top of that to help prevent it 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.400 from being punctured by rocks or garbage. Rocks below or 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.080 garbage above. Everything's trying to puncture of this mat. Yeah, 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.760 it's a moisture barrier. Right, But that liner is the 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:08.600 main component, the the initial component of the landfill, that's right. Uh. Next, 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:14.560 we have our cell, and a cell is basically the garbage. Yeah, 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.360 it's the day's garbage that you dump in there. Um, 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:22.240 you compacted airspace is is key. That's where the more 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.920 airspace you have, the more trash you can bury. So 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.360 they want to keep it as compact as possible. And 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.520 they do this by rolling over it with bulldozers and 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.320 flatteners and rollers and graters and they smush it down. 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:38.640 And a cell is um, it's a it's a it's 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:42.640 a hole in the ground. Apparently in the North Carolina 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:44.960 landfill that House Stuff Works went to back in the day. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.360 A cell is fifty ft long, fifty ft wide, fourteen 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.760 ft deep yep. And all the trash is put in there. 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:53.880 Like you said, there's heavy equipment that rolls over and 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.440 compacts it. And did you read the Atlantic um article 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.080 I sent to you about Pointe Hills. Yes, they said 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.639 that there's an added benefit of compacting trash not just 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.560 doesn't take up less space, it also kills about the 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.639 rats in there. Oh good. And then at the end 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.320 of the day, when the cell is filled, they cover 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.320 it over with about six inches of dirt that they 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.600 then compact that kills the other of rats. That's where 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.600 the other half and that makes that type of landfill 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:29.720 what's called the sanitary landfill, which mean rat free, because 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:33.520 they're all dead, they're squished or they're suffocated by this 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.959 process of compacting and covering over. And the by covering 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.320 over this stuff every day, you protected from being blown 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:42.639 away by the wind, by being carried away from by 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.200 the rain. You protected from being dug up by coyotes 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:50.320 or trash scavengers. Right, um, And so that's what makes 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.920 it a sanitary dry tomb landfill is what we've described 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.000 so far. That's right. And to get this thing as 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:00.680 compact as possible, they're gonna weed out things like that 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:02.560 huge roll of carpet that you took out of your 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:07.080 uh nineteen seventies bedroom, or that mattress that has a 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.520 you know, brown stained like looks like the map of 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:14.360 Asia from the sixteen hundreds, because you raised that one 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.240 lady from Hell, raiser from the dead. Yeah, so they're 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.200 gonna chake out all that stuff and make it um 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:21.479 you know, all the yard ways to make it as 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.239 compactable as possible, and then um that is compacted at 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.240 a rate depending on where you are, about fift pounds 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:32.080 per cubic yard. Yes, so boom, flat dirt is over 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:37.240 it now and now we need to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically, 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:40.080 once you created that cell, you've just completed a portion 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.479 of the landfill, right, Yes, for the day, um, one 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.520 day's trash. It's so weird, it's like yours Tuesday's whole 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.879 five days a year. And those well, those UM the 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.479 Hills people in that Atlantic article, we're saying that they 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.520 in retrospect figured out that they could have predicted the 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.440 economic crisis. Interesting because about a little less than a 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.359 year before it happened, the UM they would fill up 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.080 their days cell by like one pm and closed. Now 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.400 they stay up until five and it's not even necessarily full. 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.240 So they know it's like a huge downturn in building 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:21.040 materials and consumer waste. UM. Like a year or two 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.600 before the actual crisis happened before they collapse. Well, you 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.440 know what the old saying, if you want to know 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.879 the state of the country's economics, go to a landfill. 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:33.680 It's a good thing. That's what I think. Jimmy Carter 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:38.840 first said that. So you don't want liquids in that 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:41.680 solid waste as much as possible. So they test the 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:46.040 solid waste for liquids, and um, if it's not liquid, 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.000 then it's fine to go in the hole, right, So 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.000 they put that in there. And the other way that 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:52.160 they want to keep liquids out. And again, what they're 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.760 doing is trying to prevent garbage juice from forming. Is 0:19:55.880 --> 0:20:01.280 to have storm raw storm, water runoff, drainage going on. 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:03.920 So all of the first of all, you never want 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.840 a flat landfill. Ever, you want to mount it at 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:13.359 least slightly. You never want a plateau um and so 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:14.800 you want the water to run off, and then when 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:16.520 it runs off, you want to collect it into pipes. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.119 You want to basically create an eves system like you 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:21.280 have on the roof of your house and then shoot 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:25.280 it all down to some concrete gulches or French trains 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:32.040 at your house. Roos shepperls what else uh, gutters, yeah, 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:37.000 habit dasher right, um, and all that goes to a 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:40.920 collection pond. That's right. Uh, this is not the kind 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:42.960 of thing you want to swim in. What they wait 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.959 for there is for um the suspended particles to kind 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:49.880 of settle on the bottom, and then they will test 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.680 the water for those the garbage juice, and depending on 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:58.200 how nasty it is and riddled with chemicals, they'll go 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.840 from there. They may um treat like regular wastewater. Well, 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.320 that depends, like if they if just the storm water 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:07.840 shows some leech, they'll send it to a leech a 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:10.560 collection pond. If it's if it turns out to just 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:13.880 be normal stormwater, then they'll let it flow out of there. 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.399 That's trying to like whatever river or whatever. And sometimes 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.159 it's gravity. Sometimes they use a pump, depends on the 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:22.320 lay of the land. But if it's leach, they have 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:26.480 a separate collect collection system for leech. A yes, which 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:30.720 is um basically perforated pipes that are running through the 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:33.280 cells and the leach. It is gonna happen, like they 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:35.880 try and prevent it as much as possible, but there 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:37.960 is no hole in the ground where you're not gonna 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.399 have any garbage juice right exactly. Um, So they collect 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.520 that garbage juice as it's forming, and they run it 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.000 out to a separate collection pond that's the leech a 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:48.159 collection pond. And if you don't want to swim in 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.920 the stormwater collection pond, like you don't even want to 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.080 look at the leech collection pump. So again, they let 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:58.160 the particles settle, they test the concentration of the leech 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.400 a in the pond, and then they send it either 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:05.600 to uh an on site UH water remediation system like 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:08.240 a wastewater plant, yeah, or else they send it to 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.960 like the local city or county wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah. Boy, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.080 we gotta do one in wastewater treatment. At some point. 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:18.280 You got to talk about fascinating. You poop in the 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:23.440 water and eventually you water. It's pretty remarkable of what 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.959 we've learned to do. Uh, you know yep. So uh. 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:30.360 The other big thing that we mentioned earlier was methane, 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:35.600 and that is a byproduct that's a gaseous byproduct um 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:42.640 of anaerobic decomposition. And about fifty of your your gases 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:45.480 coming out of this thing, we're gonna be methane about 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:48.800 carbon dioxide and they say a little bit of nitrone, 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:51.000 little bit oxygen. I guess not even enough to be 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:55.439 a percentage point, almost negligible. So methane is um can 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:58.959 be dangerous and hazardous, but it can also be very useful. 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.600 So these days they're finding ways to harness this methane 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:05.720 and use it as fuel, right, which is pretty great. Yeah, 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:08.240 it is very great. And actually there's a lot of 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.840 money in it they're finding too, especially if you go 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:13.359 to the trouble of building an on site power plant 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.520 where you just basically extract the methane from the landfill 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:19.879 gas l f G is what it's called, and then 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.320 you burn the methane. You can power, you can create electricity, right, 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.359 you can power a turbine and boom, there's electricity being produced. 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.639 And actually at Fresh Kills, New York City gets ten 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:32.760 million bucks a year from a company that has exclusive 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:36.040 rights to extract the methane from this place. Ten million. 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.560 That's not something it needs that UM and Lincoln, Nebraska 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:42.600 did a pilot study in two thousand and ten and 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:45.160 found that they could make about three hundred thousand dollars 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:49.040 a year from methane collection from their landfill. So if 0:23:49.080 --> 0:23:51.200 you're a city that's trying to like figure out ways 0:23:51.240 --> 0:23:56.800 to at least keep your landfill open methane collection I 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:00.119