Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. Hi. How's it going.
Speaker 1: It's great? Good, Good to yourself. I found this topic
Speaker 1: and I was starting to tell you before how interesting
Speaker 1: I thought it wasn't. Yeah, you went it's awesome. I
Speaker 1: was like, stop, it's gold. So now I'm going to
Speaker 1: say it. It's awesome. And landfills, the concept of a landfill,
Speaker 1: even though it ain't perfect, it's pretty neat. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: even though we need to reduce the amount of trash,
Speaker 1: especially Americans produce. Yeah, um, there is still going to
Speaker 1: be trash in the world and it needs to be
Speaker 1: dealt with. And this is way better than the old days. Uh,
Speaker 1: when in like pre nineteen thirty New York City they
Speaker 1: would dump their garbage in the ocean. And then between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and we still do that. You realize New
Speaker 1: York City doesn't dump it right in the Atlantic Ocean, No,
Speaker 1: but a lot of garbage is dumped in the ocean. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we talked about the Great Pacific garbage back um. And
Speaker 1: then between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies they
Speaker 1: had what they called dumps, which is a big hole
Speaker 1: in the ground covered in rats and birds, and then
Speaker 1: you would just dump garbage to leach into everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is messed up. And the e p A comes
Speaker 1: along and I think the sixties, definitely the seventies, and
Speaker 1: was like, uh, we need to do something better about this.
Speaker 1: But so the the idea of the landfill was born
Speaker 1: in about the sixties, I believe. Well, well, the first
Speaker 1: modern sanitary landfill was ninety seven and Fries. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: that's right, and it's like a national his or place
Speaker 1: or something, because it kind of kicked off the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that they
Speaker 1: started passing law saying that, like every state really needs
Speaker 1: to start doing the same thing. Right, And like you
Speaker 1: said before that they just dumped their trash in a pit,
Speaker 1: which people have been doing for millennia at least. Um.
Speaker 1: They were burning their trash also, and it sounds mind
Speaker 1: bogglingly awful and it is, especially from environmental standpoint, but
Speaker 1: they didn't have the trash problem that we have now
Speaker 1: in the sixties. Since the nineties sixties are trash generation,
Speaker 1: municipal solid waste generation has um doubled, tripled, tripled, And
Speaker 1: I was like, why is that? What's going on? Apparently
Speaker 1: it's the advent of cheap packaging, Before styrofoam packaging, before plastic,
Speaker 1: before aluminum cans, that everybody just threw away. Everything was
Speaker 1: wrapped in a T shirt that you could wear exactly,
Speaker 1: And like when you weren't carrying around a slab of
Speaker 1: meat in the T shirt from the butcher to your house,
Speaker 1: you wore your T shirt so you reused it, right, No,
Speaker 1: but no, you would you would have maybe like, um,
Speaker 1: do you remember when Sam the butcher brought Alice the
Speaker 1: meat BC Boys reference about um Stone driving around with
Speaker 1: two which is I guess a really weird way of
Speaker 1: putting in his barefoot well that didn't rhyme bald feet anyway.
Speaker 1: He would bring it to her wrapped in like white
Speaker 1: butcher's paper, and she would throw it away and it
Speaker 1: would really not take up much space to the dump.
Speaker 1: It would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for
Speaker 1: fifty thou years, right, And so starting about packaging, especially
Speaker 1: very non biodegradable packaging, took off like a rocket. Yeah
Speaker 1: you could still go to the butcher though now you
Speaker 1: can and you get it in paper, but you go
Speaker 1: to that big chain grocery store and it's going to
Speaker 1: be plastic and starmer foam. So between nineteen are packaging
Speaker 1: waste increased. That meant that we had to do something.
Speaker 1: We had a lot more trash and we had to
Speaker 1: take care of this trash and ways that we had before.
Speaker 1: And so the modern landfill based on that Fresno model
Speaker 1: uh boomed And fortunately that's right. But even now they're
Speaker 1: finding we went too far in one direction. Now we
Speaker 1: need to adjust it, massage it a little bit, refine it.
Speaker 1: And we were we were coming up with a new
Speaker 1: generation of landfills. That's right. So, uh, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about a landfill, the goal of a landfill is not
Speaker 1: to compost trash. And a lot of people probably don't
Speaker 1: know this. It's not to compost trash such that it
Speaker 1: breaks down super quickly uh and biodegrades. It is the
Speaker 1: opposite of that. It is to keep it as dry
Speaker 1: as possible in an air tight and and just bury
Speaker 1: it lock it away from the surrounding world. That's right.
Speaker 1: And so that's what a landfill is, a sanitary landfill,
Speaker 1: municipal solid waste or MSW landfill. Um, they isolate the
Speaker 1: trash from the environment. They don't just dump it on
Speaker 1: the dirt and let things leach in. And this thus
Speaker 1: begins the landfill podcasts. There are a lot of components
Speaker 1: to that, but that's along and short of it. It's true.
Speaker 1: And um what what that's called. The whole idea behind
Speaker 1: that landfill that was in reaction to that's one dry
Speaker 1: tomb is the industry lingo for it. It's and it
Speaker 1: it was created in reaction to trash just being allowed
Speaker 1: to seep into the ground water and methane to just
Speaker 1: leak out into the air blow up. Apparently houses that
Speaker 1: have utility pipes that pass by old landfills, methane will
Speaker 1: get into those utility pipes and like get in mixed
Speaker 1: in with the electricity and when you go to plug
Speaker 1: in your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really, yes, it's
Speaker 1: a problem with old landfills because they were all idiots
Speaker 1: with trash like up until the sixties, seventies, eighties, UM
Speaker 1: and even still we have a big problem with trash,
Speaker 1: but nothing like it was before. As far as taking
Speaker 1: care of it, is starting to really get a handle
Speaker 1: on it. Americans produce four point six pounds of trash
Speaker 1: per day per person. Yeah, and you know what's crazy
Speaker 1: is you think, well, America's probably like as bad as
Speaker 1: it gets. Know, the UK is America is like in
Speaker 1: the middle roughly for trash generation, and the UK is
Speaker 1: the worst. They produced per capita, they produced the most,
Speaker 1: and um, they also throw away the most. They have
Speaker 1: the lowest recovery rate. Um, although it's gone up. I
Speaker 1: believe I think they had like some sort of national
Speaker 1: initiative because it says here that it won up from
Speaker 1: thirty one percent recovery rate, which is like recycling and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, um, basically diverting it from the landfill.
Speaker 1: So it's actually better than America as far as the
Speaker 1: resource recovery rate goes. Canada is the worst. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Canada is the worst. Yeah, that's hard to believe. I
Speaker 1: would think so too, but it's true. The standout is Germany.
Speaker 1: Germany produces way more trash per person than any other
Speaker 1: country per capita, but they also have the highest recovery
Speaker 1: rate at like almost of their trash gets diverted from
Speaker 1: the landfill. That's amazing, Actually that's efficient. What what's the
Speaker 1: American number on that diversion? It hovers about a third
Speaker 1: for at least a couple of decades, now, maybe three decades,
Speaker 1: you could say Americans diverted about they diverted about a
Speaker 1: third of their trash from the landfill. You'd like to
Speaker 1: see that number get better in three decades for sure,
Speaker 1: and it's always hovers around thirty three, and uh, it
Speaker 1: should be a lot better than that. You know. That
Speaker 1: sounds like to me, whoever is in charge of doing
Speaker 1: that study is just like, let's just use last numbers.
Speaker 1: We can all live with that, right, all right. So
Speaker 1: if you want to landfill in your municipality, um, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to start with a proposal by saying.
Speaker 1: You can't just go start Yeah, you gotta look around
Speaker 1: and say we need to landfill everybody. So let's uh
Speaker 1: do an environmental impact study and let's let's find an area.
Speaker 1: Let's find a lot of acreage. Um. Because I think
Speaker 1: they use the North Wake County Landfill in Raleigh, North
Speaker 1: Carolina as a their go to example, in this article,
Speaker 1: so our how stuff work started two and thirty acres
Speaker 1: of land, about seventy acres of which is the actual landfill.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna need a lot of land, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do an environmental impact study to determine
Speaker 1: a lot of things. How much land do you have, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if there's enough of it, sure? Um. What type of
Speaker 1: soil you have and what bedrock is underneath it? Very important? Um.
Speaker 1: How water flows over the surface of the site. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does it flow right down into the river? Does it
Speaker 1: perfully right right exactly? Um? And then the uh, the
Speaker 1: impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure. And
Speaker 1: if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to landfill on an archaeological site. What's
Speaker 1: funny is if you, um, if you go back and
Speaker 1: look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest in the world New York, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't even the only one for New York. Yes,
Speaker 1: And the guy who created the high line, James Corner,
Speaker 1: is um creating a park there out of it, like
Speaker 1: a massive, massive park. Interesting. I think like three times
Speaker 1: the size of Central Park are they calling it cancer Park.
Speaker 1: I think they're avoiding that. Okay, I don't remember what
Speaker 1: it's called. I wrote a really interesting New York Magazine
Speaker 1: article about it, though. It really well written and clever
Speaker 1: um where it's basically like, that's awesome, that's awesome, this
Speaker 1: guy's got this great vision. And then but it's a landfill.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's still buried garbage exactly. Um. Alright, So when we
Speaker 1: talked about the bedrock, that's really important because if you have,
Speaker 1: what would you really want to try and prevent when
Speaker 1: you're building a landfill or operating landfill is um leakage
Speaker 1: and seepage. That was like the that was the big
Speaker 1: thing when the e PA came along and started saying like,
Speaker 1: you can't just bare your trash anywhere there's groundwater, dummies,
Speaker 1: and like, as trash decomposes, it's not just like old
Speaker 1: coca cola and banana peals. When those things break down
Speaker 1: instead of mixing together, some really horrific stuff like ammonia
Speaker 1: gets produced and that gets into the groundwater, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're drinking ammonia. That's bad for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called the it's called leech eight is the liquid
Speaker 1: um or garbage juice is another words that. That's a
Speaker 1: better way to say it, because that defines it all
Speaker 1: in one go, right and um, the whole point of
Speaker 1: the of the dry tomb in fill was to do
Speaker 1: everything you could to prevent this garbage that you're burying
Speaker 1: from reaching the the water table. Right, So you study
Speaker 1: that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's not gonna work
Speaker 1: because it's going to seep into that junk. No mines,
Speaker 1: no quarries, because they probably already have broken through the
Speaker 1: water table before they were abandoned. That's right. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you also need to be able to
Speaker 1: sink wells in various points, so you can't the bedrock
Speaker 1: needs to allow for that as well. That's right. Like
Speaker 1: you're really looking for a specific area when we talked
Speaker 1: about the water flow, of course, you don't want it
Speaker 1: flowing near wetlands or any kind of rivers or streams.
Speaker 1: That's a no brainer. Fresh Kills is an old marsh
Speaker 1: land that they just filled the marshes and lakes in
Speaker 1: with garbage. What what did they name it? That is
Speaker 1: that the area or like that kills is a Dutch
Speaker 1: word for stream, Okay, because I was about to say
Speaker 1: that's like the worst name for anything unless it was
Speaker 1: a butcher. But it really means fresh stream, fresh kills, charcooterie,
Speaker 1: fresh stream garbage, don't Yeah, that makes sense. Now what
Speaker 1: does kill mean stream of old Dutch word because you've
Speaker 1: heard of like bowery means yes, that would be fish stream.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot more sense. Now fresh kills. I
Speaker 1: wondered about that for years. Now, you know, all right, so, uh,
Speaker 1: local wildlife they're going to really study that to see
Speaker 1: what kind of um You know, it can't be in
Speaker 1: the area of a migrate my migratory route for birds
Speaker 1: or like a nesting area a k marsh like Fresh
Speaker 1: Kills landfill. That's right. And then once you figured all
Speaker 1: this out and they say, oh wait, wait, you skipped
Speaker 1: over the historical or archaeological site. Well you already mentioned
Speaker 1: that like Fresh Kills landfill. Okay, Apparently I think it
Speaker 1: was stated at all wrong. Huh. Henry David Thoreau said
Speaker 1: that um arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from
Speaker 1: the ground at Fresh Kills before it was a landfill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so our theological site wet land and very close to UM.
Speaker 1: The ground water it's seeping right into it. Unbelievable. UM.
Speaker 1: And I believe there was a large bunny rabbit population
Speaker 1: that they just dumped it right on top of UM. So,
Speaker 1: once you figured it out, this is not fresh skills,
Speaker 1: is actually a great spot. You're gonna get your permits,
Speaker 1: you're gonna raise your money. Um. This one in North
Speaker 1: Carolina costs about nineteen million to build cheap. That seems
Speaker 1: a little cheap, but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably from the nineties. And then you probably have
Speaker 1: a public vote because they're probably gonna be using public
Speaker 1: dollars and no one will know that vote takes place,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get a landfill built. Yeah, they just
Speaker 1: build it in the night. All right. So let's take
Speaker 1: a little break here and we will talk about building
Speaker 1: that landfill right for this all right, So you've got
Speaker 1: your permits, you've got your money raised, it's time to
Speaker 1: build a landfill. Yeah, you've shouted down the old guy
Speaker 1: at the Board of Commissioners meeting, who objects, old man?
Speaker 1: McLean the tree hugger. Let's recycle all our garbage, crack pot.
Speaker 1: So we will list the basic parts of the landfill
Speaker 1: and then go over them in detail. Hows that sound
Speaker 1: It sounds like a bulleted list. You've got the bottom
Speaker 1: liner system, You've got the cells, you've got the storm
Speaker 1: water drainage, you've got the leech eight collection system, ok,
Speaker 1: garbage juice methane collection system, and you've got the cap
Speaker 1: the covering boom. Actually, that's the opposite of what you
Speaker 1: want to happen with the cap covering system. You don't
Speaker 1: want a kaboom, So start with the bottom liner. Man again,
Speaker 1: this is the original purpose of all landfills that are
Speaker 1: in use today, unless they're bioreactor, although it's it's part
Speaker 1: of it. But this dry tomb landfill, uh, it's the
Speaker 1: main part is the bottom liner. So they use a
Speaker 1: very thick like um sometimes a hundred million millimeter thick,
Speaker 1: very sturdy like polyethylene liner synthetic plastic that they line
Speaker 1: the whole place with, puncture resistant, strong, able to withstand
Speaker 1: a lot of trash being dumped on it. And just
Speaker 1: to be a certain, they'll often use some sort of
Speaker 1: like um fabric matt that they'll lay down first and
Speaker 1: then put the the the liner on and then put
Speaker 1: another mat on top of that to help prevent it
Speaker 1: from being punctured by rocks or garbage. Rocks below or
Speaker 1: garbage above. Everything's trying to puncture of this mat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a moisture barrier. Right, But that liner is the
Speaker 1: main component, the the initial component of the landfill, that's right. Uh. Next,
Speaker 1: we have our cell, and a cell is basically the garbage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the day's garbage that you dump in there. Um,
Speaker 1: you compacted airspace is is key. That's where the more
Speaker 1: airspace you have, the more trash you can bury. So
Speaker 1: they want to keep it as compact as possible. And
Speaker 1: they do this by rolling over it with bulldozers and
Speaker 1: flatteners and rollers and graters and they smush it down.
Speaker 1: And a cell is um, it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a hole in the ground. Apparently in the North Carolina
Speaker 1: landfill that House Stuff Works went to back in the day.
Speaker 1: A cell is fifty ft long, fifty ft wide, fourteen
Speaker 1: ft deep yep. And all the trash is put in there.
Speaker 1: Like you said, there's heavy equipment that rolls over and
Speaker 1: compacts it. And did you read the Atlantic um article
Speaker 1: I sent to you about Pointe Hills. Yes, they said
Speaker 1: that there's an added benefit of compacting trash not just
Speaker 1: doesn't take up less space, it also kills about the
Speaker 1: rats in there. Oh good. And then at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, when the cell is filled, they cover
Speaker 1: it over with about six inches of dirt that they
Speaker 1: then compact that kills the other of rats. That's where
Speaker 1: the other half and that makes that type of landfill
Speaker 1: what's called the sanitary landfill, which mean rat free, because
Speaker 1: they're all dead, they're squished or they're suffocated by this
Speaker 1: process of compacting and covering over. And the by covering
Speaker 1: over this stuff every day, you protected from being blown
Speaker 1: away by the wind, by being carried away from by
Speaker 1: the rain. You protected from being dug up by coyotes
Speaker 1: or trash scavengers. Right, um, And so that's what makes
Speaker 1: it a sanitary dry tomb landfill is what we've described
Speaker 1: so far. That's right. And to get this thing as
Speaker 1: compact as possible, they're gonna weed out things like that
Speaker 1: huge roll of carpet that you took out of your
Speaker 1: uh nineteen seventies bedroom, or that mattress that has a
Speaker 1: you know, brown stained like looks like the map of
Speaker 1: Asia from the sixteen hundreds, because you raised that one
Speaker 1: lady from Hell, raiser from the dead. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: gonna chake out all that stuff and make it um
Speaker 1: you know, all the yard ways to make it as
Speaker 1: compactable as possible, and then um that is compacted at
Speaker 1: a rate depending on where you are, about fift pounds
Speaker 1: per cubic yard. Yes, so boom, flat dirt is over
Speaker 1: it now and now we need to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: once you created that cell, you've just completed a portion
Speaker 1: of the landfill, right, Yes, for the day, um, one
Speaker 1: day's trash. It's so weird, it's like yours Tuesday's whole
Speaker 1: five days a year. And those well, those UM the
Speaker 1: Hills people in that Atlantic article, we're saying that they
Speaker 1: in retrospect figured out that they could have predicted the
Speaker 1: economic crisis. Interesting because about a little less than a
Speaker 1: year before it happened, the UM they would fill up
Speaker 1: their days cell by like one pm and closed. Now
Speaker 1: they stay up until five and it's not even necessarily full.
Speaker 1: So they know it's like a huge downturn in building
Speaker 1: materials and consumer waste. UM. Like a year or two
Speaker 1: before the actual crisis happened before they collapse. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what the old saying, if you want to know
Speaker 1: the state of the country's economics, go to a landfill.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. That's what I think. Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: first said that. So you don't want liquids in that
Speaker 1: solid waste as much as possible. So they test the
Speaker 1: solid waste for liquids, and um, if it's not liquid,
Speaker 1: then it's fine to go in the hole, right, So
Speaker 1: they put that in there. And the other way that
Speaker 1: they want to keep liquids out. And again, what they're
Speaker 1: doing is trying to prevent garbage juice from forming. Is
Speaker 1: to have storm raw storm, water runoff, drainage going on.
Speaker 1: So all of the first of all, you never want
Speaker 1: a flat landfill. Ever, you want to mount it at
Speaker 1: least slightly. You never want a plateau um and so
Speaker 1: you want the water to run off, and then when
Speaker 1: it runs off, you want to collect it into pipes.
Speaker 1: You want to basically create an eves system like you
Speaker 1: have on the roof of your house and then shoot
Speaker 1: it all down to some concrete gulches or French trains
Speaker 1: at your house. Roos shepperls what else uh, gutters, yeah,
Speaker 1: habit dasher right, um, and all that goes to a
Speaker 1: collection pond. That's right. Uh, this is not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you want to swim in. What they wait
Speaker 1: for there is for um the suspended particles to kind
Speaker 1: of settle on the bottom, and then they will test
Speaker 1: the water for those the garbage juice, and depending on
Speaker 1: how nasty it is and riddled with chemicals, they'll go
Speaker 1: from there. They may um treat like regular wastewater. Well,
Speaker 1: that depends, like if they if just the storm water
Speaker 1: shows some leech, they'll send it to a leech a
Speaker 1: collection pond. If it's if it turns out to just
Speaker 1: be normal stormwater, then they'll let it flow out of there.
Speaker 1: That's trying to like whatever river or whatever. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it's gravity. Sometimes they use a pump, depends on the
Speaker 1: lay of the land. But if it's leach, they have
Speaker 1: a separate collect collection system for leech. A yes, which
Speaker 1: is um basically perforated pipes that are running through the
Speaker 1: cells and the leach. It is gonna happen, like they
Speaker 1: try and prevent it as much as possible, but there
Speaker 1: is no hole in the ground where you're not gonna
Speaker 1: have any garbage juice right exactly. Um, So they collect
Speaker 1: that garbage juice as it's forming, and they run it
Speaker 1: out to a separate collection pond that's the leech a
Speaker 1: collection pond. And if you don't want to swim in
Speaker 1: the stormwater collection pond, like you don't even want to
Speaker 1: look at the leech collection pump. So again, they let
Speaker 1: the particles settle, they test the concentration of the leech
Speaker 1: a in the pond, and then they send it either
Speaker 1: to uh an on site UH water remediation system like
Speaker 1: a wastewater plant, yeah, or else they send it to
Speaker 1: like the local city or county wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah. Boy,
Speaker 1: we gotta do one in wastewater treatment. At some point.
Speaker 1: You got to talk about fascinating. You poop in the
Speaker 1: water and eventually you water. It's pretty remarkable of what
Speaker 1: we've learned to do. Uh, you know yep. So uh.
Speaker 1: The other big thing that we mentioned earlier was methane,
Speaker 1: and that is a byproduct that's a gaseous byproduct um
Speaker 1: of anaerobic decomposition. And about fifty of your your gases
Speaker 1: coming out of this thing, we're gonna be methane about
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and they say a little bit of nitrone,
Speaker 1: little bit oxygen. I guess not even enough to be
Speaker 1: a percentage point, almost negligible. So methane is um can
Speaker 1: be dangerous and hazardous, but it can also be very useful.
Speaker 1: So these days they're finding ways to harness this methane
Speaker 1: and use it as fuel, right, which is pretty great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is very great. And actually there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money in it they're finding too, especially if you go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of building an on site power plant
Speaker 1: where you just basically extract the methane from the landfill
Speaker 1: gas l f G is what it's called, and then
Speaker 1: you burn the methane. You can power, you can create electricity, right,
Speaker 1: you can power a turbine and boom, there's electricity being produced.
Speaker 1: And actually at Fresh Kills, New York City gets ten
Speaker 1: million bucks a year from a company that has exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to extract the methane from this place. Ten million.
Speaker 1: That's not something it needs that UM and Lincoln, Nebraska
Speaker 1: did a pilot study in two thousand and ten and
Speaker 1: found that they could make about three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year from methane collection from their landfill. So if
Speaker 1: you're a city that's trying to like figure out ways
Speaker 1: to at least keep your landfill open methane collection I
Speaker 1: call my my worst days l f G. Actually when
Speaker 1: I have landfill gats the worst. Uh. So, then you've
Speaker 1: got your covering and your or your cap is the
Speaker 1: final piece of the puzzle here, and um, it depends
Speaker 1: on what kind of a landfill it is. Generally it's
Speaker 1: going to be covered with six inches at least of
Speaker 1: compacted soil and that's to keep you know, rats and
Speaker 1: stuff out the ones that aren't killed and getting back
Speaker 1: into the trash. But um, like we said earlier, airspace
Speaker 1: is key. So like six inches, if they could find
Speaker 1: a way to make that one inch, that would be
Speaker 1: much better. And so they've been experimenting with that too,
Speaker 1: like um, paper or submit emulsions instead that you just
Speaker 1: spray on top instead of that six inches of soil,
Speaker 1: it's like a quarter inch. Yeah, And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you have five and three quarters extra inches
Speaker 1: for trash, extra inches for more trash. That's a lot
Speaker 1: many which we are right now absolutely uh. And then
Speaker 1: eventually though, when you h it will have a permanent
Speaker 1: cap um some sort of poly ethylene cap on top.
Speaker 1: And so even after it's closed, that points hills Um
Speaker 1: landfill outside of l A that was the focus of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic article or fresh kills out in New York
Speaker 1: when that when it's closed, you don't just walk away
Speaker 1: from a landfill plant stuff on it. Well, yes, you
Speaker 1: have to plant stuff on it because when you cover
Speaker 1: it over with dirt, you want to plant something with um,
Speaker 1: a low roots system that won't go into the landfill,
Speaker 1: but we'll still hold the dirt and place to prevent
Speaker 1: it from a roading. So like grass cut zoo, not trees.
Speaker 1: I don't want to plant trees. But you also have
Speaker 1: to stick around and leave some people behind to monitor
Speaker 1: the groundwater for temperature changes. Change in temperature suggests that
Speaker 1: it's um. There's leachate that's intruded. Sometimes you can see
Speaker 1: the leech seeping up through the ground, and that means
Speaker 1: that there's you need to address an issue. It looks
Speaker 1: like the Beverly Hillbillies thing where Jed shot and missed
Speaker 1: that rabbit and instead oil comes up. That's what leech
Speaker 1: kind of looks like, bubble up. But you have to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on this place for decades and decades
Speaker 1: and decades. Yeah, I think they sitting here like thirty years.
Speaker 1: It needs to be maintained and monitored at least at
Speaker 1: least I think that's definitely in the line. So we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little more about operating a landfill and how
Speaker 1: to well, I guess alternative slam fills is a way
Speaker 1: to put it right after this. So, Chuck, let's say
Speaker 1: you are Tommy Landfill and you want to fulfill your
Speaker 1: birthright and open your own landfill, and you got everything
Speaker 1: all set. You've got the municipal bonds. Old man, what
Speaker 1: was it, mc tavish, mcvaine, something like that, mc lane, McClane.
Speaker 1: He he's been shouted down. You got the place open.
Speaker 1: How are you going to operate a day to day Well,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do is it's gonna be open to
Speaker 1: a couple of different things. It's gonna be open to
Speaker 1: the um municipality that collects the trash. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be open to demolition companies, construction companies, and many
Speaker 1: of them, including the one I go to, is open
Speaker 1: to you and me. Okay, um, So let's say I'm
Speaker 1: doing work on my house, which I've done, and I
Speaker 1: end up with a bunch of junk in the back
Speaker 1: of my pickup truck. I think it's called construction waste. Yes,
Speaker 1: construction debris, which I try and re use as much
Speaker 1: as I can, but you still end up with construction debris.
Speaker 1: Did we do like a green renovation episode once? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so okay, And um, I will drive my
Speaker 1: truck out there to the landfill into Cabb County and
Speaker 1: I will drive up onto a platform. Is the first
Speaker 1: very first thing you do with a it's a way station.
Speaker 1: Does it make you go up on two wheels and
Speaker 1: then you drive through the land just wheel that's showing
Speaker 1: off the stuck car scene. Um. Then you drive up
Speaker 1: on the way station and they weigh your truck or
Speaker 1: your car or whatever with full of trash. You go
Speaker 1: dump it. There's gonna be various stations. Um, there's like
Speaker 1: a recycling station. There's a here's where yard waste goes,
Speaker 1: a kissing booth. Uh, there's a dunk tank, you know,
Speaker 1: the traditional Catholic school carnival um at the one into
Speaker 1: Capp County. There's actually free mulch and um compost if
Speaker 1: you want to pick up stuff, which is kind of neat,
Speaker 1: but then eventually you will be directed to, uh, here
Speaker 1: is your dump and I pull up my truck, I
Speaker 1: dump it in a big dumpster, and that dumpster has
Speaker 1: then taken to the cell. I imagine. I don't follow
Speaker 1: the route, but that's what's supposed to happen. Does it
Speaker 1: make that bugs Bunny conveyor belt song? Yeah, someone wrote
Speaker 1: in and had a song, yeah power If you look
Speaker 1: up what was that the one that you were thinking, Yes, totally. Um.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the composer's name, but it was the
Speaker 1: twentieth century composer who think it is old man. It
Speaker 1: was something something Quintet. Yeah, I can't remember the guy's name,
Speaker 1: but anyway, look up to something something Quintet powerhouse, and
Speaker 1: then I think it starts about almost a minute and
Speaker 1: a half in. You'll be like, yeah, that's it, d dude,
Speaker 1: you know I'm talking about Yeah. Absolutely. When I heard it,
Speaker 1: it was unmistakably looney tunes. So I dump on my garbage, um,
Speaker 1: and then I drive back out onto another platform and
Speaker 1: then they rewagh my truck. They do the math and
Speaker 1: then when they weigh it, um, they charge you a
Speaker 1: tipping fee, yeah, which is usually a per ton amount right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it's not that much money. Like
Speaker 1: I'll have a truck full of junk, go dump it,
Speaker 1: and then it's like ten or twelve bucks. And of
Speaker 1: course it depends on how heavy the junk is, but
Speaker 1: in my case, it was always you know, uh, lightwood
Speaker 1: and stuff like that that I couldn't use nails. So
Speaker 1: that's that's basically everything we just described as a dry
Speaker 1: tomb landfill. Right. But as as UM companies like waste
Speaker 1: management and local municipalies have figured out, like, hey, there's
Speaker 1: actually money in this rotting garbage, they've been looking into
Speaker 1: ways to get more methane out of it. And what
Speaker 1: they figured out is that you don't want a dry tomb.
Speaker 1: You want to kind of moist a little wet to
Speaker 1: thirty percent moisture. Yeah. I was really surprised that this
Speaker 1: isn't how it's done by now, because you can they said,
Speaker 1: you know, what could take decades and a dry tomb
Speaker 1: to break down, you can take just a few years
Speaker 1: if you just add a little water, just a little
Speaker 1: bit of water, Like there's already about ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: percent moisture in a dry tomb, no matter how much
Speaker 1: you try to keep it out. There's gonna be about
Speaker 1: ten to fift They figured out that if you add
Speaker 1: another water, you're going to greatly increase anaerobic um decomposition.
Speaker 1: And it can be leachated. It's not like they have
Speaker 1: have spring water exactly. It can be that stormwater you're collecting,
Speaker 1: it can be leech eate um, it can be gas
Speaker 1: condensation from the gas that's coming off and and basically
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're speeding up that anaerobic decomposition
Speaker 1: that's already going on. So these things are breaking down
Speaker 1: that organic stuff, the banana peels and the grass clippings
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. It's already in there. They're not
Speaker 1: breaking down the styrofoam, at least not very quickly, so
Speaker 1: that stuff is still going to be left behind. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of that burying walk awayte mentality as well. Still,
Speaker 1: but at least the the density of your m landfill
Speaker 1: is going to increase tremendously as all that other stuff decomposes,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have the added benefit of a lot
Speaker 1: more methane production. Yeah, and a lot more methane and
Speaker 1: a lot shorter time spans. So what they've had to do,
Speaker 1: because this is basically accelerated production, is create collection systems
Speaker 1: that can handle They can't just throw the old methane
Speaker 1: collection system in there that's used to collecting slowly, but
Speaker 1: surely they have to do something collect a lot and
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. Yeah, because they used to
Speaker 1: collect the methane in that they would harvest it and
Speaker 1: then burn it, which is sounds horrible because you're just
Speaker 1: releasing all that stuff into the atmosphere, but it's better
Speaker 1: than just vending it. Just vending methane. Methane is a
Speaker 1: um much more potent greenhouse gas than even like CEO
Speaker 1: two like by far, So you don't want to just
Speaker 1: vent that stuff, so you burn it off. But even
Speaker 1: better is if you're gonna burn it, at least use
Speaker 1: it to power stuff. So by adding just a little
Speaker 1: bit of water you can create this. You can accelerate
Speaker 1: the anaerobic decomposition. And since the anaerobic decomposition is what
Speaker 1: makes the landfill like a moving, living, evolving pile, once
Speaker 1: that's done in ten years, you've got all the methane
Speaker 1: you're gonna get from it, the things not gonna settle anymore,
Speaker 1: and you can walk away without monitoring it for the
Speaker 1: next fifty years. Yeah, so the bioreactor model seems like
Speaker 1: far and away the wave of the future. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess it's just a matter of like building more
Speaker 1: of them. Yes, so we got a couple of more
Speaker 1: things here before we close. For sure. This is very interesting.
Speaker 1: One Neto thing that I didn't know. I think I
Speaker 1: knew about Giant Stadium, but I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: just heard Jimmy hoff was buried there. Well, you might
Speaker 1: have just been in the in the landfill. Apparently some
Speaker 1: sports arenas like Kemiskey in Chicago, Mile Haush Stadium in Denver,
Speaker 1: Giant Stadium in New Jersey built on landfills because they're cheap,
Speaker 1: cheap land, and some speculation that it might give athletes cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there are a lot of Giants players are several
Speaker 1: um that came down with cancer. That one of the linebackers,
Speaker 1: Harry Carson, told The New York Times, Um, it makes
Speaker 1: you wonder what's going on around here, referencing the fact
Speaker 1: that it was built on an old land hill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently there was a game at Comiskey Park where
Speaker 1: there was a I think a short stop like ran
Speaker 1: into a piece of metal sticking up from the diamond
Speaker 1: and like started like kicking away. I didn't realized it
Speaker 1: was getting bigger and bigger, and the grounds crew came
Speaker 1: out and investigated, and it was Jimmy Hoffa. It was
Speaker 1: a copper cuddle from the landfill. They had moved its
Speaker 1: way up. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, So they had to
Speaker 1: dig it up and then refill it. Unbelievable. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that was a lovely break for the fans. Yes, because
Speaker 1: moving that they needed. They needed a breathere. Uh. I
Speaker 1: read an article on Slate called go West Garbage can
Speaker 1: exclamation point, and the main gist of it is, when
Speaker 1: are we going to run out of space? It's a
Speaker 1: great question. You can't keep bearing trash right? Um, Apparently
Speaker 1: you can, because what they're doing now is there there
Speaker 1: are fewer landfills than ever before. They're making these huge landfills. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen in six, there were close to seventy dumps
Speaker 1: in the US, and by two thousand nine there were
Speaker 1: just under two thousand. Decline in less than twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and so essentially what they're creating of these super landfills, um,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool, fewer landfills, right, but what's
Speaker 1: the problem, Um, do you know stinkier landfills? What the
Speaker 1: problem is is you're now trucking garbage sometimes five miles
Speaker 1: away to dump in the landfill because your state may
Speaker 1: not even have one. So then they're looking at you
Speaker 1: know how much c O two is used to do that? Um? Like,
Speaker 1: is it really greener to have fewer landfills and truck
Speaker 1: your garbage on a train or in a truck every day? Uh?
Speaker 1: And they basically say they don't really know. Which is
Speaker 1: back to burning everything? Which is more environmentally friendly? Um?
Speaker 1: In different states? Apparently there's a lot of money in it.
Speaker 1: Different states have way more room than others. And then
Speaker 1: some states don't even want that stuff. Of course, in
Speaker 1: the Northeast, like Massachusetts are like, we don't want landfills
Speaker 1: in our state, the Rhode Island. Same way they send
Speaker 1: it to Springfield, they send it to Kentucky. Well, no,
Speaker 1: remember the commissioner episode he accepted other states to waste. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's happening. Um. Let me see, Arkansas has
Speaker 1: enough capacity for more than six hundred years of trash
Speaker 1: without any more facilities being opened. There you go we'll
Speaker 1: just send it all to Arkansas. Whereas Rhode Island only
Speaker 1: has twelve years remaining. New York State only has twenty
Speaker 1: five years of capacity left. Send it to Arkansas. So
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. Um, Kentucky is twenty nine dollars
Speaker 1: per ton, making about six billion dollars a year. Ohio
Speaker 1: twenty one billion dollars a year of available land phil
Speaker 1: space because Ohio knows how to negotiate. That's right, the
Speaker 1: Buckeye State, that's right. Don't tread on me. That's New
Speaker 1: Hampshire the Tea Party. I think it's either New Hampshire, Vermont,
Speaker 1: one of those you know New Hampshires is lived for
Speaker 1: your die and make their inmates make those license plates. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: don't tread on me wasn't a state motto. And I
Speaker 1: think that was just flag with the cut up snake
Speaker 1: right that the Tea Party adopted. Remember did they adopt that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you see a bumper sticker with one
Speaker 1: of those flags on it, they're not just like a
Speaker 1: history buff or anything. Yeah. Or if it says who
Speaker 1: was John Galt? Yeah that that that'll tell you something
Speaker 1: about the driver of that vehicle was that a Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise movie. No John Galt was the main character, and
Speaker 1: Atlas shrugged, Oh yeah, I ran, I'm thinking of Jack Reacher.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about landfills, you can
Speaker 1: type that word into the search part how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and uh, I said search bar. So it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener, ma'il. I needna call this very
Speaker 1: sad email but uplifting at the same time. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, my amazing and wonderful father in law,
Speaker 1: Walter passed away. We had to drop everything, my husband
Speaker 1: and son and I and fly from Florida to Germany,
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Speaker 1: That was and is devastating. My husband and youngest son
Speaker 1: and I sat in the dark days for days, mixing
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Speaker 1: listen to podcasts while I run, though, which I do
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Speaker 1: I finally decided to cue up one of your podcasts
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Speaker 1: are going through was so tough. But I also started
Speaker 1: to realize that if I laugh, than I could heal. Uh. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: my husband and I, still in Germany, decided to go
Speaker 1: UH to walk to the nursing home where my aunt lives,
Speaker 1: which is two and a half hours through the forest,
Speaker 1: up and down hills. I love this family. By the way,
Speaker 1: walking to the nursing home like that, we of course
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