Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. Chuck here with your Saturday selects. Pick how
Speaker 1: landfills work. J This is a good one everyone. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is part of our I guess uh city works
Speaker 1: uh suite of podcasts. And how things like landfills work
Speaker 1: is super important and very interesting and not quite as
Speaker 1: depressing as you might think a little bit. But it's
Speaker 1: also kind of a marvel of engineering how these things
Speaker 1: actually get pulled off. So take a listen, take a
Speaker 1: re listen even how landfills work? Right now, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. 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 was. 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, well,
Speaker 1: New 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 that
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 seven and frees Now, okay, that's right,
Speaker 1: and it's like a National Historic Place or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it kind of kicked off the whole thing. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that they started
Speaker 1: passing law saying that, like every state really needs to
Speaker 1: start doing the same thing, right And like you said
Speaker 1: before that they just dumped their trash and 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 mine
Speaker 1: ugglingly awful, and it is, especially from an environmental standpoint,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have the trash problem that we have
Speaker 1: now in the sixties. Since the nineteen 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 meat.
Speaker 1: BC Boys reference was just about to say, um, freshman
Speaker 1: Stone driving around with two ft bald ft yeah, which
Speaker 1: is I guess a really weird way of putting in
Speaker 1: his barefoot. Well, it didn't rhyme bald feet anyway. He
Speaker 1: would bring it to her wrapped in like white butcher's
Speaker 1: paper and she would throw it away and it would
Speaker 1: really not take up much space of the dump. It
Speaker 1: would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years, right, Yeah, And so starting about nine sixty, packaging,
Speaker 1: especially very non biodegradable packaging, took off like a rocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah you could still go to the butcher, though now
Speaker 1: you can, and you get it in paper, but you
Speaker 1: go to that big chain grocery store and it's going
Speaker 1: to be plastic in styrofoam. So between nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: are packaging waste increased by eight That meant that we
Speaker 1: had to do something. We had a lot more trash
Speaker 1: and we had to take care of this trash and
Speaker 1: ways that we had before. And so the modern landfill
Speaker 1: based on that Fresno model uh boomed And fortunately that's
Speaker 1: right but even now they're finding we went too far
Speaker 1: in one direction. Yeah, now we need to adjust to
Speaker 1: massage it a little bit, refine it, and we're we
Speaker 1: were coming up with a new generation of landfills. That's right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a landfill, the goal of a
Speaker 1: landfill is not to compost trash. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people probably don't know this. Yeah, it's not to compost
Speaker 1: trash such that it breaks down super quickly, uh and biodegrades.
Speaker 1: It is the opposite of that. It is to keep
Speaker 1: it as dry as possible in an airtight and and
Speaker 1: just bury it, lock it away from the surrounding world.
Speaker 1: That's right. And so that's what a landfill is, a
Speaker 1: sanitary landfill, municipal solid waste or MSW landfill. Um, they
Speaker 1: isolate the trash from the environment. They don't just dump
Speaker 1: it on the dirt and let things leach in. And
Speaker 1: this thus begins the landfill podcast Sarah. 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 A
Speaker 1: dry tomb is the industry lingo for it. It's and
Speaker 1: it it was created in reaction to trash just being
Speaker 1: allowed to seep into the groundwater and methane to leak
Speaker 1: out in the air blow up. Apparently, houses that have
Speaker 1: utility pipes that passed by old landfills, methane will get
Speaker 1: into those utility pipes and like get in mixed in
Speaker 1: with the electricity and when you go to plug in
Speaker 1: your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really. Yes, it's a
Speaker 1: problem with old landfills because they were all idiots with
Speaker 1: trash like up until the sixties, seventies, eighties, um, and
Speaker 1: even still we have a big problem with trash, but
Speaker 1: nothing like it is before. As far as taking care
Speaker 1: of it, we're starting to really get a handle on it.
Speaker 1: Americans produce four point six pounds of trash per day
Speaker 1: per person. Yeah, and you know what's crazy is you'd think, well,
Speaker 1: America is probably like as bad as it gets. Know,
Speaker 1: the UK is America is like in the middle roughly
Speaker 1: for trash generation, and the UK is the worst. They
Speaker 1: produced per capita, They produced the most, and um they
Speaker 1: also throw away the most. They have the lowest recovery rate. Um.
Speaker 1: Although it's gone up I believe I think they had
Speaker 1: like some sort of national initiative because it says here
Speaker 1: that it went up from thirty one recovery rate, which
Speaker 1: is like recycling and that kind of stuff, um, basically
Speaker 1: diverting it from the landfill, to so it's actually better
Speaker 1: than America as far as the resource recovery rate goes.
Speaker 1: Canada is the worst. I'm sorry, Canada is the worst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's hard to believe. I would think so too, but
Speaker 1: it's true. The standout is Germany. Germany produces way more
Speaker 1: trash per person than any other country per capita, but
Speaker 1: they also have the highest recovery rate at like almost
Speaker 1: of their trash gets diverted from the landfill. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Actually that's efficient. What what's the American number on that diversion?
Speaker 1: It hovers about a third for at least a couple
Speaker 1: of decades, now, maybe three decades, you could say Americans
Speaker 1: diverted about they diverted about a third of their trash
Speaker 1: from the landfill. You'd like to see that number get
Speaker 1: better in three decades for sure, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: always hovers around thirty and it should be a lot
Speaker 1: better than that. You know, what that sounds like to me,
Speaker 1: whoever is in charge of doing that study is just like,
Speaker 1: let's just use last numbers. We can all live with that, right, Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So if you want to landfill in your municipality, Um,
Speaker 1: you're 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 works 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: not perfully? Right? Right? Exactly? Um. And then the uh,
Speaker 1: the impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure,
Speaker 1: and if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want a landfill on an archa a logical site.
Speaker 1: What's funny is if you, um, if you go back
Speaker 1: and look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest in the world New York, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even the only one for New York.
Speaker 1: It's closed now, right, yes, And the guy who created
Speaker 1: the high line, James Corner, is um creating a park
Speaker 1: there out of it, like a massive, massive park. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I think like three times the size of Central Park.
Speaker 1: Are they calling it Cancer Park? I think they're avoiding that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. I wrote a really
Speaker 1: interesting New York magazine article about it now it really
Speaker 1: well written and clever, um, where it's basically like, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, this guy's got this great vision. And then
Speaker 1: but it's a landfill, you know. I'm sure at the
Speaker 1: end of the day it's still bared garbage exactly. Um. Alright,
Speaker 1: So when we talked about the bedrock, that's really important
Speaker 1: because if you have what would you really want to
Speaker 1: try and prevent when you're building a landfill or operating
Speaker 1: landfill is um leakage and seepage. That was like that
Speaker 1: that was the big thing. When the e PA came along.
Speaker 1: You started saying, like, you can't just bury your trash
Speaker 1: anywhere there's groundwater, dummies, and like, as trash decomposes, it's
Speaker 1: not just like old coca cola and banana peals. When
Speaker 1: those things break down and start mixing together, some really
Speaker 1: horrific stuff like ammonia gets produced, and that gets into
Speaker 1: the groundwater and all of a sudden you're drinking ammonia.
Speaker 1: That's bad for you. Yeah, that's called the it's called
Speaker 1: leech eight is the liquid um or garbage juice is
Speaker 1: in other words that that's a better way to say it,
Speaker 1: because that defines it all in one go, right, and um,
Speaker 1: the whole point of the of the dry Tomb landfill
Speaker 1: was to do everything you could to prevent this garbage
Speaker 1: that you're burying from reaching the the water table. Right,
Speaker 1: So you study that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna work because it's going to seep into that junk.
Speaker 1: No mines, no quarries because they probably already have broken
Speaker 1: through the water table before they were abandoned. That's right.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you also need to be
Speaker 1: able to say wells in various points, so you can't.
Speaker 1: The bedrock needs to allow for that as well. It's
Speaker 1: like you're really looking for a specific area. When we
Speaker 1: talked about the water flow. Of course you don't want
Speaker 1: it 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 did they name it? That is that
Speaker 1: the area or like that, Kills is a Dutch word
Speaker 1: for stream. Okay, because I was about to say that's
Speaker 1: like the worst name for anything totally unless it was
Speaker 1: a butcher. But it really means fresh stream, fresh kills, charcooterie,
Speaker 1: fresh stream garbage dump. Yeah, that makes sense. Now what
Speaker 1: does kill mean stream a Dutch word because you've heard
Speaker 1: it like fowery means really 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 st alright, 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 archaeological site, wet land and very close to UM,
Speaker 1: the groundwater seeping right into it. Unbelievable. UM. And I
Speaker 1: believe there was a large bunny rabbit population that they
Speaker 1: just dumped it right on top of UM. So once
Speaker 1: you figured out this is not Fresh Kills is actually
Speaker 1: a great spot, you're gonna get your permits you and
Speaker 1: raise your money. UM. This one in North Carolina costs
Speaker 1: about nineteen million to build cheap. That seems a little cheap,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: probably from the nineties, and then you probably have a
Speaker 1: public vote because you're probably gonna be using public dollars
Speaker 1: and no one will know that that vote takes place,
Speaker 1: and you're going to get a landfill built. Boom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just build it in the night. All right. So
Speaker 1: let's take a little break here and we will talk
Speaker 1: about building that landfill right for this. All right, So
Speaker 1: you've got your permits, you've got your money raised, it's
Speaker 1: time to build a landfill. Yeah, you shouted down the
Speaker 1: old guy at the board of come a shioner's meeting.
Speaker 1: Who objects, old man, McLean the tree hugger. Let's recycle
Speaker 1: all our garbage, crack pot. So we will list the
Speaker 1: basic parts of a landfill and then go over them
Speaker 1: in detail. How's that sound. It sounds like a bulleted list.
Speaker 1: You've got the bottom liner system, you've got the cells,
Speaker 1: you've got the storm water drainage, you've got the leech
Speaker 1: eight collection system a K garbage juice methane collection system,
Speaker 1: and you've got the cap the covering. Actually, that's the
Speaker 1: opposite of what you want to happen with the cap
Speaker 1: covering system. You don't want to kaboom. So start with
Speaker 1: the bottom liner man. Again, this is the original purpose
Speaker 1: of all landfills that are in use today, unless they're bioreactor.
Speaker 1: Although it's it's part of it. But this dry tomb landfill, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the main part is the bottom liner. So they
Speaker 1: use a very thick like um sometimes a hundred million
Speaker 1: millimeter thick, very sturdy like polyethylene liner synthetic plastic that
Speaker 1: they line the whole place with, puncture resistant, strong able
Speaker 1: to withstand a lot of trash being dumped on it.
Speaker 1: And just to be a certain they'll often use some
Speaker 1: sort of like um fabric matt that they'll lay down
Speaker 1: first and then put the the the liner on and
Speaker 1: then put another mat on top of that to help
Speaker 1: prevent it from being punctured by rocks or garbage. Rocks
Speaker 1: below or garbage above. Everything's trying to puncture 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. Next,
Speaker 1: we have our cell, and a cell is basically the
Speaker 1: day's garbage. Yeah, it's the day's garbage that you dump
Speaker 1: in there. Um, you compacted airspace is is key. That's
Speaker 1: where uh, the more airspace you have the more trash
Speaker 1: you can bury, so they want to keep it as
Speaker 1: compact as possible. And they do this by rolling over
Speaker 1: it with bulldozers and flatteners and rollers and graters, and
Speaker 1: they smush it down. And a cell is um, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a hole in the ground. Apparently
Speaker 1: in the North Carolina landfill that how stuff works went
Speaker 1: to back in the day. A cell is fifty ft long,
Speaker 1: fifty ft wide, fourteen ft deep, and all the trash
Speaker 1: is put in there. Like you said, there's heavy equipment
Speaker 1: that rolls over and compacts it. And did you read
Speaker 1: the Atlantic um article I sent you about Pointe Hills.
Speaker 1: They said that there's an added benefit of compacting trash.
Speaker 1: Not just doesn't take up less space, it also kills
Speaker 1: about fifty of the rats in there. Oh good. And
Speaker 1: then at the end of the day, when the cell
Speaker 1: is filled, they cover it over with about six inches
Speaker 1: of dirt that they then compact. That kills the other
Speaker 1: fifty of rats where the other half goes. And that
Speaker 1: makes that type of landfill what's called the sanitary landfill,
Speaker 1: which means rat free, because they're all dead, they're squished,
Speaker 1: or they're suffocated by this process of compacting and covering
Speaker 1: over and the By covering over this stuff every day,
Speaker 1: you protected from being blown away by the wind, by
Speaker 1: being carried away from by the rain. You protected from
Speaker 1: being dug up by coyotes or trash scavengers. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: and so that's what makes it a sanitary, dry tomb
Speaker 1: landfill is what we've described so far. That's right. And
Speaker 1: to get this thing as compact as possible, they're gonna
Speaker 1: weed out things like that huge roll of carpet that
Speaker 1: you took out of your uh, nineteen seventies bedroom, or
Speaker 1: that mattress that has a you know, brown stained like
Speaker 1: looks like the map of Asia from the sixteen hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: because you raised that one Lady from Hell, raiser from
Speaker 1: the dead. Yeah, so we're gonna take out all that
Speaker 1: stuff and make it um you know, all the yard
Speaker 1: ways to make it as compactable as possible. And then
Speaker 1: um that is compacted at a rate depending on where
Speaker 1: you are, about pounds for cubic yard. Yes, so boom,
Speaker 1: flat dirt is over it now, and now we need
Speaker 1: to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically, once you created that cell,
Speaker 1: you've just completed a portion of the landfill. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: for the day, um, one day's trash. It's so weird,
Speaker 1: it's like yours Tuesday's whole, right, sixty five days a
Speaker 1: year and those well, those UM the Points Hills people
Speaker 1: in that Atlantic article, we're saying that they in retrospect
Speaker 1: figured out that they could have predicted the economic crisis
Speaker 1: because about a little less than a year before it happened,
Speaker 1: the UM they would fill up their days cell by
Speaker 1: like one pm and closed. Now they stay up until
Speaker 1: five and it's not even necessarily full. So they know
Speaker 1: it's like a huge downturn in building materials and consumer waste. UM,
Speaker 1: like a year or two before where the actual crisis
Speaker 1: happened before they collapse. Well, you know what the the
Speaker 1: old saying, if you want to know the state of
Speaker 1: the country's economics, go to a landfill. It's a good thing.
Speaker 1: That's what I think. Jimmy Carter first said that. So
Speaker 1: you don't want liquids in that solid waste as much
Speaker 1: as possible, So they test the solid waste for liquids,
Speaker 1: and um, if it's not liquid, then it's fine to
Speaker 1: go in the hole, right, So they put that in there,
Speaker 1: and the other way that they want to keep liquids out.
Speaker 1: And again, what they're doing is trying to prevent garbage
Speaker 1: juice from forming. That's right, is to um have storm
Speaker 1: raw storm, water, runoff, drainage going on, so all of
Speaker 1: the First of all, you never want a flat landfill. Ever,
Speaker 1: you want to mount it at least slightly. You never
Speaker 1: want a plateau um, and so you want the water
Speaker 1: to run off, and then when it runs off, you
Speaker 1: want to collect it into pipes. You want to basically
Speaker 1: create an eves system like you have on the roof
Speaker 1: of your house, and then shoot it all down to
Speaker 1: some concrete gulches or if French strains at your house
Speaker 1: roos shepparls. What else? Uh gutters yeah, habitasher right, um,
Speaker 1: and all that goes to a collection pond. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is not the kind of thing you want to
Speaker 1: swim in. What they wait for there is for um
Speaker 1: the suspended particles to kind of settle on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and then they will test the water for those the
Speaker 1: garbage juice, and depending on how nasty it is and
Speaker 1: riddled with chemicals, they'll go from there. They may um
Speaker 1: treat it like regular wastewater. Well that depends like if
Speaker 1: they if just the storm water shows some leech, they'll
Speaker 1: send it to a leech a collection pond. If it's
Speaker 1: if it turns out to just be normal stormwater, then
Speaker 1: they'll let it flow out of there. That's trying to
Speaker 1: like whatever river or whatever. Yeah, and sometimes it's gravity.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they use a pump. It depends on the lay
Speaker 1: of the land. But if it's leech, they have a
Speaker 1: separate collect collection system for leachate. Yes, which is um
Speaker 1: basically perforated pipes that are running through the cells and
Speaker 1: the leach it is gonna happen, Like they try and
Speaker 1: prevent it as much as possible, but there is no
Speaker 1: hole in the ground where you're not gonna have any
Speaker 1: garbage juice right exactly. Um, So they collect that garbage
Speaker 1: juice as it's forming, and they run it out to
Speaker 1: a separate collection pond that's the leech a collection pod.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to swim in the stormwater
Speaker 1: collection pond, like you don't even want to look at
Speaker 1: the leech collection pod. So again they let the particles settle,
Speaker 1: they test the concentration of the leech a in the pond,
Speaker 1: and then they send it either to an on site
Speaker 1: uh water remediation system like a wastewater plant, or else
Speaker 1: they send it to like the local city or county
Speaker 1: wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah, boy, we gotta do one
Speaker 1: in wastewater treatment at some point. You got to talk
Speaker 1: about fascinating you poop in the water and eventually water.
Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable of what we've learned to do. Uh
Speaker 1: you know yep. So Uh. The other big thing that
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier was methane, and that is a byproduct
Speaker 1: that's a gaseous byproduct um of anaerobic decomposition. And about
Speaker 1: fifty of your your gases coming out of this thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to be a methane about carbon dioxide and
Speaker 1: they say a little bit of nitrone, little bit of oxygen.
Speaker 1: I guess not even enough to be a percentage point,
Speaker 1: almost negligible. So methane is um can be dangerous and hazardous,
Speaker 1: but it can also be very useful. So these days
Speaker 1: they're finding ways to harness this methane and use it
Speaker 1: as fuel, right, which is pretty great. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: very great, and actually there's a lot of money in
Speaker 1: it they're finding too, especially if you go to the
Speaker 1: trouble of building an on site power plant where you
Speaker 1: just basically extract the methane from the landfill gas l
Speaker 1: f G is what it's called. And then you burn
Speaker 1: the methane. You pow. You can create electricity. Right, you
Speaker 1: 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. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Ten million. That's not something it needs that UM and Lincoln,
Speaker 1: Nebraska did a pilot study in two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: and found that they could make about three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year from methane collection from their landfill. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: So if you're a city that's trying to like figure
Speaker 1: out ways to at least keep your landfill open, methane
Speaker 1: collection I call my my worst days l f G.
Speaker 1: Actually when I have landfill gas, it's the worst worst.
Speaker 1: Uh So, then you've got your covering and your or
Speaker 1: your cap is the final piece of the puzzle here
Speaker 1: and UM it depends on what kind of a landfill
Speaker 1: it is. Generally it's going to be covered with six
Speaker 1: inches at least of compacted soil. And that's to keep
Speaker 1: you know, rats and stuff out the ones that aren't
Speaker 1: killed and getting back into the trash. But um, like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, airspace is key. So like six six inches,
Speaker 1: if they could find a way to make that one inch,
Speaker 1: that would be much better. And so they've been experimenting
Speaker 1: with that too, like UM paper or submit emulsions instead
Speaker 1: that you just spray on top instead of that six
Speaker 1: inches of soils like a quarter inch. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have five and three quarters
Speaker 1: extra inches for trash, straight inches for more trash. That's
Speaker 1: a lot man speaking about this, which we are right
Speaker 1: now absolutely uh. And then eventually though, when you it
Speaker 1: will have a permanent cap um some sort of polyethylene
Speaker 1: cap on top. And so even after it's closed, that
Speaker 1: points hills Um landfill outside of l A that was
Speaker 1: the focus of the Atlantic article or fresh kills out
Speaker 1: in New York when that when it's closed, you don't
Speaker 1: just walk away from a landfill. You plant stuff on it. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: you have to plant stuff on it because when you
Speaker 1: cover it over with dirt, you want to plant something
Speaker 1: with um, a low roots system that won't go into
Speaker 1: the landfill, but we'll still hold the dirt and place
Speaker 1: to prevent it from a roading. So like grass cut zoo,
Speaker 1: not trees. I don't want to plant trees. But you
Speaker 1: also have to stick around and leave some people behind
Speaker 1: to monitor the groundwater for temperature changes. Change in temperature
Speaker 1: suggests that it's um. There's leachate that's intruded. Yeah. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can see the leech seeping up through the ground,
Speaker 1: and that means that there's you need to address an issue.
Speaker 1: It looks like the Beverly Hillbillies thing where Jed shot
Speaker 1: and missed that rabbit and instead oil comes up. That's
Speaker 1: what leech kind of looks like, bubbles up. But you
Speaker 1: have to keep an eye on this place for decades
Speaker 1: and decades and decades. Yeah, I think they sit in
Speaker 1: here like thirty years. It needs to be maintained and
Speaker 1: monitored at least at least I think that's definitely in
Speaker 1: the line. So we'll talk a little more about UM
Speaker 1: operating a landfill and how to well, I guess alternatives
Speaker 1: lamb fills is a way to put it. Yeah, right
Speaker 1: after this, So Chuck, let's say you are Tommy Landfill
Speaker 1: and you want to fulfill your birthright and open your
Speaker 1: own landfill, Tommy Landfill. And you got everything all set.
Speaker 1: You got the municipal bonds. Old man, what was it, McTavish, mcvain,
Speaker 1: something like that, McLean McClean. He he's been shouted down.
Speaker 1: You've got the place open. How are you going to
Speaker 1: operate a day to day? Well, what you're gonna do
Speaker 1: is it's gonna be open to a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: It's going to be open to the um municipality that
Speaker 1: collects the trash. Of course, it's gonna be open to
Speaker 1: militian companies, construction companies, and many of them, including the
Speaker 1: one I go to, is open to you and me. Okay, um, so,
Speaker 1: let's say I'm doing work on my house, which I've done,
Speaker 1: and I end up with a bunch of junk in
Speaker 1: the back of my pickup truck. I think it's called
Speaker 1: construction waste. Yes, construction debris, which I try and re
Speaker 1: use as much as I can. But you still end
Speaker 1: up with construction debris. Did we do like a green
Speaker 1: Renovation episode? Once? Yeah? I think so, And um, I
Speaker 1: will drive my truck out there to the landfill into
Speaker 1: Cab County and I will drive up onto a platform.
Speaker 1: Is the first very first thing you do with a
Speaker 1: it's a way station. Does it make you go up
Speaker 1: on two wheels? And then you drive through the landfills
Speaker 1: just on two wheels, off the stuck carn um. Then
Speaker 1: you drive up on the way station and they weigh
Speaker 1: your truck or your car or whatever with full of trash.
Speaker 1: You go dump it. There's gonna be various stations. Um,
Speaker 1: there's like a recycling station. There's a here's where a
Speaker 1: yard waste goes. Kissing boo, just a kissing booth. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a dunk tank, you know, the traditional Catholic school
Speaker 1: carnival um at the one into Capp County there's actually
Speaker 1: free mulch and um compost if you want to pick
Speaker 1: up stuff, which is kind of neat. But then eventually
Speaker 1: you will be directed to, uh, here is your dump
Speaker 1: and I pull up my truck at dump it in
Speaker 1: a big dumpster. Then that dumpster has then taken to
Speaker 1: the cell. I imagine I don't follow the route, but
Speaker 1: that's what's supposed to happen. Does it make that bugs
Speaker 1: Bunny conveyor belt song? Yes, someone wrote in and had
Speaker 1: a bunch of song was Powerhouse. Yeah, Powerhouse. If you
Speaker 1: look up, 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 I think it was a old man.
Speaker 1: It was something something Quintet. Yeah, I can't remember the
Speaker 1: guy's name, but anyway, look up to something something Quintet, powerhouse,
Speaker 1: and then I think it starts about Oh my us
Speaker 1: a minute and a half in you'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it, ye dat dude, d d D you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Yeah. Absolutely, when I heard it, 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,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and so you know it's not that much money.
Speaker 1: Like I'll have a truck full of junk, go dump it,
Speaker 1: and then it's like ten or twelve bucks. Of course,
Speaker 1: it depends on how heavy the junk is, but in
Speaker 1: my case, it was always you know, uh, light wood
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. That I couldn't reuse nails. So
Speaker 1: that's that's basically everything we just described as a dry
Speaker 1: tomb landfill, right, that's right. But as as UM companies
Speaker 1: like waste management and local municipalies have figured out, like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's actually money in this rotting garbage. They've been looking
Speaker 1: into ways to get more methane out of it. And
Speaker 1: what they figured out is that you don't want a
Speaker 1: dry tomb. You want to kind of moist a little
Speaker 1: wet to 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 They figured out that if you add another water,
Speaker 1: you're going to greatly increase anaerobic um decomposition and it
Speaker 1: can be leech aated. It's not like they have have
Speaker 1: spring water exactly. It can be that stormwater you're collecting
Speaker 1: it can be leech eight 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: the organic stuff, the banana peals and the grass clippings
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that'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 bury and walk awayte mentality as well. Still,
Speaker 1: but at least the the density of your um 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 span. 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 and 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 c
Speaker 1: O two like by far, so you don't want to
Speaker 1: just vent that stuff, so you burn it off. But
Speaker 1: even better is if you're going to burn it, at
Speaker 1: least use it to power stuff. So by adding just
Speaker 1: a little bit of water you can create this. You
Speaker 1: can accelerate the anaerobic decomposition. And since the anaerobic decomposition
Speaker 1: is what makes the landfill like a moving, living, evolving pile,
Speaker 1: once that's done in ten years, you've got all the
Speaker 1: methane you're going to get from it, the things that
Speaker 1: can settle anymore, and you can walk away without monitoring
Speaker 1: it for the next fifty years. Yeah. So the bioreactor
Speaker 1: model seems like far and away the wave of the future,
Speaker 1: right for sure. Um, I guess it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of like building more of them. Yes, so we got
Speaker 1: a couple of more things here before we close. For sure,
Speaker 1: this is very interesting. One Neto thing that I didn't
Speaker 1: I think I knew about Giant Stadium, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I just heard Jimmy Hoff was buried there. Well,
Speaker 1: he might have just been in the in the landfill.
Speaker 1: Apparently some sports arenas like Kemiskey in Chicago, Mile Haun
Speaker 1: Stadium in Denver, Giant Stadium in New Jersey built on
Speaker 1: landfills because they're cheap, cheap land and some speculation that
Speaker 1: it might give athletes cancer. Yeah, apparently there are a
Speaker 1: lot of Giants players are several um that came down
Speaker 1: with cancer that one of the linebackers, Harry Carson, told
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Um, it makes you wonder what's
Speaker 1: going on around here, referencing the fact that it was
Speaker 1: built on an old landfill. Yeah. And apparently there was
Speaker 1: a game at Kemiskey Park in Chicago where there was
Speaker 1: a I think a short stop like ran into a
Speaker 1: piece of metal sticking up from the diamond and like
Speaker 1: started like kicking away and didn't realized it was getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and the ground crew came out and investigated,
Speaker 1: and it was Jimmy hoffa right, It was a copper
Speaker 1: cuttle from the landfill they had moved its way up.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Yeah, so they had to dig it
Speaker 1: up and then refill it. Unbelievable. I'm sure that was
Speaker 1: a lovely break for the fans. Yes, because around so
Speaker 1: fast moving that they needed they needed to breathe. Uh.
Speaker 1: I read an article on Slate called go West garbage
Speaker 1: can exclamation point, and the main gist of it is,
Speaker 1: when are we going to run out of space? It's
Speaker 1: a great question. You can't keep bearing trash right? Um?
Speaker 1: Apparently you can, because what they're doing now is there
Speaker 1: there are fewer landfills than ever before. They're making these
Speaker 1: huge landfills. Yeah, in nine six there were close to
Speaker 1: seventy dumps in the US, and by two thousand nine
Speaker 1: there were just under two thousand. Decline in less than
Speaker 1: twenty five years, and so essentially what they're creating of
Speaker 1: these super landfills. Um, which is kind of cool, fewer landfills, right,
Speaker 1: But what's the problem, Um, do you know stinkier landfills?
Speaker 1: What the problem is is you're now trucking garbage sometimes
Speaker 1: five miles away to dump in the landfill because your
Speaker 1: state may not even have one. So then they're looking
Speaker 1: at you know, how much c O two is used
Speaker 1: to do that. Um, like, is it really greener to
Speaker 1: have fewer landfills and truck your garbage on a train
Speaker 1: or in a truck every day? Uh? And they basically
Speaker 1: say they don't really know which is which is more
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly. Um, in different states, apparently there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money in it. Different states have way more room
Speaker 1: than others. And then some states don't even want that stuff.
Speaker 1: Of course in the Northeast, like Massachusetts are like, we
Speaker 1: don't want landfills than our state, Rhode Island. Same way
Speaker 1: they send a to Springfield, they send it to Kentucky. Well, no,
Speaker 1: remember the Trash Commissioner episode. Yeah, he accepted other states
Speaker 1: to waste. Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Um, let me see,
Speaker 1: Arkansas has enough capacity for more than six hundred years
Speaker 1: of trash without any more facilities being opened. There you go,
Speaker 1: We'll just send it all to Arkansas, whereas Rhode Island
Speaker 1: only has twelve years remaining. New York State only has
Speaker 1: twenty five years of capacity left. Send it to Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So that's what they're doing. Um, Kentucky is ty dollars
Speaker 1: per Ton making about six billion dollars a year, Ohio
Speaker 1: twenty one billion dollars a year of available landfill spaces
Speaker 1: because Ohio knows how to negotiate. That's right, the Buckeye State,
Speaker 1: that's right. Don't tread on me White, that's New Hampshire Party.
Speaker 1: I think it's either New Hampshire Vermont, one of those.
Speaker 1: You know New Hampshire's is lived for your die right
Speaker 1: and make their inmates make those license plates. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: don't tread on me was in a state motto. And
Speaker 1: I think that was just flag with the cut up
Speaker 1: snake right that the Tea Party adopted. Remember did they
Speaker 1: adopt that? Yeah? So yeah. If you see a bumper
Speaker 1: sticker with one of those flags on it, they're not
Speaker 1: just like a history buff or anything. Yeah. Or if
Speaker 1: it says who was John Galt? Yeah, and that that
Speaker 1: that'll tell you something about the driver of that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Was that a Tom Cruise movie? No, John Galt was
Speaker 1: the main character, and Atlas shrugged. Oh yeah, I ran,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Jack Reacher. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about landfills, you can type that word into the
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com And uh, I
Speaker 1: said search bar. So it's time for listener mail I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this, uh, very sad email, but uplifting at
Speaker 1: the same time. Hey, guys, two weeks ago, my amazing
Speaker 1: and wonderful father in law, Walter passed away. We had
Speaker 1: to drop everything, my husband and son and I and
Speaker 1: fly from Florida to Germany, where he lived. He's been
Speaker 1: in my world for twenty four my fifty years, and
Speaker 1: I was so sad. I felt like I was going
Speaker 1: to throw up all the time. When we arrived in Germany,
Speaker 1: walking through the front door of the family home without
Speaker 1: him there was one of the hardest things I've ever
Speaker 1: had to do. It was and is devastating. My husband
Speaker 1: and youngest son and I sat in a dark days
Speaker 1: for days, mixing the crying mixed with crying and feeling lost.
Speaker 1: Always listen to podcasts while I run, though, which I
Speaker 1: do every day, And after ten days of being there
Speaker 1: in Germany, I finally decided to cue up one of
Speaker 1: your podcast while running. It was Blood Types. I laughed
Speaker 1: for the first time in two weeks out loud. Guys.
Speaker 1: It was so nice to laugh again, and it really
Speaker 1: opened the door for me. I realized that we as
Speaker 1: a family are going through was so tough, but I
Speaker 1: also started to realize that if I could laugh, then
Speaker 1: I could heal. Uh. Yesterday, my husband and I, still
Speaker 1: in Germany, decided to go uh to walk to the
Speaker 1: nursing home where my aunt lives, which is two and
Speaker 1: a half hours through the forest, up and down hills.
Speaker 1: I love this family. By the way, walking to the
Speaker 1: nursing home like that, we of course, brought our thirteen
Speaker 1: year old son, Oliver, who has mon After about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of walking, I handed on my phone and he
Speaker 1: listened to UH three Stuff you Should Know podcast along
Speaker 1: the way and is now hooked. He loves you guys.
Speaker 1: My husband and I had a badly needed quiet, get
Speaker 1: in touch with nature walk as a result, and we
Speaker 1: didn't have to listen to our sun moan at all.
Speaker 1: Uh more, long walks are in his future as long
Speaker 1: as I have you guys on my phone. And Oliver
Speaker 1: also asked me along the walk, wait a minute, mom,
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Speaker 1: said yes, I saw a sparkle in his eye. I
Speaker 1: love this email boom that is from Jennifer and Jennifer
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Speaker 1: I mean that was a great top not to email,
Speaker 1: great email and there was more to it even I
Speaker 1: had to leave out some of it from link Jennifer right,
Speaker 1: Jennifer and Oliver her Son and she doesn't even anonymous
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