WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How Landfills Work 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.320 Hello, everybody. Chuck here with your Saturday selects. Pick how 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:09.800 landfills work. J This is a good one everyone. Uh. 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:13.480 This is part of our I guess uh city works 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.640 uh suite of podcasts. And how things like landfills work 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.640 is super important and very interesting and not quite as 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.400 depressing as you might think a little bit. But it's 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.080 also kind of a marvel of engineering how these things 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.720 actually get pulled off. So take a listen, take a 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:39.159 re listen even how landfills work? Right now, welcome to 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.839 Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:50.080 How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.840 Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:59.920 and this is Stuff you should Know. Hi, how's it going. 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:07.040 It's great? Good, Good to yourself. I found this topic 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.319 and I was starting to tell you before how interesting 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:13.080 I thought it was. Yeah, you went it's awesome. I 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.520 was like, stop, it's gold. So now I'm going to 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:21.600 say it. It's awesome. And landfills the concept of a landfill, 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:26.480 even though it ain't perfect, it's pretty neat. Yeah, And 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:28.800 even though we need to reduce the amount of trash, 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:33.039 especially Americans produce. Yeah, um, there is still going to 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:34.720 be trash in the world and it needs to be 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:40.760 dealt with. And this is way better than the old days. Uh, 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.600 when in like pre nineteen thirty New York City they 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.800 would dump their garbage in the ocean. And then between 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.120 nineteen thirty and we still do that. You realize, well, 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:53.960 New York City doesn't dump it right in the Atlantic Ocean, no, 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.480 but a lot of garbage is dumped in the ocean. Yeah. Well, 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.040 we talked about the Great Pacific Garbage back um. And 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.600 then between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies they 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.960 had what they called dumps, which is a big hole 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.320 in the ground covered in rats and birds and that 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:13.480 you would just dump garbage to leach into everything. Yes, 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:16.560 which is messed up. And the e p A comes 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.280 along and I think the sixties, definitely the seventies and 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.839 was like, uh, we need to do something better about this. 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:28.640 But so the the idea of the landfill was born 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.920 in about the sixties, I believe. Well, well, the first 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:36.280 modern sanitary landfill was seven and frees Now, okay, that's right, 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.799 and it's like a National Historic Place or something. Yeah, 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:40.440 because it kind of kicked off the whole thing. But 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.959 it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that they started 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:46.440 passing law saying that, like every state really needs to 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:49.040 start doing the same thing, right And like you said 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.519 before that they just dumped their trash and a pit, 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.320 which people have been doing for millennia at least um 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.880 they were burning their trash also, and it sounds mine 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.880 ugglingly awful, and it is, especially from an environmental standpoint, 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.240 but they didn't have the trash problem that we have 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:13.840 now in the sixties. Since the nineteen sixties are trash generation, 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:20.639 municipal solid waste generation has um doubled, tripled, tripled, And 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.560 I was like, why is that? What's going on? Apparently 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:31.000 it's the advent of cheap packaging. Before styrofoam packaging, before plastic, 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.800 before aluminum cans that everybody just threw away. Everything was 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:37.120 wrapped in a T shirt that you could wear exactly, 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:39.640 and like when you weren't carrying around a slab of 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.960 meat in the T shirt from the butcher to your house, 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.760 you wore your T shirt so you reused it, right, No, 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.040 but no, you would you would have maybe, like, um, 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.960 do you remember when Sam the butcher brought Alice the meat. 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.960 BC Boys reference was just about to say, um, freshman 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:01.160 Stone driving around with two ft bald ft yeah, which 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.280 is I guess a really weird way of putting in 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:08.320 his barefoot. Well, it didn't rhyme bald feet anyway. He 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.680 would bring it to her wrapped in like white butcher's 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.320 paper and she would throw it away and it would 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.359 really not take up much space of the dump. It 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:20.520 would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for fifty 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:26.400 thousand years, right, Yeah, And so starting about nine sixty, packaging, 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:31.440 especially very non biodegradable packaging, took off like a rocket. 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:33.320 Yeah you could still go to the butcher, though now 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.719 you can, and you get it in paper, but you 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:38.760 go to that big chain grocery store and it's going 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.120 to be plastic in styrofoam. So between nineteen sixty and 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:49.440 are packaging waste increased by eight That meant that we 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.560 had to do something. We had a lot more trash 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:54.200 and we had to take care of this trash and 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.400 ways that we had before. And so the modern landfill 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:04.000 based on that Fresno model uh boomed And fortunately that's 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.960 right but even now they're finding we went too far 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.880 in one direction. Yeah, now we need to adjust to 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.840 massage it a little bit, refine it, and we're we 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:18.120 were coming up with a new generation of landfills. That's right. So, uh, 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.240 if you're talking about a landfill, the goal of a 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:25.320 landfill is not to compost trash. And a lot of 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.919 people probably don't know this. Yeah, it's not to compost 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:32.000 trash such that it breaks down super quickly, uh and biodegrades. 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:34.320 It is the opposite of that. It is to keep 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.719 it as dry as possible in an airtight and and 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:42.440 just bury it, lock it away from the surrounding world. 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.520 That's right. And so that's what a landfill is, a 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:50.240 sanitary landfill, municipal solid waste or MSW landfill. Um, they 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.880 isolate the trash from the environment. They don't just dump 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:55.880 it on the dirt and let things leach in. And 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:00.640 this thus begins the landfill podcast Sarah. Lot of components 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.119 to that, but that's along and short of it. It's true. 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:07.720 And um, what what that's called. The whole idea behind 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:13.320 that landfill that was in reaction to that's one A 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.560 dry tomb is the industry lingo for it. It's and 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:22.560 it it was created in reaction to trash just being 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:27.279 allowed to seep into the groundwater and methane to leak 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.960 out in the air blow up. Apparently, houses that have 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.560 utility pipes that passed by old landfills, methane will get 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.839 into those utility pipes and like get in mixed in 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:40.839 with the electricity and when you go to plug in 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:44.440 your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really. Yes, it's a 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.280 problem with old landfills because they were all idiots with 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:54.080 trash like up until the sixties, seventies, eighties, um, and 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:58.680 even still we have a big problem with trash, but 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:01.560 nothing like it is before. As far as taking care 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:03.479 of it, we're starting to really get a handle on it. 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:07.240 Americans produce four point six pounds of trash per day 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.320 per person. Yeah, and you know what's crazy is you'd think, well, 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.720 America is probably like as bad as it gets. Know, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.440 the UK is America is like in the middle roughly 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:21.840 for trash generation, and the UK is the worst. They 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:26.400 produced per capita, They produced the most, and um they 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.320 also throw away the most. They have the lowest recovery rate. Um. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:32.720 Although it's gone up I believe I think they had 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:36.280 like some sort of national initiative because it says here 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.760 that it went up from thirty one recovery rate, which 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.240 is like recycling and that kind of stuff, um, basically 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:48.680 diverting it from the landfill, to so it's actually better 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:50.960 than America as far as the resource recovery rate goes. 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.200 Canada is the worst. I'm sorry, Canada is the worst. Yeah, 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.400 that's hard to believe. I would think so too, but 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:01.840 it's true. The standout is Germany. Germany produces way more 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.560 trash per person than any other country per capita, but 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.200 they also have the highest recovery rate at like almost 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.240 of their trash gets diverted from the landfill. That's amazing. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.960 Actually that's efficient. What what's the American number on that diversion? 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:23.120 It hovers about a third for at least a couple 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.560 of decades, now, maybe three decades, you could say Americans 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.760 diverted about they diverted about a third of their trash 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:32.880 from the landfill. You'd like to see that number get 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.320 better in three decades for sure, you know, and it's 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:40.120 always hovers around thirty and it should be a lot 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:42.080 better than that. You know, what that sounds like to me, 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.440 whoever is in charge of doing that study is just like, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:50.079 let's just use last numbers. We can all live with that, right, Yeah, alright, 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:54.360 So if you want to landfill in your municipality, Um, 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:56.959 you're going to have to start with a proposal by saying. 0:08:57.480 --> 0:08:59.840 You can't just go start Yeah, you gotta look around 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:05.000 and say we need to landfill everybody. So let's uh 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.960 do an environmental impact study and let's let's find an area. 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.960 Let's find a lot of acreage. Um. Because I think 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.520 they use the North Wake County Landfill in Raleigh, North 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:19.079 Carolina as a their go to example in this article. 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.080 So our how stuff works started two and thirty acres 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.360 of land, about seventy acres of which is the actual landfill. 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.360 So you're gonna need a lot of land, and you're 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.319 gonna have to do an environmental impact study to determine 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.559 a lot of things. How much land do you have, Yeah, 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.839 if there's enough of it? Sure? Um. What type of 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:42.640 soil you have and what bedrock is underneath it? Very important? Um? 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.760 How water flows over the surface of the site. Yeah, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:47.559 does it flow right down into the river? Does it 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.600 not perfully? Right? Right? Exactly? Um. And then the uh, 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.320 the impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure, 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:58.720 and if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site, yeah, 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:00.720 you don't want a landfill on an archa a logical site. 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.520 What's funny is if you, um, if you go back 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.319 and look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.000 of the biggest in the world New York, right yeah, 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:11.320 and it wasn't even the only one for New York. 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:14.280 It's closed now, right, yes, And the guy who created 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:19.199 the high line, James Corner, is um creating a park 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.960 there out of it, like a massive, massive park. Interesting. 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.040 I think like three times the size of Central Park. 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:29.760 Are they calling it Cancer Park? I think they're avoiding that. Okay, 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:31.360 I don't remember what it's called. I wrote a really 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:35.040 interesting New York magazine article about it now it really 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.720 well written and clever, um, where it's basically like, that's awesome, 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.280 that's awesome, this guy's got this great vision. And then 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.600 but it's a landfill, you know. I'm sure at the 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:48.680 end of the day it's still bared garbage exactly. Um. Alright, 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.080 So when we talked about the bedrock, that's really important 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.679 because if you have what would you really want to 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.000 try and prevent when you're building a landfill or operating 0:10:56.080 --> 0:11:00.760 landfill is um leakage and seepage. That was like that 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.080 that was the big thing. When the e PA came along. 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.280 You started saying, like, you can't just bury your trash 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:10.080 anywhere there's groundwater, dummies, and like, as trash decomposes, it's 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.480 not just like old coca cola and banana peals. When 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.440 those things break down and start mixing together, some really 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.120 horrific stuff like ammonia gets produced, and that gets into 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:22.839 the groundwater and all of a sudden you're drinking ammonia. 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:25.640 That's bad for you. Yeah, that's called the it's called 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.520 leech eight is the liquid um or garbage juice is 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:31.719 in other words that that's a better way to say it, 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.240 because that defines it all in one go, right, and um, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.840 the whole point of the of the dry Tomb landfill 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:42.160 was to do everything you could to prevent this garbage 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:47.480 that you're burying from reaching the the water table. Right, 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:49.959 So you study that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.240 not gonna work because it's going to seep into that junk. 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.600 No mines, no quarries because they probably already have broken 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:57.960 through the water table before they were abandoned. That's right. 0:11:58.040 --> 0:11:59.520 But at the same time, you also need to be 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.160 able to say wells in various points, so you can't. 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.120 The bedrock needs to allow for that as well. It's 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.480 like you're really looking for a specific area. When we 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:10.440 talked about the water flow. Of course you don't want 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.160 it flowing near wetlands or any kind of rivers or streams. 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.320 That's a no brainer. Fresh Kills is an old marsh 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:18.800 land that they just filled the marshes and lakes in 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.360 with garbage. What did they name it? That is that 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.000 the area or like that, Kills is a Dutch word 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:26.600 for stream. Okay, because I was about to say that's 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:30.160 like the worst name for anything totally unless it was 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.520 a butcher. But it really means fresh stream, fresh kills, charcooterie, 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.400 fresh stream garbage dump. Yeah, that makes sense. Now what 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:43.040 does kill mean stream a Dutch word because you've heard 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:48.640 it like fowery means really yes, that would be fish stream. 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.240 That makes a lot more sense now fresh kills. I 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:58.440 wondered about that for years now, you know st alright, so, uh, 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.640 local wildlife, they're going to really study that to see 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.160 what kind of UM. You know, it can't be in 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.000 the area of a migrate my migratory route for birds, 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:11.760 or like a nesting area a k marsh like Fresh 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.160 Kills landfill. That's right. And then once you figured all 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.800 this out and they say, oh wait, wait, you skipped 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.480 over the historical or archaeological site. Well you already mentioned 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.880 that like Fresh Kills landfill. Okay, apparently I think it 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.760 was stated at all wrong. Huh. Henry David Thoreau said 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.240 that UM arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.760 the ground at Fresh Kills before it was a landfill. Yeah, 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:42.120 so archaeological site, wet land and very close to UM, 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:47.640 the groundwater seeping right into it. Unbelievable. UM. And I 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.600 believe there was a large bunny rabbit population that they 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:55.600 just dumped it right on top of UM. So once 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:57.920 you figured out this is not Fresh Kills is actually 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:00.080 a great spot, you're gonna get your permits you and 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.480 raise your money. UM. This one in North Carolina costs 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:07.040 about nineteen million to build cheap. That seems a little cheap, 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.640 but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah, that's 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.719 probably from the nineties, and then you probably have a 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.160 public vote because you're probably gonna be using public dollars 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.200 and no one will know that that vote takes place, 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:23.320 and you're going to get a landfill built. Boom. Yeah, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:26.600 they just build it in the night. All right. So 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:28.440 let's take a little break here and we will talk 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:50.760 about building that landfill right for this. All right, So 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:53.960 you've got your permits, you've got your money raised, it's 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.360 time to build a landfill. Yeah, you shouted down the 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.760 old guy at the board of come a shioner's meeting. 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:08.000 Who objects, old man, McLean the tree hugger. Let's recycle 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:13.120 all our garbage, crack pot. So we will list the 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.200 basic parts of a landfill and then go over them 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.360 in detail. How's that sound. It sounds like a bulleted list. 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:21.680 You've got the bottom liner system, you've got the cells, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.240 you've got the storm water drainage, you've got the leech 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.880 eight collection system a K garbage juice methane collection system, 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:35.400 and you've got the cap the covering. Actually, that's the 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:37.760 opposite of what you want to happen with the cap 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.840 covering system. You don't want to kaboom. So start with 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:45.640 the bottom liner man. Again, this is the original purpose 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:50.560 of all landfills that are in use today, unless they're bioreactor. 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:55.520 Although it's it's part of it. But this dry tomb landfill, Uh, 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.440 it's the main part is the bottom liner. So they 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.880 use a very thick like um sometimes a hundred million 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:10.720 millimeter thick, very sturdy like polyethylene liner synthetic plastic that 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:15.720 they line the whole place with, puncture resistant, strong able 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:17.640 to withstand a lot of trash being dumped on it. 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:20.640 And just to be a certain they'll often use some 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.480 sort of like um fabric matt that they'll lay down 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.880 first and then put the the the liner on and 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.000 then put another mat on top of that to help 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.520 prevent it from being punctured by rocks or garbage. Rocks 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:39.640 below or garbage above. Everything's trying to puncture this mat. Yeah, 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.360 it's a moisture barrier, right, But that liner is the 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:47.200 main component, the the initial component of the landfill. That's right. Next, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.960 we have our cell, and a cell is basically the 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.560 day's garbage. Yeah, it's the day's garbage that you dump 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:59.360 in there. Um, you compacted airspace is is key. That's 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.160 where uh, the more airspace you have the more trash 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:04.439 you can bury, so they want to keep it as 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.240 compact as possible. And they do this by rolling over 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:12.000 it with bulldozers and flatteners and rollers and graters, and 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:14.920 they smush it down. And a cell is um, it's 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:20.000 a it's a it's a hole in the ground. Apparently 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.680 in the North Carolina landfill that how stuff works went 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.400 to back in the day. A cell is fifty ft long, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.639 fifty ft wide, fourteen ft deep, and all the trash 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:31.760 is put in there. Like you said, there's heavy equipment 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:34.160 that rolls over and compacts it. And did you read 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:38.000 the Atlantic um article I sent you about Pointe Hills. 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.560 They said that there's an added benefit of compacting trash. 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.000 Not just doesn't take up less space, it also kills 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.840 about fifty of the rats in there. Oh good. And 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.240 then at the end of the day, when the cell 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:56.159 is filled, they cover it over with about six inches 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.479 of dirt that they then compact. That kills the other 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.320 fifty of rats where the other half goes. And that 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.840 makes that type of landfill what's called the sanitary landfill, 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:10.359 which means rat free, because they're all dead, they're squished, 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:14.000 or they're suffocated by this process of compacting and covering 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.760 over and the By covering over this stuff every day, 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.080 you protected from being blown away by the wind, by 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.160 being carried away from by the rain. You protected from 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.320 being dug up by coyotes or trash scavengers. Right. Um, 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.399 and so that's what makes it a sanitary, dry tomb 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:35.040 landfill is what we've described so far. That's right. And 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.280 to get this thing as compact as possible, they're gonna 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.480 weed out things like that huge roll of carpet that 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:43.800 you took out of your uh, nineteen seventies bedroom, or 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:48.119 that mattress that has a you know, brown stained like 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.880 looks like the map of Asia from the sixteen hundreds, right, 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:54.240 because you raised that one Lady from Hell, raiser from 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.560 the dead. Yeah, so we're gonna take out all that 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:59.360 stuff and make it um you know, all the yard 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.240 ways to make it as compactable as possible. And then 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.400 um that is compacted at a rate depending on where 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:09.159 you are, about pounds for cubic yard. Yes, so boom, 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.639 flat dirt is over it now, and now we need 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:17.120 to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically, once you created that cell, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.480 you've just completed a portion of the landfill. Right, yes, 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.200 for the day, um, one day's trash. It's so weird, 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:28.000 it's like yours Tuesday's whole, right, sixty five days a 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.640 year and those well, those UM the Points Hills people 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:35.600 in that Atlantic article, we're saying that they in retrospect 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.240 figured out that they could have predicted the economic crisis 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.400 because about a little less than a year before it happened, 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.440 the UM they would fill up their days cell by 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.560 like one pm and closed. Now they stay up until 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.639 five and it's not even necessarily full. So they know 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:58.680 it's like a huge downturn in building materials and consumer waste. UM, 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.200 like a year or two before where the actual crisis 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:03.760 happened before they collapse. Well, you know what the the 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.960 old saying, if you want to know the state of 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.720 the country's economics, go to a landfill. It's a good thing. 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:15.240 That's what I think. Jimmy Carter first said that. So 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:18.640 you don't want liquids in that solid waste as much 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:21.680 as possible, So they test the solid waste for liquids, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.520 and um, if it's not liquid, then it's fine to 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:27.680 go in the hole, right, So they put that in there, 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:29.840 and the other way that they want to keep liquids out. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.479 And again, what they're doing is trying to prevent garbage 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.720 juice from forming. That's right, is to um have storm 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:41.000 raw storm, water, runoff, drainage going on, so all of 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.920 the First of all, you never want a flat landfill. Ever, 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:47.520 you want to mount it at least slightly. You never 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:52.640 want a plateau um, and so you want the water 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:54.000 to run off, and then when it runs off, you 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.360 want to collect it into pipes. You want to basically 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:58.360 create an eves system like you have on the roof 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:00.520 of your house, and then shoot it all down to 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:04.360 some concrete gulches or if French strains at your house 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:14.040 roos shepparls. What else? Uh gutters yeah, habitasher right, um, 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.800 and all that goes to a collection pond. That's right. Uh, 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:20.040 this is not the kind of thing you want to 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:24.200 swim in. What they wait for there is for um 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:27.080 the suspended particles to kind of settle on the bottom, 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.920 and then they will test the water for those the 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:34.560 garbage juice, and depending on how nasty it is and 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.280 riddled with chemicals, they'll go from there. They may um 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.600 treat it like regular wastewater. Well that depends like if 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:45.560 they if just the storm water shows some leech, they'll 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:48.160 send it to a leech a collection pond. If it's 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.840 if it turns out to just be normal stormwater, then 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.480 they'll let it flow out of there. That's trying to 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.640 like whatever river or whatever. Yeah, and sometimes it's gravity. 0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:59.000 Sometimes they use a pump. It depends on the lay 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.080 of the land. But if it's leech, they have a 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:05.840 separate collect collection system for leachate. Yes, which is um 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:10.240 basically perforated pipes that are running through the cells and 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:12.199 the leach it is gonna happen, Like they try and 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.880 prevent it as much as possible, but there is no 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:16.800 hole in the ground where you're not gonna have any 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:20.600 garbage juice right exactly. Um, So they collect that garbage 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:22.480 juice as it's forming, and they run it out to 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:25.400 a separate collection pond that's the leech a collection pod. 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:27.480 And if you don't want to swim in the stormwater 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:29.879 collection pond, like you don't even want to look at 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:33.760 the leech collection pod. So again they let the particles settle, 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:37.560 they test the concentration of the leech a in the pond, 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:40.919 and then they send it either to an on site 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:46.280 uh water remediation system like a wastewater plant, or else 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:48.520 they send it to like the local city or county 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.239 wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah, boy, we gotta do one 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:53.480 in wastewater treatment at some point. You got to talk 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:59.359 about fascinating you poop in the water and eventually water. 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:03.600 It's pretty remarkable of what we've learned to do. Uh 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.520 you know yep. So Uh. The other big thing that 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:11.240 we mentioned earlier was methane, and that is a byproduct 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:19.240 that's a gaseous byproduct um of anaerobic decomposition. And about 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:22.520 fifty of your your gases coming out of this thing. 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:26.240 We're going to be a methane about carbon dioxide and 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.080 they say a little bit of nitrone, little bit of oxygen. 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:30.480 I guess not even enough to be a percentage point, 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:35.520 almost negligible. So methane is um can be dangerous and hazardous, 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:39.400 but it can also be very useful. So these days 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:41.639 they're finding ways to harness this methane and use it 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.840 as fuel, right, which is pretty great. Yeah, it is 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:47.240 very great, and actually there's a lot of money in 0:23:47.240 --> 0:23:49.720 it they're finding too, especially if you go to the 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:52.960 trouble of building an on site power plant where you 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:56.600 just basically extract the methane from the landfill gas l 0:23:56.680 --> 0:23:58.880 f G is what it's called. And then you burn 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:02.040 the methane. You pow. You can create electricity. Right, you 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.000