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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,260,275 times
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Landfills are subject to decomposition of organic materials, which results in the release of methane gas. That contributes to climate change. Unlike a sewage treatment plant, it's not really enough to use for heating a building or running generators to produce electricity, and is hard to capture over such a large area. The other issue is the many many trucks and trains burning fuel to get the waste from the municipal transfer stations to the landfills. Here in Seattle, for example, we see the "garbage train" go by, with hundreds of cars full of trash from the various local garbage collection companies headed for the Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon.
Not to mention that it is a grand waste of good land that could be used for other purposes, or left in its natural state. I have seen several landfills install pipes to capture the methane gas and use it as energy, but I do not know how effective the method of capture is, or how widespread the capture practice is. All of the waste that is going to landfills could be burned in specially designed plants to create electricity. The technology to do this has become very advanced so that the emissions from such plants, along with the noise, have been reduced to the point where they could even locate these plants near residential neighborhoods. It is the natural gas and oil industries and the global warming nuts that are suppressing such technology and keeping landfills alive.
Why would one not at least try to eliminate waste? It has to go somewhere.... The less waste made the less to dispose of.
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