Environmental Damage Of Landfills

Dangerous Trash

Landfills in today's society are our cheapest solution to ridding the land of everyday waste. Although, this is a convenient alternative to waste solution, it does provide substantial dangers to our environment and health. One of the greatest dangers we face today is the groundwater pollution from lacheates. While they are supposed to protect humans from harmful toxins, but these protective barriers only delay the inevitable due to natural deterioration.

The problem with landfills lacheates is the leakage of many toxins. Since landfills are usually built near large bodies of water, this pollution often goes undetected. Frequent seeping of metals and organic compounds submerge themselves into the ground and into our drinking water, making it impossible to detect with the incursion of river water and landfill toxins merging together in groundwater. This potential of leaking groundwater pollution increases everyday due to many factors.

For example, the every hour increase in our population is a major factor that exacerbates pollution, adding more waste and wasting more land to find a place for our trash. Furthermore, over population contributes to massive amounts of common household waste which includes plastic, glass, paper, and cans, all of which can be recycled. Another cause of the overuse of landfills is our society's lack of recycling. As we know, recycling is a brilliant way of saving trash, land, and the ozone. All of these are harmful causes to the environment and humans. The final major cause associated with the environment is trash itself. Trash should be made more biodegradable. If products are made of more biodegradable material, such as the plastic, they will disintegrate faster if thrown away or reused if recycled.

Overtime many problems arise from unassisted prevention of causes such as groundwater pollution to the environment. The problems that will arise from the leakage of lacheates are the collection of toxins in groundwater that will pollute river water and the animals that live within or around that water. Once the wildlife is hunted for food, humans are then polluted with pathogens from the landfills. The pathogens are contaminating the water as well as the air. Methane gas, along with CO2 is vented into the air from the top of landfills. When large amounts of this gas are inhaled, death is caused by suffocation. Land is also another major concern of the environment. Pollution of land means pollution of our crops. Consumption of poisonous crops results in sickness or even death. Shortage of land increases as waste and the population increases. According to one report, over the next ten years, southeast England will run out of landfill area and will try to resort to a waste free economy.

Economies in general are run through political leaders and set rules or guidelines to abide by. Landfills must meet certain requirements and regulations; however these laws usually aren't strict enough to protect our environment. Politics, for the most part, find other ways to avoid major issues of waste and the environment. However, there are applicable laws that landfills must abide by. For example, it is required that wells are placed between landfills and a body of water, if the landfills are placed around water. This is an applicable rule governed by the EPA. Other applicable guidelines include the basic engineering of landfills. All landfills must contain the following to perform as a legalized landfill: a bottom liner, a leachate collection system, a cover, and a natural hydro-geological setting. Other laws that are applied to landfills are waste management regulations. For example, leachates must be lined with clay, contain flexible synthetic membranes;