I think there is a misconception that landfill is bad because it used to actually be bad many decades ago. Now there is a lot of regulation around what is required to build a landfill site, and a lot more technical knowledge on how to do it safely. This is a pattern I see occasionally where folks learn something when they are young, and repeat it long past when it ceases to be true, never noticing that it has become a falsehood.

It’s a different issue in countries with less land (Japan being the most extreme one) where landfill is just too expensive because land is expensive. But the US has lots of unused and cheap land that nobody would notice if you added a well-run landfill to.