They roll out large sheets of plastic and weld them together. Some states (NY) require dual liners (bags in a bag) and piping to collect the liquid that comes out at the bottom "(leachate). When they put the plastic top on holes are made to allow waste gas to escape. Landfills tend to be dry and nothing rots in them.
I think they work well, but its better to reduce the waste going into them. I'm assuming many places in the world aren't handling the trash like this leading to issues with groundwater contamination and other problems.
Isn't the main problem that landfills aren't sustainable? Burning is bad for CO2 in the atomsphere, but it frees up de-bonds matter so they can be taken up again.
I'm not sure how the leachate was treated. At the end of the day the cap was supposed to keep the water out, so when closed there wouldn't be much more leachate.
That's exactly it. It's the whole reason why there was a huge recycling push in the 80s/90s.
>GONZALEZ: There were all these stats coming out at the time that showed that the number of landfills in America was plummeting. Landfills were closing, and people kept citing these stats in stories about the garbage barge.
>KINNAMAN: And so people put it all together, and in their minds, the conclusion was that the United States is running out of landfill space. The United States was full - that we couldn't store any more.