Read complete books and articles on: Landfills

Solid Waste - discarded materials other than fluids. In the United States in 1996, nearly 210 million tons—about 4.3 lb. (2 kg) per person daily (up from 2.7 lb./1.2 kg in 1960)—were collected and disposed of by municipalities. In that year, municipal garbage included 12.4 million tons of glass and about 80 million tons of paper and paperboard (by far the largest constituent); in addition enormous tonnages of food residues, yard trimmings, textiles, plastics, and sludge formed in sewage treatment were produced. Although the amount of the increase has been slowed somewhat by recycling and composting programs and improvements in packaging, the amount of solid waste continues to increase annually. Moreover, the most common disposal methods pollute land, water, or air to some degree (see pollution). Management of solid waste therefore presents an increasingly acute problem.

Landfills

Approximately 62% of municipal waste is placed in landfills. If the waste is dumped untreated, it can promote the proliferation of rats, flies, and other vermin, encourage growth of disease-carrying organisms, contaminate surface and underground water, scar the land, and preempt open space. An alternative method of solid waste disposal is the sanitary landfill, first employed in Fresno, Calif., in 1937: waste is spread in thin layers, each tamped compactly and covered by a layer of earth. While more expensive than open dumping, the sanitary landfill eliminates health hazards and permits reclamation of the site for construction, recreation, or other purposes. The chief drawbacks are that feasible locations are relatively rare and costly and that sites must be insulated from water resources to avoid polluting them (see water pollution). Both open dump and sanitary landfill disposal depend on the natural degradability of wastes for an ultimate return to normal earth conditions. Decay, however, takes time; buried paper, for example, can persist as long as 60 years. Many plastics and synthetic textiles do not degrade at all.

Incineration

To reduce the bulk of solid waste burning of paper, plastic, and other components is often resorted to, either in open dumps or incinerators. Fly ash, noxious gases, and chemical contaminants can thus be released into the air (see air pollution). However, new techniques for "scrubbing" pollutants from incinerator stacks are being developed. Incineration of typical garbage reduces its weight and volume by as much as 80%. Approximately 15.9% of municipal solid waste is combusted.

Recycling

Recycling of solid wastes is an option that many municipalities have explored in recent years. It not only facilitates disposal but conserves energy, cuts pollution, and preserves natural resources. To make cans from recovered aluminum, for example, requires 10% of the energy needed to make them from virgin ore. At the same time ore is saved, and the pollution resulting from mining and processing are avoided. Making steel bars from scrap requires 74% less energy and 50% less water, while reducing air-polluting emissions by 85% and mining wastes by 95%.

Similarly, sludge from treated sewage can be used for fertilizer, but it has been less costly to dump it at sea or on open land (see sewerage). Dumped sludge has killed marine life and threatened beaches along the Eastern seaboard; elsewhere in the United States it is a growing nuisance. Between 1975 and 1985 the amount of sludge dumped in U.S. coastal waters increased by 60%; the effects of dumping and illegal dumping are still felt despite the fact that it has been illegal since the beginning of 1992. Recycling and composting take care of approximately 2.7% of municipal solid waste.

New Techniques

The federal government now provides assistance to localities in developing new means of recovering materials and energy from solid waste, and encourages private industry to seek similar goals. One technique being tried involves intensified combustion of wastes to produce heat for generating power. A second promising approach is pyrolysis, the thermal decomposition of wastes in controlled amounts of oxygen to produce valuable petrochemicals; the residue is an inert char of little bulk. Another method of reducing solid wastes is to replace polystyrene packaging with less bulky wrapping made largely of paper. Wider application of such processes is being advocated not only to diminish pollution of the environment by solid waste, but also to conserve natural resources.

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Landfills

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Waste-to-Energy in the United States: A Social and Economic Assessment (Discussion of landfills begins on p. 2) » Read Now
by T. Randall Curlee, Susan M. Schexnayder, David P. Vogt, Amy K. Wolfe, Michael P. Kelsay, David L. Feldman. 262 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This book presents the first comprehensive and unbiased assessment of the social and economic factors that drive decisions about waste-to-energy (WTE) projects in the United States. Information about each WTE project initiated between 1982 to 1990 is combined with detailed socioeconomic data at the...
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This book presents the first comprehensive and unbiased assessment of the social and economic factors that drive decisions about waste-to-energy (WTE) projects in the United States. Information about each WTE project initiated between 1982 to 1990 is combined with detailed socioeconomic data at the county level to identify the social and economic differences between counties that have completed WTE facilities and counties that have abandoned their projects during the planning process. To examine the effects of political objectives, public attitudes, and the decision process itself, the book reports on four in-depth case studies--two directed at communities that have accepted WTE and two that have canceled WTE projects. The book also discusses the potential health and environmental risks posed by WTE and alternative waste practices, legislative initiatives and regulatory uncertainties, and the potential for energy production from burning our municipal waste.
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2.

Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York: The Last Two Hundred Years (Discussion of landfills begins on p. 199) » Read Now
by Benjamin Miller. 372 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This study of New York's garbage covers social and scientific theories of class and disease, and includes an in-depth study of the tortured history and imminent closure of the world's largest landfill, New York's Fresh Kills. Photos and illustrations.
3.

Managing the Solid Waste Crisis: Exploring the Link between Citizen Attitudes, Policy Incentives, and Siting Landfills, in Policy Studies Journal » Read Now
by Hunter Bacot, Terry Bowen, Michael R. Fitzgerald. 16 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
4.

Aerobic Landfill Test Cells and Their Implications for Sustainable Waste Disposal, in The Geographical Journal » Read Now
by Adam D. Read, Mark Hudgins, Paul Phillips. 13 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
5.

The Search for a Landfill Site in the Risk Society, in The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology » Read Now
by S. Harris Ali. 19 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
6.

Landfill as a Future Waste Management Option in England: The View of Landfill Operators, in The Geographical Journal » Read Now
by Adam D. Read, Paul Phillips, Guy Robinson. 12 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
7.

Life, Death and In-Between on the U.S.-Mexico Border » Read Now
by Martha Oehmke Loustaunau, Mary Sánchez-Bane. 236 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Loustaunau and Sanchez-Bane combine their many years of association and collaboration dealing with health issues of the U.S.-Mexico border area, to bring together a series of chapters illustrating that asi es la vida, "that's life," need not indicate a fatalistic acceptance that poverty, sickness...
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Loustaunau and Sanchez-Bane combine their many years of association and collaboration dealing with health issues of the U.S.-Mexico border area, to bring together a series of chapters illustrating that asi es la vida, "that's life," need not indicate a fatalistic acceptance that poverty, sickness, misery, and misfortune must be taken in stride. Focusing on specific problems of employment, education, drug addiction, violence, healthcare and women's issues, the chapters in this book encourage greater understanding of the U.S.-Mexico border. The contributors have researched, studied, worked with, or have been borderlanders themselves.
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8.

Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality ("Waste Facility Siting Disparities" begins on p. 32) » Read Now
by Robert D. Bullard. 234 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Starting with the premise that all Americans have a right to live in a healthy environment, Bullard chronicles the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with social justice.
9.

Contaminated Communities: The Social and Psychological Impacts of Residential Toxic Exposure (Discussion of landfills begins on p. 22) » Read Now
by Michael R. Edelstein. 217 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library
10.

Groundwater Contamination in the United States (Discussion of landfills begins on p. 65) » Read Now
by Ruth Patrick, Emily Ford, John Quarles, Veronica I. Pye, Ruth Patrick, John Quarles. 518 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
11.

Beyond Superfailure: America's Toxics Policy for the 1990s (Chap. 3 "How Clean is Clean? A Case Study of the Nation's No. 1 Superfund Toxic Dump") » Read Now
by Daniel Mazmanian, David Morell. 278 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
12.

The Economic Feasibility of Recycling: A Case Study of Plastic Wastes (Chap. 5 "The Cost of Recycling Versus Disposal") » Read Now
by T. Randall Curlee. 205 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
13.

Don't Burn It Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators (Chap. 1 "The Incinerator Siting Controversy in the United States") » Read Now
by Edward J. Walsh, Rex Warland, D. Clayton Smith. 292 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

An investigation of conflicts surrounding eight proposed U.S. trash incinerator projects.
When first proposed in this country during the 1970s, waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators appeared to be ideal solutions to the growing mounds of trash in our "throw-away" society. Promising to convert useless...
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An investigation of conflicts surrounding eight proposed U.S. trash incinerator projects.
When first proposed in this country during the 1970s, waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators appeared to be ideal solutions to the growing mounds of trash in our "throw-away" society. Promising to convert useless garbage into electricity while saving precious landfill space, trash incinerators seemed perfectly timed to respond to a national need. Within a decade, however, a grassroots anti-incineration movement emerged as a vibrant offshoot of the environmental movement. In Don't Burn It Here, sociologists Edward Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith examine this grassroots movement through detailed analyses of the struggles surrounding proposals to build eight municipal incinerators in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.
The eight case histories that form the heart of the book are comparable to hundreds of others across the U.S. The authors' research is based on interviews, focus group discussions, extensive newspaper files, and questionnaire responses from participants on both sides of the conflicts. A final chapter examines the similarities and differences between the three successful projects and the five defeated ones. An overview of the history of the modern incinerator in the U.S. and the emergence of a major national opposition movement provides the necessary context, and throughout the book, the authors make useful comparisons to other national movements s
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14.

The Solid Waste Dilemma: Municipal Liability and Household Hazardous Waste Management, in Environmental Law » Read Now
by Paula J. Meske. 22 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
15.

Energy, the Environment, and Public Policy: Issues for the 1990s (Chap. 7 "Economic Impacts of Solid Waste Disposal Sites") » Read Now
by David L. McKee. 224 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

With contributions by experts in economics, geography, marketing, agriculture, business, international affairs, and more, this book addresses the extent and gravity of the current environmental situation. From toxic industrial and medical waste to acid rain and radioactive waste, from the Alaskan...
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With contributions by experts in economics, geography, marketing, agriculture, business, international affairs, and more, this book addresses the extent and gravity of the current environmental situation. From toxic industrial and medical waste to acid rain and radioactive waste, from the Alaskan oil spill to the continuing destruction of the rain forests, McKee's focus is on economic welfare. He points out that public and private issues regarding environmental problems have been limited to crisis response. The contributions he has chosen for this volume clarify key issues for formulating policy options toward long-range economic welfare.
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16.

Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History (Chap. 14 "Throwaway Society" » Read Now
by Ted Steinberg. 346 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

A tour de force of writing and analysis, Down to Earth offers a sweeping history of our nation, one that for the first time places the environment at the very center of our story. Writing with marvelous clarity, historian Ted Steinberg sweeps across the centuries, re-envisioning the story of...
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A tour de force of writing and analysis, Down to Earth offers a sweeping history of our nation, one that for the first time places the environment at the very center of our story. Writing with marvelous clarity, historian Ted Steinberg sweeps across the centuries, re-envisioning the story of America as he recounts how the environment has played a key role in virtually every social, economic, and political development. Ranging from the colonists' attempts to impose order on the land to the modern efforts to sell the wilderness as a consumer good, packaged in national parks and Alaskan cruises, Steinberg reminds readers that many critical episodes in our history were, in fact, environmental events: the California Gold Rush, for example, or the great migration of African Americans to the North in the early twentieth century (in part the consequence of an insect infestation). Equally important, Steinberg highlights the ways in which we have envisioned nature, attempting to reshape and control it--from Thomas Jefferson's surveying plan that divided the national landscape into a grid, to the transformation of animals, crops, and even water into commodities (New Englanders started trading water rights by the early nineteenth century). From the Pilgrims to Disney World, Steinberg's narrative abounds with fascinating details and often disturbing insights into our interaction with the natural world. Few books truly change the way we see the past. Down to Earth is one of them: a vivid narrative that reveals the environment to be a powerful force in our history--a force that must be examined if we are truly to understand ourselves.
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