By Genevieve Parker Hill with Laura Bailey

As a minimalism expert, I feel I should have more answers about trash. After all, I've certainly read up on sustainable living, recycling, and composting. But when it comes to actual trash I throw away, I know very little about what happens to it, other than that it goes to a dump or a landfill.

I know I'm not alone. When I ask friends and family my questions about trash, I get shrugs in response. On social media, I've read statements like "landfills are meant to preserve trash until we humans find something better to do with it," and someone on Facebook recently asserted that parents should be scraping their children's feces from each soiled diaper into the toilet, not simply throwing the whole diaper away, as is the current practice of thousands, if not millions of parents globally. (And, I imagine, all kinds of care workers, from hospitals to nursing homes.)

So, what is a landfill? What is its goal or purpose?

A landfill is markedly different from a dump. While the quite suitably named ‘dump’ is a simple hole in the ground where trash literally gets left to rot, the much more new and improved landfill is a structure that does its best to prevent contamination between the trash and the area surrounding it.

Exactly how the landfill does this involves some engineer-y technical stuff. But the most important techniques include a bottom liner than separates the trash from the groundwater and soil and the other is a daily covering of the trash with soil to separate it from the air and animals. (https://www.advanceddisposal.com/for-mother-earth/education-zone/learn-about-landfills.aspx )

What happens to rubbish in the landfill?

Landfills are not designed to break down the trash, as the cells that contain them are oxygen free but it will eventually decompose anaerobically, just a lot slower than trash put in a regular dump. It is essentially a place where we can make the stuff we don’t know what to do with smaller, more invisible, and surrounded by tough protection so it won’t poison the environment. (https://www.livescience.com/32786-what-happens-inside-a-landfill.html)

But, are we just pretending this kind of impenetrability is possible? Nature is powerful. Do we really think that many years of weather extremes, hungry animals, and strong tree roots (among other forces) wouldn’t find a way through to all this trash at some point? Leakages seem inevitable. Leaching is the most common form of this, in which the decomposition of harmful matter mixes with water that enters the landfill and find its way into the surrounding community. Substances like ammonia, phosphorus and toxic compounds can then make their way to local habitats and water systems. (https://www.oxymem.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-landfill-leachate-treatment)

But there is some good news for the environment. Modern landfills are now taking advantage of the gas it produces and using it as an environmentally-friendly energy source. So a small percentage of your garbage actually becomes fuel that powers your community. (https://www.advanceddisposal.com/for-mother-earth/education-zone/landfill-gas-to-energy.aspx)

What happens to the stuff that doesn’t go to landfill?

It’s important to remember that recycling is the more environmentally friendly option over landfill, given the landfill’s potential for leaching. Therefore, some countries and jurisdictions have found various ways to deal with our trash, before sending it to landfill.

UK

Before your rubbish gets dumped in the landfill, the UK uses advanced machinery to recover certain useful materials that can be recycled. This amounts to approximately a third of all the stuff you throw away into your general waste bins. You may be thinking, well what’s the point in the recycling bin then? As it turns out this “advanced” recovery process is not as advanced as we’d like it to be, so lots of recyclable material falls through the cracks. Plus it takes a lot of unnecessary energy to actually sort all that trash. (https://whatplastic.co.uk/blogs/blog/what-happens-at-a-landfill-site) Some of this then gets recycled, some will get sent to incinerators and some will be sent to energy converting facilities. (https://www.suez.co.uk/en-gb/our-offering/communities-and-individuals/what-happens-to-waste/general-waste) After all this, around 24% of the total waste is sent to landfill. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49827945)

USA

Where garbage ends up (if it’s not a landfill) in the US largely depends on your state. Some states or cities will recycle more and some will incinerate more. Any stuff you do throw away into your general trash though, like the UK, will in most cases be sent to MRFs (material recovery facilities) where magnets, shredders and other such advanced technology recover what it can before the rest gets sent to landfill. Approximately, 52% of all US municipal waste gets sent to landfill. (https://www.budgetdumpster.com/resources/where-does-trash-go.php) Places like San Francisco have managed to divert 75% of its trash from landfill and incineration to be recycled. (https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/PublicEd/EarthDay/Where/) States such as Michigan and Indiana however send the most trash to landfill per capita. (https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/which-states-produce-most-trash)

Australia

Of Australia’s total waste, 40% of it makes it to landfill. (https://www.civil.uq.edu.au/news/article/explainer-how-much-landfill-does-australia-have) The rest gets sent either to materials recovery facilities and a minority of it is sent to incinerators. (https://www.burnsidetrash.com.au/what-happens-to-your-rubbish/#ch2)

What happens to certain types of trash?

Food Waste

Food waste is most commonly recycled at composting facilities. Composting is a natural biological process that has been around since the dawn of time. The process, which breaks down organic material so it can be used as fertilizer, now has been harnessed and sped-up by in-vessel composters where food waste is shredded, mixed with water and set to a temperature of 60°C.

Some food waste will also get sent to anaerobic digesters. Here, the organic material gets broken down by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. The great thing about this is that it produces a renewable source of energy; bio gas. (https://www.suez.co.uk/en-gb/our-offering/communities-and-individuals/what-happens-to-waste/food-and-garden-waste)

Where your food ends up though, may rely largely on your state’s or council’s procedures and laws. Places that provide a means for you to dispose of your food waste separate to your other trash will reliably meet its true destiny of being composted, but if you put all your food waste in your general trash, it’s likely to end up in landfill. (https://www.budgetdumpster.com/resources/where-does-trash-go.php)

Old Electronics

Since mercury was removed from single-use batteries, the chemicals inside them no longer pose any threat to the environment, so they can in theory be thrown in the trash and sent to landfill. But it’s better to recycle them where possible. Batteries take about 100 years to decompose. Rechargeable batteries on the other hand, contain heavy metals and other toxic chemicals so they must be recycled. (https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/recycle-old-batteries/)

Many other old electronic items still contain materials like mercury, arsenic, lead or flame retardants which can be harmful to the environment if sent to landfill. In many places you are legally required to recycle electronics and other things that may harm the environment if put into the landfill. Really makes you think that most landfills are not reliably able to protect the surrounding environment from leaching, right? (https://www.ewaste1.com/is-it-illegal-to-throw-away-electronics/)

Poopy diapers

Fecal matter can be a pretty nasty spreader of bacteria and viruses. It’s no wonder we like to stay away from it. As it turns out, so would your local landfill, as it’s another one of those high risk contaminants. Through leaching, that bacteria could potentially leak into groundwater and the surrounding environments. It is advisable then that the poop be scraped off and thrown in the toilet. Then you can throw the diaper away. (https://momlovesbest.com/diapering/diapers/how-to-dispose)

Not everyone agrees with this however, as some people buy disposable diapers to do precisely that; dispose of them, because this means a less likely chance of them coming into contact with dangerous fecal matter. And of course, unless you are particularly skilled at cleaning diapers, it’s almost certain there will be some fecal residue absorbed by the diaper and so that’s going to end up in the landfill anyway. For me, this is one of those ambiguous situations. The sewage system is meant to treat bacteria-laden fecal matter, but on the other hand, (nearly) everyone else is already throwing their poopy diapers in the trash, so the poop is already there. Also, here’s a little known fact (for Americans): many countries plumbing systems do not allow for toilet paper. Therefore, the trash bins in the bathrooms of many countries are where any remnants of wiped-off fecal matter go. (Which in some countries isn’t much, thanks to bidets, while other countries don’t use bidets).

Finally, there doesn’t seem to be a huge problem with bacteria from landfills leaching into the surrounding community. This could be because many dangerous bacteria and viruses die withing a few hours to a few weeks outside the human body. Common sense tells us that if you throw a poopy diaper into the trash, most of those bacteria will be dead by the time it reaches the landfill.

Beauty Chemicals

Some say you should put old beauty products in landfill and some say to put them down the drain. It sort of depends on what’s in the product. As a rule of thumb, landfill, which can, in theory, be better controlled than the water systems seems to be a better option. There is evidence that harmful chemicals from certain shampoos and make-up can leach from landfill sites. But disposing of products containing parabens down drains has been linked to heightened risks of cancers. Other substances have also been proven to be harmful to aquatic life.

The best option is probably to take the time to look at the back of the bottle and try to avoid products that contain parabens, phthalates or sodium laureth sulfate. If you can’t or haven’t eliminated these chemicals from your life, then you can also contact your local hazardous waste facility to help you out. https://grist.org/living/can-i-just-dump-old-beauty-products-down-the-drain/)

The Hypothetical Shampoo Bottle Situation

Imagine this common scenario. You’ve decided to declutter your bathroom cabinet. You want to get anything with parabens, phthalates or sodium laureth sulfate out of your personal grooming routine. What do you do with those old bottles you find with bits of product remaining with those chemicals in them? The bottles themselves are likely recyclable if they are cleaned out , and the fact is, the chemicals have the potential to harm whether they go into landfill or down the drain, but there's a margin more risk if they're going down the drain. I’m happy that this article has finally brought me an answer. Rather than rinsing the bottles out and recycling them, it’s better to throw the bottles with their remnants into the landfill.

The Take Home

So after all of our investigating, my conclusion is that landfills are an imperfect solution for dealing with garbage we don’t know what to do with. Seeing the way above-ground structures degrade after a few decades of exposure to weather, water, animals, plants, and biodegradation, it’s clear there are no truly impermeable systems. While engineers and waste managers try their best, it’s difficult to imagine that harmful chemicals will not always leak through into places we don’t want them.

The most sustainable direction to move is to minimize the amount of trash we produce, and compost and recycle as much as we can.

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