Modern landfill technology

I’m a civil engineer. Landfills get a bad rap because they seem horrible, but modern landfill technology is really pretty amazing.

They are sealed on the bottom with geotechnical fabric to prevent leachate from entering the groundwater. They burn off, or sometimes even harvest, the methane produced from decomposition. Landfill cells are capped off with clay or bentonite to protect the environment. And then often they’re turned into parks or golf courses at the end.

It takes about fifty years for the biodegradable material in a landfill to decompose by anaerobic means, and there are pilot projects to use aerobic processes to reduce that time to five years or less. And anything that goes into the landfill does not get into the ocean.

Source

That 👆 whole post is about how there’s a pretty good chance that any recycled plastic will end up in the ocean, and throwing plastic in the trash is usually more sustainable than recycling it.