The landfill stuff doesn’t eventually turn into dirt. They purposefully make sure that it’s wrapped in plastic in such a way that it never decomposes. Landfills are terrible.
Comment on Anon has a question
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month agoYou have incinerators in your area? Everything in my area is landfill, so it will eventually become dirt.
tyler@programming.dev 1 month ago
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
They do it to protect the water table from things like battery acid. But a good chunk of it will become dirt, because there’s enough organic matter in mixed trash to decompose. It’ll just take a really long time because of the mix of plastic and whatnot.
tyler@programming.dev 1 month ago
WM at least has rules that every load of trash must be in individual bags, and they must be tied. So you’re not getting that mix you’re talking about. Their goal (every landfill) is to make sure that nothing breaks down as it costs more to deal with (like leachate and methane).
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Ours doesn’t have those rules, and I and my neighbors put all kinds of crap in there: tree branches, lawn clippings, rocks, disassembled furniture, rotten food. If it fits, it goes in. And our bins are pretty big, so a lot goes in there. The main reasons to bag are to prevent the bin from getting too stinky and to keep stuff from blowing out if the wind flips the lid. AFAICT, there’s no policy about what goes in the bin, other than hazardous materials like batteries (which they plan for because a lot of people toss those in as well).
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Do plastics go in the landfill too? Or is it somehow separated so that only stuff that decays in years rather than centuries goes there?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The regular trash doesn’t get separated, it’s just dumped. There’s also almost no restrictions on what can go in there, our trash cans are massive, and we have to pay for recycling, so many people just don’t bother (and a second trash can is not much more than a recycling bin).
We do have a recycling service that accepts most plastics (#1-#7), and they claim to recycle it, but they have pretty strict standards (needs to be clean, need to separate caps from bottles/jugs, etc), so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of it just ends up at the landfill anyway. Our area is a “single sort” facility, meaning people just dump everything into one bin and they sort it on their end. This means workers are even more likely to just throw stuff out that isn’t easily identifiable as recyclable.
One big issue is that they don’t accept glass, so to recycle glass, you need to take it somewhere special. I’m pretty obsessive about recycling, so I go out of my way to recycle everything I can (I have a bag of dead batteries in the garage, I make regular trips to recycle glass, etc), but I highly doubt most people bother. In fact, I have a few neighbors with 2 garbage cans and no recycling can.
Damage@feddit.it 1 month ago
Wow weird. May I ask where that is? Not recycling glass sounds WILD to me, it’s one of the most recyclables, even decades ago when plastic recycling was uncommon, glass “dumpsters” where everywhere.
Being forced to separate caps from bottles of very exotic as well, considering the EU just introduced a regulation that forces manufacturers to make caps that stay on the bottle even when opened.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Utah, USA.
We do have a few drop-off bins, but I have to drive to each of them. The going explanation is that, since we do sorting at the facility, it’s not worth exposing workers to broken glass, which is inevitable when mixing all recyclables into one garbage truck. So people have two options: drive to a drop-off location (each a few miles away and not on the way to anything) or just toss it in the trash. So, most people just toss it in the trash.
The plastic in the caps is different from the plastic in the bottles and cannot be recycled together. I guess it’s not worth the time for them to separate at the plant (plastic recycling isn’t profitable as it is), so they put that responsibility onto trash customers (in other words, they want an excuse to just toss bottles w/ caps still on them).
I’m talking about these bottle caps btw. They’re everywhere here (milk jugs, soda, bigger ones for pasta sauce, etc).
I’m guessing more urban areas have better recycling policies since they don’t have massive landfills available for dumping.
JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Almost guaranteed to be U.S.A. as it sounds almost identical to my area except we have even fewer options. Here it all goes to the landfill, you can pay for recycling cans and pickup on recycling day but it gets contaminated by people putting trash in the recycling nearly every time so it all just goes to landfill and the local government just doesn’t care
bassomitron@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Random question, where do you take old gasoline? Will auto part stores take a jug of old motor oil and gasoline that’s been mixed? I guess I should probably just call and ask a local store after I’m done shitting on company time.
Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Where I live, it goes to the dump, they have a space dedicated to hazardous liquids/containers. However, you have to leave the whole container there, there’s no spot to dump it