What happens to your garbage?

Most garbage around the world ends up in landfill. In different places it is:

• Allowed to contaminate the neighbouring soil and water
• Held in secure landfill where it cannot leak into the surrounding land or water table
• Just burnt, sometimes with emission filtering or capture, sometimes not
• Burnt as biomass (to generate electricity)
• Used to generate methane as a biofuel (for heating, industry or electricity generation)
• Sorted for recyclables first which are then separated from the garbage
• Open to the public who can search for recyclables and reusables
• Used by landfill owners or local authorities as a second-hand shop, where items are salvaged and offered for sale

 

A:

Trash builds up and keeps building up in a land fill. Some of the trash biodegrades (or disintegrates) but trash like plastic does not. Instead, the plastic biodegrades after many years into the chemical wastes it is made of, like oil. Trash that people lazily throw into sewers eventually end up in our ocean and rivers polluting our waterways and potentially killing ocean life.

 

A:

All the waste that is not recycled is dumped in a landfill site. This is where they dig huge holes and dump the waste. When the hole is full they cover the top and leave it to disintegrate (which in fact takes over 1000 years). Tragic!