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 Landfills﻿﻿  What is a landfill? A landfill is a big hole in the ground filled with garbage, every day being covered by 6 inches of dirt. landfills resemble large hills of dirt. They all share similarities like litter fences to keep trash from escaping by w﻿ind. But images speak louder than words. Please enjoy this video of a landfill on a daily basis.  media type="youtube" key="z7EEC3ctQro?fs=1" height="385" width="480"Can you approve of such a waste of valuable resources and real-estate? media type="custom" key="7960412"

 I knew landfills were thought to be "﻿evil" but there had to be a silver lining somewhere. Maybe landfills weren't useless. Plus I thought it would've been easy to find information for. This also brings me to my next topic... Can landfills be useful?

 The answer is yes. Organic waste in landfills that are able to rot produce methane and release the gas into the air, which is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Think of the valuable fuel we are losing being so wasteful! My proposition to give cows special methane trapping diapers may not work, but these guys in California have the right idea making a few thousand tons of rotten apples reserved for bad movies, along with other perishables, into usable methane. media type="youtube" key="5hCp4hCWLUg?fs=1" height="385" width="640"

 media type="custom" key="7960498" Its time for the math. Every day the average person produces about 4 pounds of waste a day. Multiply that by a week, you get 28 pounds. 4 pounds x 365 days = 1460, multiply that by... lets just say 400 million... we produce 584 billion pounds of garbage a year as America in a whole. This is an obvious indicator of the resources we waste!

 But wait! Only 55% is put into landfills, giving us a grand total of 321.2 billion pounds of trash compacted into landfills yearly, or 160.6 million tons. But this is only an estimation, but even 330 million people wouldn't make the number small, just small**__er.__**

Now we have to see the 45% that don't go into landfills

So one way or another something will end up in a landfill or releasing chemicals for air pollution. If we cannot clean up our act, lets at least use landfills to our advantage. America needs to get its act straight and be a role model for other nations. If we have no choice but to use landfills, let us reap the benefits of a man-made methane mine, or recycle to have a cleaner, less fuel dependent, tomorrow.

Source: |jdbprhjnh||ssJN "Pollution (9781597167246)"||sljh','');|Pollution (9781597167246), 2009, p16-17, 2p, 2 Color Photographs