The Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 did much to control the health and environmental risks of improper waste management. Unfortunately, as the USPHS noted during its lengthy fight for waste management legislation, waste generation continued accelerating as the population expanded. That acceleration has only continued into the modern era, and today, it is causing significant problems with landfill stress.
To provide some background, landfills in the United States are more specifically classified as “municipal solid waste landfills” (or MSWLFs). An MSWLF is defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “a discrete area of land or excavation that receives household wastes,” as well as “commercial solid waste, non-hazardous sludge, conditionally exempt small quantity generator waste, and industrial nonhazardous solid waste.” As of 2009, there were just over 1,900 of these landfills in the United States. Today, the number is reportedly over 2,000.
Every MSWLF must meet certain restrictions to receive waste. For instance, they must be located in “suitable geographic areas,” free of features such as wetlands or geographic faults that might classify the sites as more hazardous. They must also be lined with geo-membranes and compacted clay soil (to prevent groundwater contamination) and be compacted and covered on a regular basis (to reduce odors). These requirements—and others described on the EPA website—are standard for all MSWLFs in the United States, an example of centralized waste management policy in action. These policies were enacted as part of the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
While landfills today are carefully and deliberately designed to minimize the risks of contamination or health impact, though, they still pose a growing crisis. In the United States, we produce approximately 728,000 tons of garbage every single day. More than 250 million tons of waste end up in U.S. landfills every year. The result is that we are using up a valuable and limited resource: space.
This chart shows the concentration and size of landfills throughout the United States. Crucially, it also shows how many landfills have been closed.
The number of large red dots on this map—and the amount of space they cover—is alarming. States such as California and Florida, especially, appear to be overflowing with garbage. As waste generation becomes more pronounced, this problem will only get worse. Those green dots are going to balloon outward until they too become red dots. At that point, more green dots will spring up in other locations until the same thing happens to them. Eventually, we will either have to find a new way to dispose of garbage or risk running out of land to use for waste management purposes.
Space isn’t even the most pressing concern. Gases are also a problem. The bacterial breakdown of organic materials that happens in landfills creates gaseous emissions as a natural byproduct. This mix of gases—mostly methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor—is what you have likely smelled if you have ever driven by a landfill. These gases qualify as greenhouse gases, which could worsen the problem the planet is already facing with emissions and climate change.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 did a lot to prevent any issues relating to these gases. Before the bill was passed, there was no regulatory measure in place to control the byproducts generated at landfills. Leachate, the liquids created by decomposing garbage, were allowed to filter into the soils beneath a landfill, while the methane and carbon dioxide gases were left to dissipate directly into the atmosphere. The 1976 legislation put measures in place to correct both issues. As mentioned previously, landfills must now be carefully lined, in large part to prevent leachate from getting into the soil or groundwater. Landfills need to pump leachate out of the garbage pile and dispose of it safely. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act also required dump sites to vent methane gas through piping systems and burn it. This process turns the methane into carbon dioxide, which is then emitted into the atmosphere.
Of course, carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse gas. While less potent or harmful than methane, carbon dioxide is still thought to affect planetary climate. In other words, even though landfill gases aren’t the problem they used to be, they are still an issue. The chart below shows just how much gas each state is producing from landfills.