Reflection of the Landfill
This picture is taken at the landfill in San Diego and is the only landfill that the city of San Diego owns. This image showed landfill workers staking the waste on top of each other. Most of the trash you see in this picture is cardboard and plastic. In fact cardboard makes up most of the landfill and is always recyclable. It is always recyclable to the point of being spoiled. all the trash that reaches the reaches the landfill cannot be searched through to find any recyclable materials because its to dangerous. The landfill is very toxic because the trash that gets decomposed releases methane gas. There are many things that we can recycle yet don't and it creates about 60% of the landfill. This trip informed up about how important recycling is. We will use this information to write a letter to people that can help make an impact on the world to make it better. Some questions that I might ask is that if we have a plan for when this landfill fills up? Are we going to have to transport our trash to a farther place?
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- The city of San Diego requires the landfill to cover the trash every night so animals cant get into the hazardous waste They cover the trash with large tarps at night that have heavy metal around them so the animals around the landfill area cannot get into the waste.
- Many birds(mainly seagulls) try to get into the trash also during the day, their are workers that are around the landfill with shotguns that are filled with blanks and fire them at the birds to scare them away. They have a permit to kill 50 seagulls a year but since the blanks work very well, they rarely shot any birds down. If they shot down five seagulls a year, that is considered as a lot.
- There is a liner underneath the entire landfill area to keep the toxics out of the water ways under the landfill. Toxins usually try to leak when it has rained.
- When the waste decomposes, it releases methane gas, the landfill capture most of the methane gas(about 70%) and turn it into power for the marines base that is located right next to them.
- There are so many recyclable materials in the waste but can not be picked out because it is to much of a heath concern for the workers.
- The landfill also creates there own composition from the food waste that they get from hotels, restaurants, and universities.
- The landfill costs 15 billion dollars to run each year.