Dysfunctional Landfills

I was thinking of an article I read about research that was done to learn what happens to trash in landfills decades later. In some instances, it was found that trash deep under a landfill doesn't decompose away as you would expect, rather it's preserved due to the lack of oxygen and light. Lettuce was actually found from the 1960's still in a recognizable state. Intact newspapers from the 1960's were found in this same layer, and that is how the lettuce was dated. The biodegradation rate slows even more in hotter climates, such as in Arizona.

I began to wonder of ways to improve the situation of overloaded landfills across America. There is the obvious, of course, which is at the individual level where households should reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. The three R's are always a great thing to do, but what if there was a way to do this at a grander scale? We all pay for sanitation services in our communities, but what if these services could do more for us than just to take our trash from the curb straight into the landfill? What if our trash was sorted before it all goes to the landfill?

The idea of a compost field came to mind. Since food obviously doesn't decompose very quickly over time (as stated in the lettuce example above), it could be sorted out of our trash and brought to a field specially designed for that reason. As for the rest of the trash material, since not all people know what is recyclable, the plastics, metals, glass, paper and so on could be sorted out and then reused/recycled.

I realize that these ideas would probably cost us more in tax dollars, but in the end it could be feasible and worth it to clean up the environment. Plus, we'd have a lot higher rate of materials being recycled and less land destroyed by landfills. I can't discount the fact that this would be a VERY dirty job, but where there's work, there's money!