Environmental Musings on Landfill Management -- Your Opinions Are Welcome  

Landfills Into Forests

I had a recent entry wherein I was speculating about garbage management. I mentioned the possibility of dumping on a valley and then covering those up and planting trees. Far fetched? Apparenly not.

In New York, one of the biggest landfills was transformed into a park. Called the Fresh Kills Park, it's three times the size of Central Park or around 2,200 acres! And it's not the only one. The Leichner Landfill (in Utah I believe) will also be transformed into something ecologically friendly.

Landfills require six (6) inches of soil everyday to cover the day's dump to prevent the latter from making contact with the air. To turn it into a park will require a tremendous amount of soil. What struck me in one of the articles I read was that the cheapest way to get the needed amount of soil o First point: I'm sure there are concerns about walking around in what used to be a highly toxic dump. Well don't turn it into a park; turn it into a forest instead. Plant and nurse the trees and leave them be. Let the trees quietly provide us with oxygen even as the toxic levels are lowered. And if there are walls surrounding the place, there won't be any illegal loggers. We can leave the place like that for a couple of decades.

The second point is that the city should buy compost at the barangay level. If we place a monetary value on it, maybe we'll see some composting at the residential level. If it's worth a few bucks a month, why not? We should give it a try.

A couple of tidbits I also got is that one of the richest women in the world made her fortune by buying paper from landfills and selling the same to China! Imagine that. Paper is the single biggest "content" of landfills. I better examine the junk shop business model again. Could be worth something in the future.

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