City of McLean Landfill

When waste arrives in a landfill it needs to be sorted out first. Therefore, we have waste sorting stations. These are specialized for municipal waste and not for other types of landfills. Garbage trucks dump their municipal waste. Then the waste is separated into recyclable waste and non-recyclable materials. The non-recyclable garbage is then separated into hazardous waste, energy recyclable waste, landfill waste, or incinerator waste. Afterward that it has been sorted out, it is then loaded onto garbage trucks, and this deposits the waste onto their designated places.

There is a lot of waste generated in the USA. In 2018, there were 292 million tons of waste generated. Averagely that is 4.9 Lb. of waste per person. The waste from municipalities is recycled the most. The data says that in 2018, there was a recycling rate of 32%. Some of the waste is reprocessed not other means such as bio-chemical management.The largest categories of waste pertain to paper, food plastics, yard trims, and metals. Food, plastics, and paper make are the main resources for energy production from waste.

A sanitary landfill is different from a dump in the meaning that it goes above and beyond to assure that there is no environmental pollution. A sanitary landfill also reuses gases to generate electricity while eliminating the chance of liquids spillage onto fresh groundwater. The landfill is also covered, so the wind won’t fly away debris or any piece of garbage. A dump is just an open space to dump the garbage. No controlled activity, no monitoring, no expert supervision, and no environmental protection. The waste decomposes in the open air and pollutes the soil and groundwater water.

There is an interesting type of landfill, inert landfills. This type of landfill receives sand, concrete, and other waste related to construction. This type of waste does not have any biohazards nor decomposes, or it does so very slowly. These types of waste neither produce liquid waste. In this category, we mostly have asphalt, rocks, bricks, yard leaves. In this category, we do not include demolition waste.

Each landfill has a different cost to use its services. The price depends on many factors, such as type of waste ( hazardous, construction and demolition waste, municipal solid waste, and inert waste ), location of the landfill, and the individual charges of the landfill. According to statistics, the USA average price per ton is $53.72. The costs tend to be higher in the Pacific area, where they reach an average of $72.02 per ton of waste. The prices are averagely the cheapest in South Central, where they reach $39.66 per ton. From statistics, we see that the highest populated areas, the Pacific and the northeast are the costliest, while the other areas of the USA tend to have cheaper prices per ton.