Cortland County Zero-Sort Collection Recycling Center

A landfill has very detailed business operations. The waste arrives at the facility in garbage trucks on a section called the Cell. The cell is made of an isolated layer, that prevents any waste or liquids from leaking. In the cell, the waste is sorted out. This unit is enclosed, as the sun and the atmospheric conditions can interact with the waste. Afterward, the garbage is compressed in the smallest volume possible. The cell will accept new waste until it is full. When it reaches, it is further reinforced on top with various materials and dirt. The idea is that the area on top of the cell is reused and to support vegetation.

The important part of this process is the base of the cell. It must prevent liquids and other pollutants from reaching the soil. For this reason, the cell is isolated below with layers of plastic and clay, to create a strong isolation system.

Regarding liquids, they are collected onto a unit called the sump. In this unit, the liquids are processed, and when they are cleaned on pollutants, they are reintroduced onto the environment. Each landfill has groundwater monitoring, which means they collect the quality of groundwater before it reaches the landfill and afterward it exits the landfill. Regarding gasses generated by the waste, they are collected via a special system that ends up reusing the methane generated and the gases to produce energy.

When a landfill reaches the point that all the cells are full, then the landfill stops operations. This doesn’t mean that the owners of the landfill have no responsibilities. They must be monitored for 30 years after closure, and that means assuring the quality of groundwater and preventing leakage to the soil of any type of waste.

There is one detail to clear out. Landfills and dumps sound the same but are not. A landfill is engineered to maximally reduce the effect on the environment of the waste. The advantages of landfills over dumps are that landfills are managed with more care and landfills can even recycle the waste to produce other compounds or to even produce energy. Dumps are almost nonexistent today as they do not manage the waste and just leave things in the open.

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.

The first step onto the waste stations is to weigh the incoming garbage trucks. These sites are also open to the public and they help the community. The work of waste sorting stations is very important, and it helps to optimize the process of waste management. Transfer stations pre-compact the waste thus it is easier for the bulldozers to manage the waste at the sanitary landfills.

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.