Foothill Sanitary Landfill

A landfill is a location that manages our waste. In some landfills the garbage is left in piles, in some the garbage is incinerated and, in some others, the waste is decomposed onto other chemical structures and processed. In some landfills, the waste is buried.

Landfills are in specific areas, and they are away from cities and counties as there are gases that leak from the decomposition of the waste. There are various types of landfills. Some are used for municipal waste, some are used for sorting of the waste, some serve as transfer stations, and some are specialized only for recycling. Each landfill has its acceptance conditions, which means only a specific type of waste can be accepted.

When a load of waste is accepted, the garbage trucks go to the dumping point and offload the materials. During the processing of the waste, the main ideas are to confine the waste in the smallest space possible and to reduce the volume of the waste by compacting it. The garbage trucks are weighed when they enter and exit the landfill. The difference is the tons of garbage deposited and that affects the cost to use the landfill. Each landfill has its prices per ton depending on the type of waste that is deposited.

Sanitary landfills offer a more advanced waste management approach that further reduces the chances of environmental contamination. The basic unit of a sanitary landfill is still the cell. The idea is to create soil tranches. The garbage is deposited onto layers 1 to 3 meters high and then compacted by bulldozers to reduce the volume. Then the garbage is covered by a layer of dirt. Multiple of these layers are piled together until they reach maximum capacity and thus, we form a cell. The cell is then reinforced on all sides to prevent leakage to the soil.

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.

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.

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.