Landfill. As in: “when excavating a landfill, 40 year old newspapers have been found with easily readable print.” She also read about a half-eaten hotdog that hadn't decomposed at all after being in a landfill for more than 20 years. Items like that – and just the thought that someone actually did the research (yeech!) – led Girlawhirl to believe that she really didn't know what a landfill is, because in her mind, garbage decomposed, and all things biodegradable, well… degraded.

But technically that's not the case with modern day landfills. It might have been the process in old-fashioned dumps, where garbage was open to the elements – which led to its own set of problems – but open-to-the-air waste management sites haven't been allowed in the US since the late 70s. These days it's all about landfills, so Girlawhirl found out just how a landfill works.

A landfill is a place where garbage goes to be buried. Landfills are designed to bury tons of garbage, and contain any of the possibly dangerous and generally gross contaminants that might come out of the garbage. Here's what happens: garbage trucks dump loads of trash every day and each night the day's trash is covered with about six inches of dirt, effectively burying it. The process is repeated daily and as sections fill up they're closed off and other cells, as they are called, are opened. One of the key elements of decomposition, oxygen, is eliminated from the equation in a landfill, and that's why it takes so long for the buried waste to break down – if it breaks down at all – hence the readable newspapers almost half a century old.

Modern-day landfills have lots of safeguards in place to make sure nothing bad from the garbage finds its way into the surrounding soil. There are a couple of barriers built in when landfills are constructed, from an underground clay wall surrounded by a plastic liner to a system of pipes and pools for collecting liquids and rainwater run-off. There are also pipes that collect gasses, because even though the garbage isn't decomposing very quickly in there, there's still a lot of stuff that's decaying, and both methane and CO2 are produced. Some landfills even turn that methane gas into power that's used to offset the energy needs of the landfill itself.

Just realizing that a yogurt container that finds its way into her regular garbage instead of her recycling bin is going to be sitting around for a very long time – hundreds of years perhaps – or, that all the new biodegradable things that are hitting the market aren't able to biodegrade as quickly as they're designed to when they're in a landfill, has made Girlawhirl think twice about what goes into her trash can. Which, since the trash produced by each American has almost doubled since the 1960s and is now approaching five pounds of trash per person per day (wow!), seems like a good thing.

related articles:

Apr 5, 2007:	Girlawhirl finds some help with plastic bag recycling. read full entry
Nov 15, 2006:	Girlawhirl gets in on America Recycles Day with a promise to recycle her batteries. read full entry
Jun 13, 2006:	Girlawhirl learns how to trade used DVDs, CDs, books and videogames on zunafish.com. read full entry
Feb 2, 2006:	Freed. read full entry
Jan 19, 2006:	E-cycling. read full entry