you do a great job of telling the truth here.. as i learned it in my masters studies at least.

i just wonder how appropriate, as a journalist, it would be to include more information and slant on the NEED to cut down on solid waste production. would that make the article seem biased? there definitely seemed to be a slant toward calling the landfill ‘beautiful’, which i’d say is a stretch of reality.

back to solid waste, in my mind a global environmental issue paramount to global warming and nuclear proliferation. there is a HUGE need to stop producing so much WASTE. landfills waste natural resources, and the leachate is really nasty stuff. leachate is filtered, but all landfills leak, so some of it escapes unfiltered. also, when food and other organic waste ends up in the landfill, it decomposes anaerobically and releases methane. It is also impossible to capture all the methane, which is 25 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. See how it is all connected? Burning the garbage is just as bad , b/c burning plastics (also inevitable) sending carcinogenic smoke out into our air, and eventually our water.

so what is the answer?

well… have every american visit a landfill (and sewage treatment plant and farm and factory farm…) as part of their mandatory grade school education.

can you tell i’m an environmental educator? lol.

anyway, keep up the good work! knowledge is power :)