https://hakaimagazine.com/news/the-future-is-full-of-zombie-garbage/
In the early 2010s, garbage started falling out of the sand dunes in Lingreville, France. Beset by chronic coastal erosion, a long-forgotten landfill was spewing its rotten trove into the ocean. In 2016, a powerful storm dug into the site. The next year, cleanup crews stripped 14,000 cubic meters of sand mixed with waste—including asbestos—from the site. Now, researchers are warning that coastal communities around the world are set to face the same fate, with destabilized landfills on the verge of releasing large amounts of waste into the ocean.
Humans have been throwing everything from hazardous industrial waste to domestic rubbish into landfills for decades. Landfills were originally seen as eternal dumping grounds that could hold waste forever. It didn't take long for environmental concerns to arise, and today legislation often dictates what can and can't be chucked into a landfill. But the vast majority of landfills predate such rules. And with sea level rise causing more extreme erosion, flooding, and storm surges, we are on the verge of being reunited with much of this refuse.
[...] Their research shows that in France, for instance, the 1,000 municipalities located close to the coast each have at least one landfill. The Netherlands has 4,000 to 6,000 legacy landfills. With a third of the country lying below sea level, most Dutch dumps are also partly below sea level. (Though, like the rest of the country, they are hidden behind extensive flood defenses.) In Florida, the team estimates that there are 1,099 landfills at risk of flooding.
Several of these coastal tips have already started to decay. In 2008, a 400-meter-long stretch of cliff collapsed near Lyme Regis on England's southern coast. Since then, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and asbestos have all been found in the sediment nearby. Unlike in Lingreville, the cliff near Lyme Regis is too unstable to be excavated. Instead, people have been clearing the waste as it falls out. The estimated 50,000 tonnes of rubbish seems destined to erode into the ocean. That is just one of England's roughly 1,200 historical landfills that sit within the tidal flood zone—generally near estuaries, cities, and industrial centers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 27 2021, @03:15PM (4 children)
50+ years back, when the environmental rule was: the solution to pollution is dilution, landfills had a habit of being sited near the coast, on low lying or otherwise undesirable for development land.
I believe it was the 1970s before anyone started to act the least bit concerned about "lechate" from landfills entering the ground water.
Even the "Indian Mounds" tend to be found near the coast - full of oyster shells and whatever else they didn't have a use for.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 27 2021, @03:49PM (3 children)
But that's because oyster shells and whatever else they didn't have a use for happened to be at the coast - which incidentally happens to be much the case in modern times too. Nobody living on the coast back then would manual haul useless junk inland. And today, though we have the ability to move junkyards just about anywhere, it's still cheaper to dump useless junk near where you live - and a lot of people live on or near the coast.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:08AM (2 children)
Indians lived a lot of places, not just by the coasts - but the coastal living Indians, around here at least, were the ones who left the big mounds.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:43AM (1 child)
That just means they lived in one place a lot. A lot of these other Indians moved around and left lots of little mounds.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 28 2021, @04:00AM
Fair enough, although I don't think anybody really documented much about how the Central Florida Indians lived before the territory was transferred to the U.S. Mostly they just fought with them and documented when they stole white babies, etc.
There was one tribe around Wakulla Springs who defended their territory so fiercely that the Conquistadors and all who followed them until the 1800s basically marked a big red X on the map notating: go here and you die. As far as I know, they didn't make significant mounds, despite living in the same spot for hundreds of years.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @03:41PM (4 children)
LARGE Tractors - think looking like a giant snowblowers - grinding (eating) its way thought the dumps, chopping everything into 1mm cubes. Then feed those cubes into plasma furnaces. Doing so "glass" pellets and metal slag are kicked out the other end. With the waste heat feed back into the cycle and pulled for power (at least to run the tractors).
Similar to destroying chemical ammunition by burning. CDC.gov [cdc.gov]
But I now know of the release of pollutants into the air with this type of process.
But I do not have a better idea. Do you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @03:58PM
This is truly awful, but the reality of recycling today--at least in USA--is often, "Jose works for cheap."
At some point robots will replace "Jose", at least in some cases. Then it might be cost effective to use excavation equipment to dump old landfills onto conveyor belts and have the robots sort/separate the different materials.
Some of the sorted material may be appropriate for your plasma furnace, but much of it may be processed by lower temperature processes.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday December 27 2021, @04:05PM (2 children)
It's still a good idea. Just need pollution control on it, much like modern coal power plants have. Every air pollutant that would be a problem, we already have the technology to filter it out to acceptable levels (which can be significantly lower than today for the cleaner coal power plants, should that be desired).
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 27 2021, @05:33PM (1 child)
The big problem with that is the cost.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 27 2021, @10:20PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @07:02PM
So not only is it garbage that is coming out, it is French garbage. You KNOW that stuff's gotta be stinky.