This is why we have a ‘shortage’ of landfill space
It’s odd, I know, but I like to look in dumpsters. Trash is where you see the whole chain of consumer value from the other side; what are people willing to pay to get rid of? In this case, it’s a couple hundred 4-foot fluorescent light tubes. Each one contains a few milligrams of mercury but they’re going to a plain old landfill alongside my dinner leftovers.
I commute on a bicycle and my route takes me past this dumpster, which is near a large building. It has this many bulbs in it about twice a month. And that’s just one building. Multiply it by all the superstores and hospitals and… well you name it… and you get a pretty significant amount of mercury. In landfills it is turned into particularly nasty organic compounds by bacteria, the kind that feed on my dinner leftovers. These compounds can outgas with the methane that landfills constantly produce.
‘Simple’ solution? (OK, not so simple) separate out toxic and non-toxic trash. Then there’d be no shortage of space for bulky, non-toxic trash. And we’d keep the mercury out of the biosphere.
Think it would cost a lot? Many lakes and streams in Illinois can no longer produce edible fish due to mercury. That’s a huge industry, shot down. Much of the mercury comes from from burning coal, but a goodly amount of it – and other nasty chemicals too – comes from dumpsters like this. Big economic impact.
That’s why landfills need elaborate containment systems, and an expensive political process to locate them far from people with enough clout to mount an effective protest. I have a hunch it would be cheaper to deal with the toxic stuff separately when you account the real cost.