Trash Talk - part deux: Days 6-9

Touring the King County Landfill – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

A couple weeks ago, I toured the last remaining King County Landfill. When I was getting ready to do this two-week project, I thought it would be useful to see where the trash goes. Originally, I was told I couldn’t get in until mid-June as their tours were fully booked until then. Who knew? However, when I told them I wanted to take the tour as part of my project, they very nicely fit me in – for a private 90-minute tour at that. The official information about the landfill is here. So I won’t go into all the statistics, but just give you some thoughts about my visit.

The Good
I was excited about my tour, and was kind of surprised that I couldn’t convince anyone else to go with me. I’m thinking they were picturing wading through trash. I will admit I expected to be able to smell the place before seeing it (helpful if I got lost, I reasoned); however, I was pleasantly surprised to approach a very well-kept “active area” surrounded by clearly human-made hills (filled areas) returning to a semi-natural state above-ground , all surrounded by quite a bit of forest (“buffer zone”). During the tour, riding in a pickup truck around and above the “active area” – not in it,” I saw a couple deer and several bald eagles. My guide said he had seen a brown bear just that morning drinking from a rain runoff pond (yes, it’s clean). He said that the management of the landfill has contracted with the county to monitor it for 100 years. It’s scheduled to close in nine years, so after that, his job will consist mostly of wandering through the developing forest, checking for methane gas leaks or any other issues.

In the meantime, the most interesting thing he told me is that the landfill has contracted with an Australian company to convert the methane gas (product of trash decomposition) to liquid form and pipe it to the gas company to use as fuel.

My guide also told me that they are on level 7 of 17 levels in the last section of the last landfill in the county. Once it closes in nine years, King County will begin shipping trash by train from transfer stations to a trash “super site.” I’m not sure this falls in the “Good” category, but I suppose consolidation of trash into fewer, larger locations is a good thing (unless you live nearby).

The Bad
I asked if they had noticed any slowdown in their fill rate with increasing recycling. To my surprise, and disappointment, King County does not require recycling or provide pickup. People have to take recyclable items to a designated acceptance location. So, of course, most don’t – meaning the landfill is full of a huge amount of items that don’t need to be there.

Since Seattle, which prides itself on its model recycling program, is the largest city in King County, this seemed odd. Then my guide told me that actually Seattle’s trash and recycling does not go into the King County landfill; and he didn’t know where it went. Strange. When I called the Seattle Department of Solid Waste to find out more, they told me that they already ship trash to a super site in Oregon because it’s cheaper than using the King County landfill (huh?). Recycling gets shipped out to various recycling plants.

Along with the huge amounts of methane gas produced, landfills sink about two feet per year, depending upon what’s in them. No one knows how long this will go on (according to my guide).

The Ugly
It’s still a dump.

But maybe not forever. In King County, nothing can ever be built on previous landfill. However, I contacted a friend of mine in Baltimore who worked for thirty years for a company that designed landfills (I think he was shocked that for the first time in ~20 years, I was taking more than a polite interest in his profession). He said that many places have turned closed landfills into parks (the best: Mt. Trashmore Park) or golf courses – where the course changes slightly every time you go! He also confirmed that hauling trash to super sites has been the trend for years on the east coast. He also mentioned that people have begun mining landfills for metals – even Alcoa is hunting for it’s old aluminum. This is an interesting concept – reduce mining of new metals, reduce the size of old landfills, and hopefully find a better way of re-disposing of the remaining uncovered trash with newer technologies.

Now, and update on my own personal trash contribution.
• One Styrofoam egg carton
• Several pieces of plastic food wrap/packaging; this has been the most unavoidable item for me – but they all fit inside the egg carton (second use!)
• Plastic cup and plastic coffee cup lid
• Stupid plastic starbucks sample cup and foil coffee bean bag*
• Prescription bottle (not recyclable)
• Dental floss package (ran out), several pieces of floss
• A couple Q-tips
• A toothbrush that I couldn’t justify using anymore (this is after converting it to a kitchen cleaning brush)
• A couple small pieces of foil wrap, e.g. from a dinner mint
• 2 pieces of plastic packaging from Apple products (I scolded them)
• A couple plastic bottle caps
• A metal clasp from an envelope I received in the mail
• A pen that burst in my purse (had to happen this week, didn’t it?)

I am now carrying my trash around in a fairly large grocery carrier made of recycled plastic bags by a company in India that hires people to sort through mounds of trash for the bags, then processes them into purses, backpacks, etc. The main reason I did this is because I can toss the backpack and my purse in there, and it just looks like a really big purse. Taking it with me has become second nature. I took it to the movies Friday night, to a backyard party Saturday night – I put it on a chair in the middle of the small yard so I was always within the five-foot limit without having to lug it around. ☺
~Linda