Once a week, you bring trash to the curb, and your local waste management company empties your trash cans. The truck rumbles away, not to be seen again for another week. Your trash is out of sight and out of mind.

Modern waste management is one of the wonders of current society. Our waste is taken care of quickly and efficiently, so most people do not have to worry about it.

But what happens after the waste management company picks up your trash? Most of our trash is dumped at a landfill, which is where modern waste management gets interesting.
If you have ever wondered what happens to trash in landfills, this article has you covered. We’ll dive into waste management in the United States and outline how exactly modern landfills handle your trash.

How Much Trash Does the US Produce?

Unfortunately, the U.S. is one of the largest trash-producing nations in the world. In 2018, the United States collectively produced almost 300 million tons of trash. Three hundred million tons comes out to around five pounds of waste per person per day.

If five pounds per day sounds like a lot, it is. The U.S. ranks as the world’s third highest per capita trash producer. The U.S. is only behind Canada and Bulgaria in this unfortunate competition.

Things are not much better when it comes to total trash production. The U.S. is the third-highest total producer of trash, only trailing behind China and India. Things look a bit different when you consider the population.

The U.S. produces around 12% of the world’s total garbage, but only has about 4% of the world’s population. This ratio is terrible and one of the reasons you should ask, “what happens to trash in landfills?” There are serious long-term consequences for the amount of trash Americans put in landfills.

How Does the US Dispose of Trash?

Over half of the trash produced in the United States ends up in a landfill. The amount of waste in landfills is becoming increasingly problematic because Americans are making more and more trash. In fact, Americans produce three times more trash now than we did in 1960. So, what happens to trash in landfills when there is that much trash?

Thankfully, not all of the trash produced in the U.S. ends up in a landfill. The U.S. manages to recycle around 70 million tons of waste, compost another 25 million tons, and combust 35 million tons to turn it into energy. The most common trash in landfills is primarily plastic, paper, and rubber products.

Therefore, about half of Americans’ 300 million tons of trash each year end up in a landfill.

Sorting the Trash

Before your trash ends up in the landfill, you must sort it. As mentioned earlier, only about half of the garbage produced in the United States ends up in landfills.

The sorting of trash is one of the most critical steps in modern waste management because it decreases the amount of trash we put in landfills and allows us to minimize the environmental impact.

Trashing sorting starts at your home with recycling or composting. When waste management picks up these items, the waste is transported to different locations to be adequately managed.

The exact process at your house occurs at a massive scale at waste management sites. Individuals sort the trash, and recyclable items are removed from the general trash to be properly disposed of. This process is labor intensive, time-consuming, and expensive.

Recycling efforts are one of the reasons why the cost of waste management has dramatically increased in the last decade.

What Is a Landfill?

All the waste that cannot be recycled or composted is transported to a landfill. When people think of what happens to trash in landfills, they think a landfill is a dump or a large hole in the ground where trash is dumped and covered. Thankfully, this is not the case.

Landfills are far more advanced and complicated than dumps. The first landfills were developed in the 1960s due to the rising amount of trash produced.

So, what do landfills do with trash? Landfills are complex operations that seek to dispose of our trash as efficiently and safely as possible. Waste management companies design landfills to minimize the environmental impact of burying our waste.

Once trash reaches a landfill, it is sorted and buried systematically by heavy machinery. Landfills use many of the same machines found on construction sites. The heavy machinery also compacts the trash, so it takes up the smallest amount of space possible.

How Does a Landfill Work?

So, what happens to trash in landfills once it has been sorted and reached the landfill? The sorting and burying system at a landfill is a complex process that involves many moving parts. You can imagine a landfill as an artificial pond filled with trash instead of water.

At the bottom of the landfill, there are several layers of plastic liner that water cannot penetrate. Another liner protects the plastic liner so trash does not escape. Waste is then compacted and then buried on top of the plastic liner. Eventually, when the landfill is full, it is covered in a layer of dirt and closed.

What happens to trash in landfills when it gets wet? Even though the most common trash in landfills is also plastic, any rainwater that falls on a landfill can pass through the trash and be collected at the landfill’s bottom by the plastic liner. As a result, pollutants and contaminants are in the wastewater that collects at the bottom of a landfill.

Instead of leaching into the groundwater, a pipe collects the wastewater and pumps it into a pond where the waste management company decontaminates it. Therefore, what happens to trash in landfills is an important process to consider to avoid this issue.

As you can see, a landfill is a relatively complicated system that minimizes the amount of space our trash takes up and mitigates our waste’s environmental impact. It is far more complex and much safer than simply burning the garbage in the ground.

Furthermore, landfills are just one part of the waste management cycle. Hundreds of moving parts function together to take care of trash, recycling, and other waste and minimize the environmental impacts.

Wrapping Up

modern technology to dispose trash safely.

So there you have it, now you know what happens to trash in landfills. It is much more complicated than dropping your junk in a hole and burning it. A landfill is a complex operation that utilizes heavy construction equipment and modern technology to dispose of trash safely. Contact WIN Waste Innovations today to learn more about our local landfills, and how our team can help you with waste management.

What Happens to Trash at a Landfill