It’s dirty. It’s messy. It smells awful.
No I’m not talking about your teenager’s bedroom. I’m talking about the landfills where all our solid trash ends up. They weren’t meant to be clean, but they weren’t meant to trap greenhouse gases that are heating up the earth either.
17% of all human-caused methane pollution in the U.S. is due to these landfills. But some states and cities are using more environmentally friendly-processes to manage them. Others, of course, are just barely meeting outdated government regulations (if meeting them at all). It’s time to clean up this mess we’ve made and make things a little healthier for everyone.
Let’s get rid of the “trashy” landfills and raise standards and accountability while lowering methane emissions. And maybe, just maybe, while we’re working on this someone will devise a better way to eliminate solid waste from our planet entirely.
The world has bluetooth-enabled forks… clap-on, clap-off lights… bacon flavored dental floss… PET WIGS for Pete’s sake! We have conjured and created amazing things during our lifetime – and believe me when I tell you that I’m all for it. But can we finally devise a way to take out the trash?
Article idea and feature image courtesy of https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-controlling-landfill-methane-is-key-to-slowing-climate-change