LANDFILL LOCATOR

You are an agricultural architect looking to build an aquifer to irrigate your crops. You decide to survey some land in a rural area to determine where you would like to build. But watch out! There are landfills around this area! Landfills can contaminate your aquifer’s water supply, damaging farmers’ crops, and negatively affecting the soil quality of the land as well as the drinking water. Click on each square plot of land to see how close a landfill is. Don’t hit the landfills! That will ruin your land survey! The number on each plot will reveal how many landfills are located within one plot of the numbered plot. Good luck!

A landfill is a place where garbage and other waste is disposed of by burying it and covering it with soil. There are many landfills in the world. In the U.S.A alone, there are 13,000 landfills; 3,000 active landfills and 10,000 closed landfills. That’s a lot of trash!

Landfills are very dangerous to the environment. First, they produce biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. This gas traps heat in the atmosphere, leading to warmer temperatures and climate change. Landfills account for around 10% of harmful emissions! They also contaminate soil and water. Many toxic chemicals found in landfills can leak out of the disposal zones, leading to damaged soil, and they can also leak into adjacent water supplies. Weather such as rain and snow can also cause landfills to become unstable in the surrounding settings, causing landslides and collapses, endangering workers and nearby plant and animal life.

The best solution to combating the dangers of landfills is reducing waste. This can come in the form of reusing and donating clothes to reduce garment waste, or eliminating single-use plastics from the food and drink industry. Buying in bulk can also help reduce waste, and composting turns waste into a positive!