Landfills — Mountains of Trash
When you throw something in the garbage can, where does it go? A big truck picks it up and takes it to a place called a landfill. A landfill is a huge area where trash is buried in the ground.
Landfills can be enormous — some are as big as entire neighborhoods! Layer after layer of trash is dumped, compacted by heavy machines, and covered with dirt. Over time, landfills become literal mountains of garbage.
The problem with landfills is that many things we throw away take a VERY long time to break down:
- A plastic bottle takes about 450 years to decompose
- A glass bottle takes about 1 million years
- A styrofoam cup may NEVER fully decompose
- An aluminum can takes about 200 years
Landfills can also cause problems for the environment. As trash breaks down, it can create polluted water that seeps into the ground (called leachate) and harmful gases that go into the air.
That is why reducing, reusing, and recycling are so important — they keep things OUT of the landfill!
**Wow Factor:** Americans create about 292 million tons of trash every year. If we all recycled and reduced waste, we could cut that number dramatically!