Cold Canyon Landfill
By Andrea Peck
This week I took a field trip to the Cold Canyon Landfill with my son's class. He is in third grade and while the busload of children probably did not comprehend the gravity of the day's visit, I certainly did.
We're in deep trouble people.
I can't be too negative, though - we have a great system. The first thing I learned on the trip was the difference between “landfill” and “dump.” A landfill prevents leakage of trash into the soil and waterways, while a dump does not. At Cold Canyon they start by excavating a large hole, placing black plastic inside this area and then layering clay and rock and dirt. They fill the hole with our trash and layer on more dirt. It is a continual process where large, smelly trucks dump trash and efficient tractors compact the trash, squishing it as far as possible to make room for … more. The end result is a mountain – a mountain where there was nothing but flat land.
I watched the trucks come in and out, paper flying, cardboard stacking up. At one point an employee extricated a long piece of copper pipe. The landfill had recyclable items.
I asked the guide were there any statistics on how much trash is actually made up of recyclables. He did not have numbers handy, but he did say that paper (about 40%, he later noted) is the most common recyclable item that ends up in the landfill.
Items in the landfill do not break down. So, for example, if you put a banana peel in the trash it does not turn into soil as it would in your compost. Compost is turned and moistened which fosters beneficial bacteria and decomposers. Food in the landfill produces methane gas. Normally, this is problematic, but Cold Canyon actually pipes the gas out of the landfill and uses it to provide electricity. Like I said, in SLO County we have it good.
We later visited the recycling center where pile upon pile of recycling waited to be organized by plastic type, glass or paper or turned away as trash. Recyclables are bound into giant bundles and sent away on trucks for processing. I imagined those sad cans and cardboard boxes being shuttled on, here, there and everywhere in an endless circle.
Even the recycling comes at a cost.
The best question of the day was from the teacher. He asked about plastic sandwich bags. These are not recyclable – better to use hard (recyclable) plastic containers for sandwiches.
After what I saw today, I know what I'll be using.