by MAURA KELLER
Each year, approximately 20 million automobiles reach the end of their useful life – most of which are an average of 10 years or older.
The Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment states that Arkansans generate millions of tons of solid waste each year, with nearly three-fourths going to landfills. While this level of waste deposited in landfills may seem high, Arkansas is simply one of dozens of states who have become dependent on landfills to handle the increasing amount of waste being thrown away each day by Americans.
According to Randy Burns, chief sustainability officer at O-I, the rate at which landfills are being filled is increasing at a rate greater than anticipated 10 years ago with the incredible growth of e-commerce, excess packaging, and an increased consumption of single-use items.
“Clear policies regarding what should and shouldn’t be thrown away are also lacking, so materials that should be recycled are still being taken to landfills,” Burns said. For example, many local governments landfill glass even when consumers separate it out into recycling bins expecting it to be recycled.
As Burns explained, the contribution of glass to this issue has been minimal as it is dense and easily compacted. In fact, many landfills currently use glass as alternate daily cover (ADC) in place of other aggregate, and although this is not the highest and best use of glass – a material that is infinitely recyclable – it does provide a beneficial reuse when used in that manner.
What’s more, single-use plastics in the form of beverage containers, take out containers, shampoo bottles, detergent bottles and similar items have contributed the most to the increase in waste for a couple of reasons.
“The materials have limited recycling outlets. The only options are to dispose of single-use plastics in a landfill or to use as fuel for waste to energy (WTE) applications,” Burns said. “These types of materials take up volume in a landfill at a greater rate than other substrates.”
It’s important to note that landfill management has become more restrictive over the years, requiring additional controls and monitoring of leachate runoff and methane gas emissions from decomposition to manage one of the most harmful greenhouse gases.
“The permitting process for new landfills has also become more complex and lengthy. A current estimate now is that acquiring a permit for a new landfill may take up to 7 to 10 years, during which time regulations could change, causing increases in cost that are no longer competitive,” Burns said.
As Tommy McCoy, founder of HaulShare explained, another big challenge facing landfills today that weren’t on the radar 10 years ago includes the Chinese government enacting a global ban on the import of low-grade plastics and other related materials.
“Until 2018, the U.S. exported around one-sixth of its recyclable materials to China,” HaulShare said. “This single event led to the dissolution of recycling programs in multiple cities around the country.” HaulShare was founded by McCoy and Abhishek Luthra to fill an underserved niche in the junk removal industry that was ripe for innovation. At the time, McCoy was working for his parent’s waste management company, Champion Services Inc. He took hundreds of calls from customers asking for a more streamlined junk removal service. That’s when he noticed there was no easy way for residential and commercial customers to have bulk items removed.
As McCoy explained, while emerging technologies have enhanced the safety of landfills, the management of landfills itself hasn’t changed much in recent years. What has changed is the marketing approach.
“In the past, the solution to our waste problem would have been to simply create more landfills,” McCoy said. “Today, managers are taking a more environmentally sound approach. Convincing people to limit the amount of trash they produce. That, to me, is the only viable tool we have to fight our surge in waste.”
Loss of space for landfills is a major concern for cities and states across the country. According to McCoy, landfills take up millions of acres both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2009, there were roughly 30,000 landfills in the U.S. Today, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. has just over 3,000 active landfills and over 10,000 old municipal landfills.
“The problem is, the bulk of waste is held at just 2,000 locations – and they are near or at capacity,” McCoy said. “In fact, the U.S. is on pace to run out of landfills within 16 years, according to a new report by the Northeast Recovery Association.
Steps Being Taken
There is a myriad of initiatives being erected by landfill managers, environmental groups and the government in terms of addressing these challenges surrounding landfills.
For example, O-I is working to implement a common sense policy that will ban materials like glass from being taken to landfills (policies that already exist in EU countries) in the first place and the company is also looking to change existing policy that considers downcycling of glass for landfill cover as “recycling.”
“Additionally, as we have previously, O-I continues to engage with partners like GRC, GPI, GRF and local communities in promoting alternate collection systems for glass that helps prevent glass from going to a landfill,” Burns said.
Another example of innovations surrounding landfills includes the process of converting methane into natural gas. The flammability risk of methane is well documented, however, as McCoy said, what makes it uniquely dangerous, is that it is 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.
“Research suggests that reducing methane slippage from landfills can dramatically reduce our climate change impact,” McCoy said.
Other industries are also taking steps to limit landfill volume by limiting product waste and enhancing certain products’ reuse. Michael Barlow is co-founder and chief executive officer of Fernish, a furniture rental service that’s working to cut down the 9.8 million tons of furniture that ends up in landfills each year.
According to Barlow, the reality is that furniture is not designed at scale to be recycled. Most furniture pieces are not made of any single material and are not easily disassembled, which are the core challenges.
“A lot of the low-market furniture brands use veneers or chemically-treated coatings, which are neither recyclable nor compostable,” Barlow said. “Also, while typical polyurethane foam used in upholstery does have a commercial use for recycling, many municipalities simply don’t take foam – which is another recycling challenge for furniture.”
As a result, furniture much more often than not ends up in landfills – and in the U.S. alone almost 10 million tons of furniture goes into landfills annually.
“All of these challenges build to the higher purpose of our company at Fernish, which is to keep low-quality furniture from ever entering circulation,” Barlow said. “Our business puts only durable and modular products in the homes of consumers and then we upcycle it through an in-house refurbishment process, supported by a parts-based supply chain”
In order to make a dent in furniture waste not just nationally, but globally, brands like Fernish will need more widespread adoption and to educate consumers around the waste created by the furniture industry. “It’s totally doable, but any type of change is typically an uphill battle,” Barlow said.
On the Horizon
The future of landfills looks bleak. According to McCoy, we have less than two decades before every active landfill in the U.S. reaches its capacity.
“I also don’t see how erecting more landfills fixes our problem or aligns with our country’s aggressive sustainability goals,” McCoy said.
Burns expects to see glass being banned from landfill applications. “Haulers and others will be disincentivized to put obvious recyclables like glass in landfills themselves and we’ll see a broader harmonizing of our waste management and recycling policies to further disincentivize putting recyclables in landfills,” Burns said. “At the same time, glass only curbside collection and/or alternate collection systems will become the predominant collection method boosting glass collection in the U.S. to 50 percent by 2030.”
Published in the November 2020 Edition