Kids/Teachers

Activities, Games and Research for Kids
and Teachers

Do You Know Where Your Garbage Goes?

Have you ever wondered where your garbage bag goes after the garbage man picks it up from your house? It's simple really, after the garbage gets picked up from your house, it gets sent to a landfill.

What Is A Landfill?

A landfill is simply a large area of land that is specially designed to hold garbage and keep it isolated from groundwater and air. There are two types of landfill; a Sanitary landfill (which uses a clay liner to isolate the garbage from the environment) and a Municipal Solid Waste landfill (which uses a synthetic liner to isolate garbage from the environment). Everyday, garbage trucks go to the landfill to empty the garbage it collects. The garbage is then spread around the landfill and covered with a layer of soil. Because the garbage that goes to a landfill is buried, their is no contact with air. This means that the garbage will break down very slowly. Closed landfills must be monitored for many years to prevent groundwater contamination.

Did you know that both Zwick's Island and Myer's Pier in Belleville, were both once landfill sites? When they closed they simply planted grass and trees and turned it into a park!

What's The Big Deal?

1) Landfills take up huge amounts of land, sometimes more than 70 acres, that's close to the same size of 70 football fields!
2) Local landfills do not have a synthetic liner, which means that groundwater is currently not protected from garbage lechate.
3) landfills fill up and close, and with the amount of garbage that is generated everyday, we will run out of room to put it all.

What's the Solution?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

By using the three R's everyday, we can lengthen the life span of our landfill.