On the sustainability of modern landfills

Danehy Park is a 50-acre recreational site built on top of a landfill that was closed in the 1970s.

After discussing trends in solid waste management in my presentation on Sustainability in Solid Waste Management at the Sustainability Symposium and Expo at Brunswick Community College, I next discussed modern sanitary landfills. The pictures below show a simple schematic of a modern landfill as well as a more detailed cutaway. The EPA estimates that in 2009 132 million tons (54%) of MSW were discarded in landfills in the U.S. There is are a lot of misconceptions about what occurs during disposal in a landfill, so I think it's best to discuss how modern sanitary landfills operate. The figures below show a simplified schematic of a landfill and a detailed cutaway, respectively.

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Modern sanitary landfills are highly engineering systems that do not resemble the open dumps that people sometime imagine when landfills are mentioned. Open dumps still exist in many parts of the world. But, in the developed world such facilities are essentially non-existent. 

So, let's step through the landfill from bottom to top. Below the landfill we see an aquifer that we would like to keep contaminated leachate from reaching. The bottom layer of the landfill thus consists of a liner that typically consists of a couple feet of highly compacted clay and an impermeable geomembrane, which is essentially a plastic sheet that further inhibits leaks. Directly on top of the liner is the leachate collection layer which typically consists of a foot or so of gravel or some other hard, loose, material. The purpose of the leachate collection layer to provide the leachate an easy path to flow into the leachate collection system. Leachate is pumped out of the leachate collection system and then treated. Waste is piled on top of the leachate collection system. Each day the waste is covered, usually with soil, but other alternative daily covers exist. After all of the waste is in place, a final cover that consists of soil, clay, another geomembrane, top soil, and vegetation is put in place to inhibit water intrusion into the landfill.

You'll also notice in both figures that there are pipes for methane/gas recovery. These pipes are either placed horizontally or vertically, and are used to collect the gas generated in the landfill. Landfill gas is typically 50% CO2 and 50% methane, with some other trace gases, but the composition changes with landfill age. The gas is either flared or combusted in a turbine or engine to generate heat and/or energy. Currently, over 500 landfills in the U.S. beneficially use their landfill gas, and another 500+ landfills are good candidates for such projects. Landfill gas is a renewable energy source that leads to significantly reduced emissions when compared to coal fired power. 

Another interesting environmental aspect of landfills is that landfills actually store carbon and can act as a carbon sink. Most organic materials will not completely degrade under anaerobic conditions (i.e., without oxygen), so significant quantities of carbon end up sequestered indefinitely in landfills. When a typical ton of MSW is buried in a landfill about 100 kg C (370 kg CO2e) end up indefinitely stored. Given enough time these organic deposits may develop into peat or lignite. This sequestration plus the generation of electricity 
means that a ton of MSW landfilled in a state-of-the-art landfills are actually carbon negative.


For more information check out the How landfills work? article at HowStuffWorks.com or the EPA's landfill site.


I think the next post on this topic will be on waste-to-energy combustion. Recycling was next in the original presentation, but it's a big topic to really cover properly, so I'll probably cover it last and in pieces. 

The Cronon Affair and the Assault on Science and Reason

Paul Krugman has a great post up discussing the Cronon Affair in Wisconsin. A NY Times editorial further describes the incident.

Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.

In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms.

Both articles also make the obvious link to Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli's similar crusade against climate scientist, Michael Mann even though several independent investigations have found Mann innocent of any wrong doing. Many ultraconservatives do not care about objective science and scholarship. This is well documented in Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. Similar themes are also explored in Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt.

This should be chilling to the American public. The gap is shrinking, but the U.S. is still the world leader in scientific output. This is where our future lies. We have an enviable higher education system that still attracts many of the best and brightest from around the world. Properly channeling those intellectual resources into research and innovation will be essential to maintaining economic growth in the coming decades. Attacks on science and scientists by politicians can only serve to scare away the brightest from entering research fields or from coming here to perform their research.

I'll leave you with a great quote by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) when the GOP controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee voted down an amendment declaring the reality of climate change (the amendment didn't even say climate change was caused by humans).

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.
However, I won’t rise physically, because I’m worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating around the room.
I won’t call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Instead, we will embody Newton’s third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America’s importation of foreign oil.
This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrödinger’s cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!
Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.
And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair’s amendment pile.

Trends in Solid Waste Management

So, this morning I gave my presentation on Sustainability in Solid Waste Management at the Sustainability Symposium and Expo at Brunswick Community College. I'm planning on uploading the whole thing as a PDF. But, I also wanted to do a post on some of the major points in the talk. The first section of the presentation was on trends in solid waste management in the U.S. All of the figures and data are from the EPA's Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2009. The are numerous interesting methodological critiques available to this survey, which I may cover in another post, but it's essentially the best data available. The other nationwide waste survey is The State of Garbage which is a joint study conducted by a great group consisting researchers from BioCycle and the Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University. We can discuss the differences in a different post. Here I just want to focus on the EPA data. So, we can start with waste generation trends in the U.S.

I guess we should get terminology out to the way first. This EPA report is on municipal solid waste (MSW), which is defined for this study as:

These materials include items such as packaging, food 

scraps, grass clippings, sofas, computers, tires, and refrigerators. MSW does not include industrial, hazardous, or construction waste.

Waste generation is all of the waste that ends up in a trash can, recycling bin, dumpster, and/or left at the curb. The first figure we'll look at is the trends in waste generation over the last 50 years.

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The cool thing about this chart is the fact that per capita waste generation has been pretty stagnant since about 1990. There has been a downturn in the last couple of years, but one would assume that is mostly due to the current global recession. If there is less production and consumption then there is going necessarily be less waste generation. It's also interesting that total waste generation has been stagnant since about 2000. This may be a temporary stagnation due to economic issues, or it could be the end results of waste minimization efforts. Obviously, per capita generation needs to actually decrease for total generation to remain constant due to population increases. So, that's what generation has been doing, next we'll take a look at recycling.

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This figure makes a lot of intuitive sense. Recycling was pretty stagnant until the mid-80's when it started to take off. This lasted until the mid-90's, when most of the low hanging fruit had been plucked (i.e., large cities and suburbs, easily recyclable materials, etc.). For the last 15 years the recycling rate has still been increasing, but at a slower rate. I wouldn't be surprised if the slope decreased again around 2007ish firstly because of the recession communities will be less likely to invest in additional recycling for fairly marginal returns, and also because most of the easy recycling has been achieved and there are fewer really attractive projects available.

Next we'll take a look at the composition of MSW in the U.S.

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This chart isn't as interesting as the others, but it does tell us what's in that 234 million tons of MSW generated each year. You see that paper and fiber is the largest single component, followed by food waste and yard trimmings. All of those are organic materials that anaerobically degrade in landfills to generate methane. Some types of paper actually end up as net carbon sinks when discarded in landfills, though. We can discuss landfill carbon storage in another post, though. The next chart shows the recycling rate for a variety of materials found in MSW.

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I like this chart because it's interesting to try to explain why we the variation that we do. Auto batteries are easy since a lot people get them changed at shops who typically are required by law to recycle them. They are also considered hazardous waste and contain valuable materials. Office paper is high because so many offices and such have recycling programs and people are generally good about separating it out of the trash. I would think steel cans have such a high rate because they are valuable and they are readily removed from waste streams with a magnet. Aluminum is more valuable, but eddy current separators are going to be more costly than simple magnets. Yard trimmings have such high rates due mostly to yard waste landfill bans that are in place in about half the states. I want to do a post in the future on the benefits of recycling various materials.

Data source

Finally, I want to look at how waste is treated in the U.S. We see that over half our waste ends up in landfills. About 25% goes to what I would call traditional recycling, which consists of turning things like metals, paper, plastics, and glass into new materials. Another 12% (the State of Garbage reports calls it 18%) is combusted for either steam or electricity generation, and finally another 9% is aerobically composted. If I had to guess based on the trends discussed earlier and some intuition, I would say the composting is probably going to increase, recycling will increase more slowly than composting, and combustion will stay about the same as landfills decrease.

10th Talk: Garik Sadovy - LSD Changed My Life - Students Taking Responsibility for Their Education

There was another pre-recorded talk by Benjamin Zander on passion and music that was great followed by a performance by Panoramic Dance Project.

The tenth and final TEDxNCSU talk is Garik Sadovy on LSD Changed My Life - Students Taking Responsibility for Their Education.

LSD actually stands for lifestyle design. Garik begins with a discussion of his great depression of 2009 because his goals as an engineering student were being questioned and he lost his grandfather. I also just noticed that he's wearing very odd sandals with thin soles and several very thin leather straps. It almost looks like there are no soles to them.

He met Jeff Huber (Talk #5) during a time when he was reading relationship help books. They began discussing their lives and where they are going and what they are doing with their lives. Garik suggested that they teach a class on their discussions. They assigned the 4 Hour Work Week to read in their Lifestyle Design class. They had a model for creating purpose and meaning in life that gave them confidence in teaching.

They assigned large case studies instead of exams, and had people study their own passions. They went through a conventional life and then developed alternatives at each life stage to inspire students. They wrote personal eulogies and values assessments.

After self-definition they then began to set personal goals to become the person they wanted to be. They had numerous large class discussions that served to inspire and bond the group. They ended up doing very well on their class evaluations.

Finally, what does lifestyle design mean? What do we do with it? Do we have the proper priorities? What if there was a student led department of purpose or the meaning of life?

The whole thing is pretty fluffy without a lot of concrete guidance or food for thought.

9th Talk: Dr. Michael Steer - Ideas from Nothing - Solving a Problem Without Knowing the Problem

The ninth TEDxNCSU is Dr. Michael Steer on Ideas from Nothing - Solving a Problem Without Knowing the Problem. We are told that Dr. Steer has a great accent, and he does have a nice Australian accent.

The talk is personal, and he has broken down before while giving it.

Recently received a military medal for developing a solution for radio controlled roadside bombs. This talk is about that story and the lessons of that 8 year development process.

How do you come up with ideas from nothing?

He starts describing the attacks of 9/11. He wanted to help and make a difference. He worked 70-80 hours per week without a day off. But, he didn't have a problem solve. Engineers know a little science and math and want to create. Currently system consists of taking complex systems and compartmentalizing them into little pieces. The little pieces work great, but the system is not necessarily optimized.

He recommends taking a system view (Yay!). He looked for vulnerabilities in complex systems. He spent his time doing professorial duties, reading, and building (social) networks.

Things that he learned on the way.
1.) There are few in any new ideas. All ideas are synthesized from previous ideas.
2.) Diversity of thought and experiences is absolutely critical. Expose yourself to uncomfortable ideas.
3.) Travel is essential. Try conferences outside of your expertise.
4.) Consciously try to learn new things.
5.) It takes a lot of work to make a real difference.
6.) Think at a systems level (woot!) in all disciplines.

8th Talk: Dr. Stacy Wood - Buying Happiness

They showed another pre-recorded talk by Emily Pilloton.

The eighth TEDxNCSU talk is Dr. Stacy Wood on Buying Happiness.

We are supposed to be happy at the end of the talk. Dr. Wood studies consumer psychology, which seems pretty neat. She starts with that we all know we can't buy happiness. I'm guessing she's going to turn and say that we act as we can buy happiness (I'm right).

Examples: Where do we spend our time? We don't follow our passions, but Mike Rowe told us earlier that following our passions was bad advice. In the end, we spend 300 hours more than Europeans working each year. Also, the average European gets 6 weeks of vacation per year. Vacations are important for the things that make us happy. 52% of Americans take one week or less of vacation per year. We tie happiness to success at work and making more money.

Tells us to go home and check out the stuff we spend our money and thus our time on. We often end up buying unhappiness. There are 3 reasons we spend money unwisely.

1.) Retail therapy. We buy things and it makes us happy momentarily. People feeling the least in control may be the most likely to take advantage of this. People are also very financially illiterate. Finally, once we have things we adapt to it, and our happiness returns to it's previous level. I need granite counter tops -> I need stainless appliances -> I need new cabinets/flooring...

We've created a habit of stuff leading to mindless acquisition. She has recently studied sales of luxury brands during the recent recession using brain imaging (i.e., fMRIs). People saw 3 words and 3 logos. Indulgence Words and Frugality Words as well as luxury brand logos and "practical" brand logos. Seeing indulgence words then luxury brand logos activated part of brain associated with goal achievement?. Finally, she asks us to unplug from messages push blind consumerism.

7th Talk: Dr. Tim Wallace - Who Owns Your Heritage?

The seventh TEDxNCSU talk is Dr. Tim Wallace on Who Owns Your Heritage?

Starts with "what is heritage?" Is it building, religious customs, or art and culture. He argues that it is more. That it is practices and habits. Heritage is something that is always being redefined. Heritage is how we perform and remember things today. He's talking about Old Salem. The original Krispy Creme was apparently torn down to build 1800's era historical building.

Culture and heritage are intimately linked. Being a Phillies fan is a deep part of him, as is spending time with his granddaughter. Does it actually matter who owns our heritage? Yes, it does. He collects "face" pots, and shows one from South Carolina and asks who owns that heritage?

Heritage is a dialogue and a process. We can lose our heritage and we can claim the heritage of others.

What good is heritage?

6th Talk: Kathleen Griffin - Texts, Tweets, and Transnational Technologies - The Role of Social Networking and Citizen Journalism in International Crisis

The sixth TEDxNCSU talk is Kathleen Griffin on Texts, Tweets, and Transnational Technologies - The Role of Social Networking and Citizen Journalism in International Crisis. Kathleen is a senior in international studies here at State.

Technology can empower citizen journalists and social revolution. She joked about possible conflict with Chase and Erick, but assures us that they'd be facebook friends. We are doing word association. I think old people are supposed to think non-tech things when they hear text, tweet, viral and/or myspace.

She mentions cell phone subscription, texts, and tweeting stats and trends. Social networking allows flash mobs, green revolution, and day of revolt.

She is now going into how she became interesting in social networking and change. She was inspired by video clip of a woman beaten to death during the green revolution in Iran.

She then studied social networking for public health in China during the SARS outbreak in China in 2003. Social networking was also used for witnessing breaking emergencies (e.g., 2004 tsunami, Haitian earthquake, Japanese earthquake and tsunami).

They can also be used for social activism. Her first example is the 2009 protests in Iran and then moves to Japan. People who never used social networking turned to Twitter for updates from the country.

So, what's next? More of the same apparently. The talk was interesting, but kind of just rehashed well known occurrences. It would have been good to broaden or extrapolate things.

5th Talk: Jeffrey Huber - The Danes - What We Can Learn from the Happiest People On Earth

Another pre-recorded talk from a volunteer firefighter was presented. It was essentially a story of him saving a women's shoes and her gratitude for the gesture even though he wanted to be the one to save her dog.

The fifth TEDxNCSU talk is Jeffrey Huber on The Danes - What We Can Learn from the Happiest People On Earth. I actually stepped out of this talk early. Jeffrey is an undergraduate at NC State who spent a semester in Copenhagen and was discussing why the Danes are so happy and what lessons can be gleaned from them.

4th Talk: Dr. Toddi Steelman - My Jihad Against Scientific Fundamentalism

The fourth TEDxNCSU talk is Dr. Toddi Steelman on My Jihad Against Scientific Fundamentalism.

The oceans are under assualt, climate is changing, and biodiversity is at increasing risk. She argues that science shouldn't have a large role in these problems. She says we have put science on a podium and turned science into a "false prophet".

She moves to a case study at Camp Lejuene involving men with breast cancer. Men were exposed to a variety of carcinogens in tap water. 5 studies have tried to link the cancer to those chemicals, but none have done so conclusively. Says drawing conclusions is hard due to confounding elements.

Myth #1: Science determines policy.
I think she means the idea that "science SHOULD determine policy, but it's unclear.

She has moved on to "Climategate" and brought up the hockey stick graph. Never gets around to saying that numerous investigations have shown no wrongdoing.

Myth #2: Science is objective.
Shows side-by-side pictures of Al Gore and Glenn Beck. (sigh)

More on putting science on an alter and what if it can't deliver. The U.S. has spent $40 million on climate research, but still no consensus. This blatantly untrue in the scientific community.

Myth #4: More science leads to better consensus
This seems obviously true, and her argument only works if consensus only means "public consensus" instead of scientific consensus.

She says advocates for science argue that science is a better form of knowledge than politics. Science can't tell us what to do in Camp Lejuene and for dealing with the climate.

I want to think on this more, but the idea that we need to downplay the role of science in decision making seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

3rd Talk: Dr. Christina Cowger - Torture - The Spider's Web and the Net of Accountability

I skipped a pre-recorded talk by Mike Rowe that was really good. He referenced the ASCE report card that we've talked a lot about in our CaS colloquium.

The third TEDxNCSU talk is Dr. Christina Cowger on Torture - The Spider's Web and the Net of Accountability. She is from NC Stop Torture Now.

Quote from Cheney about "working on the dark side" in the war on terror. Talking about CIA studies on "no touch" torture such as stress positions, sexual humiliation, and sleep deprivation. She now mentioned CIA experiments on waterboarding and simultaneous exposure to torture techniques, and the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.

She moved on to rendition network and procedures. She moved on to individual stories. She is now quoting Gen. McCaffery, Gen. Taguba and the UN council on human rights. "Look forward not backwards" makes it's first appearance. Apparently, there is good news and a "global movement" towards accountability apparently exists. She brought up examples from Canada and Maher Arar, investigations in Canada, UK, Spain, Lithuania, Poland, and Australia. It doesn't seem like much to me.

She moved on to the grassroots movement in NC. Protests have occured at air fields used for rendition in the State. Brad Miller, my representative, who I have a great deal of respect for, has apparently not supported an investigation.Stop Torture Now is trying to setup a truth commission. If government support never comes, this will look like the silly Obama impeachment tribunals.

2nd Talk: Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll - Journalism and Discourse Without Newspapers

The second TEDxNCSU talk is Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll on Journalism and Discourse Without Newspapers.

They are now going into how the internet killed the newspaper. He is mentioning Craigslist, circulation numbers, ad revenue, and free news aggregators. He moved into the unbundling of news in the internet age. People are now able to get the specific content they are looking for.

He moved onto the response from newspapers in reducing hard news and moving towards lighter fare. Shows that that statehouse coverage has decreased 32% since 2003 and how this makes corruption easier to get away with.

Erick is now speaking about the absence of newspapers and the lack of real news media in the U.S. He starts about the need for rapidity and brevity in modern news and how this makes news less reliable (<50% of online articles aren't fully edited).Online articles are also half the length of their dead tree counterparts. People now choose news sources that agree with their pre-existing ideologies.

He's now going into how Sarah Palin invented "death panels" and how it was quickly rebuked by most media sources, but pushed by Fox News. But, still 50% of Americans accepted they existed since no method existed to explain to the American public. The new media landscape allows mistruths to spread quickly and removes almost all means to correct lies and conspiracies.

Chase is back saying 85% of online news originated in newspapers and how online news is "news junk food".

Erick is proposing solutions to save journalism such as pay-walls and ad revenue. He's going into non-profit and public funding. U.S. currently has lowest per capita funding towards public media of any western nation. The whole discussion is pretty pessimistic, but hard to argue with.

I am approaching battery life problems, so I'm going to have to use pen and paper and come back.

British Colonial Theory of American History is Bunk

I no longer accept the modern historian dogma that is the British Colonial Theory of American history. Firstly, it's just a theory, which means it's no better than a guess. Also, if the U.S. was founded by British colonist, then how can there still be Britons? Why haven't the Britishists produced JUST 1 transitional document. They talk about the Declaration of Independence showing the transition from British colonies to an American government, but it's obvious that the DoI was written by a developed and existing American governmental institution known as the Continental Congress. The change from Continental Congress to our modern constitutionally authorized congress is just a micro-governmental change that everyone accepts can happen. But, no one has ever observed macro-governmental change in the real world, nor will they.

On a completely unrelated note, a Florida legislator who recently submitted a bill to teach "non-evolution" in schools recently asked "Why do we still have apes if we came from them?" Also, if I descended from my grandparents, how come I still have cousins?

1st Talk: Dr. Dan Ariely - Self Control - The Problem and How to Get Over It

The first TEDxNCSU talk is Dr. Dan Ariely who is a professor of behavioral economics at Duke. I'm going to try to update this as he speaks. Hopefully, it'll go well. I may or may not do this for the other speakers depending on how this goes.

He's starting with an anecdote about advice he received in the hospital about avoiding hospitals. He's going further into his participation in a drug trial that caused certain immediate ill effects, but provided a long-term uncertain disease risk reduction. He linked this then to the Fall and texting while driving and the present-bias focus. This is then linked into our time preferences of costs and benefits with a twist that is new to me. He asked about chocolate now vs 1.5 times as much chocolate in a week and then changed it by adding a year. Nearly everyone would wait 53 weeks for more chocolate instead of 52 weeks for less.

He was also apparently the only person would adequately and regularly administered his medication during the study. He did this with reward substitution, where he'd watch a movie when he injected the medication.

Awesome quote:
"If you tried to create a problem that people won't care about, you'd have global warming."

He's trying to link people's ego to their energy decisions, such as how driving a Prius strokes environmentalist egos.

After reward substitution, he moved to self-control contracts, such as how Ulysses tied himself to the mast, while passing the sirens. He's moved to animal studies with immediate vs. delayed rewards and apparently some studies have shown rats and pigeons are able to remove their own temptation by pressing a third button. He's bringing up an alarm clock that gives money from your bank account to a charity you hate and another one that runs away from you.

He brought up stickk.com which is a web site that enforces goals otherwise you owe people money. Another website tells people when you watch porn or uninstall the software.

TEDxNCSU is today!

I'm attending TEDxNCSU today. The program looks pretty interesting, and I'm hoping I'll have some good stuff to write about later. A live stream is apparently available at the earlier link.

It's been almost two years.

I had almost completely forgotten about this blog, but now I'm back. I'm currently putting together a presentation on sustainability in solid waste management on behalf of the Environmental Research and Educational Foundation at the Sustainability Symposium and Expo at Brunswick Community College. I'm preparing the presentation now, but I'm hoping to put together a post on the presentation later this week. Then I'll add a post on how the talk went afterwards.