Landfills remind us why we need to do more recycling

Editor’s note: Got questions about recycling? We’ve got answers. Editorial board members and Opinion columnists Melissa Davis and Josh Farley continue their deep dive into the recyclable, the kind-of recyclable and, in today’s edition, where everything else goes.

Josh: I assumed a landfill is a place all garbage goes to die. Boy was I wrong, Melissa. A mountain of trash is quite alive in ways that are … wholly unpleasant.

Melissa: It’s not just the smell of rotting everything, Josh. It’s the gushing leachate, a perpetual chemical soup drained from the buried garbage depths that never stops. (Think of the famous “Star Wars” trash compactor scene … without the trash. And maybe the trash monster.) And the heat from furnaces burning landfill gases, hoovered up in a labyrinth of pipes around a 920-acre complex. All while 100 tractor trailers tip roughly 2,500 tons of trash down the gullet each day.

Josh: A look inside — really, atop — Cedar Hills Regional Landfill in Maple Valley was surely eye-opening. In our yearlong quest to be better recyclers, the landfill is the place we’re hoping will one day no longer be a necessity — or, at least, whose need will be greatly reduced.     

Melissa: Tall order, that.

Josh: Indeed. But the pressure is literally mounting. Cedar Hills is running out of space. King County is also embroiled in a lawsuit over what to do with harmful landfill gas components emitted there, including arsenic. For now, staff are merely able to burn the 7,200 standard cubic feet per minute of methane produced within the trash, converting it to carbon dioxide. Hardly ideal in an era of climate change.

Melissa: A trip through Cedar Hills is a good reminder of why work on recycling is both personal and political for us today. In the time it takes you to read this sentence, 117,000 plastic bottles will have been used up somewhere in the world, according to the United Nations. And most didn’t go to a depot to be made anew.

Josh: You can bet we saw a lot of plastic falling out of those trucks and into their new forever home.    

Melissa: We put our garbage in plastic bags, and then at the landfill those bags are put inside of one enormous garbage bag. Most nights, after smooshing football field-sized sections with heavy equipment, workers at the landfill roll tarps over the latest trash pile. Once each “cell” is filled, it’s sealed within the ground. It’s methodical and precise. Yet the trees surrounding the facility are still draped in plastic bags that drifted off in the wind. Workers must routinely go take them down.

Josh: What’s curious is that Cedar Hills — King County’s only landfill — is a bit of an anomaly in the Northwest in its more urban location and capacity constraints. Much of the waste produced in Puget Sound heads by train to landfills near the Columbia River east of the Cascades — dry expanses with room for more than a century’s worth of trash. It goes out of sight, out of mind for most people.

Melissa: Yet a recent survey by the state’s Ecology Department showed six of 10 respondents believe the goal of recycling is “To keep the recyclables out of landfills.” That was the most common answer, alongside “it’s the right thing to do.”

Josh: To be fair, landfills have come a long way. There was a time — in the late 19th century — when the fine residents of Seattle’s business district loaded garbage onto a scow and sent it overboard into the depths of Elliott Bay.

Melissa: It wasn’t until 1937 that Jean Vincenz, the public works commissioner of Fresno, Calif., (where I used to live, thank you very much) envisioned something better — a “sanitary” landfill that buried waste — and it still took a $38 million Environmental Protection Agency cleanup to contain the eventual damage to the environment.  

Josh: I think no matter how well-run a landfill becomes, people have a visceral reaction to them: We know they’re not good for the environment. I know a certain golf bag shook you to the core.

Melissa: Yes! Among jillions of latex gloves and on top of a mountain of trash, it was this oversized golf bag that had me contemplating the fragility of stuff. The previous owner certainly gave no mulligans.

Josh: Perhaps if the owner knew about the Leachate Lagoons. No, they’re not the local muni course water hazard. Regardless of rainfall, the ponds of Cedar Hills Regional Landfill are always swelling and draining and piped to a wastewater treatment plant in Renton. There, the water is treated just like the sewage that shows up. Eventually, all is discharged into Puget Sound.

Melissa: While the plant can treat the leachate, scientists are revealing in recent studies that both microplastics and the endocrine-disrupting “forever” chemicals known as PFAS survive the treatment.

Josh: Meanwhile methane emissions, including natural gas, have shown themselves to be a fossil fuel around 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide; and waste was the fourth leading source of methane emissions in 2021, according to the World Economic Forum.

Melissa: Given that organic materials, including food, make up most of the landfill’s contents, it’s not surprising microbes begin a feast that produces a potpourri of gases. And wow, those gases are not pleasant. I take back the term “potpourri.”

Josh: The county previously signed an agreement that invited Bio Energy Washington to open a plant on site and capture the landfill gases. The company produced biogas equivalent to powering 18,000 homes. But a dispute over the discharge of arsenic in the byproduct of the landfill gas has in part led the company to sue the county in federal court. A trial is slated for next spring. Meanwhile, the methane silos are used for burning off the gas, powering nothing.

Melissa: In the meantime, the county has also improved its ability to pluck valuables and recyclables from the rubbish. A discarded boat trailer was culled, crushed and sold to a metals dealer, for example. Filed under pulse-pounding was the time workers uncovered a boa constrictor slithering among the refuse; the snake was ensconced in a trashed suitcase and turned over to a wildlife rescue organization.

Josh: Unfortunately, there’s still some stuff we just haven’t figured out yet what to do with: pet waste, diapers, certain types of demolition debris, to name a few.

Melissa: Don’t forget the golf bags.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct measurement of landfill gases.