Landfills: More than Just Dumps

The statistics are shocking: Humans produce over 2 billion tons of waste annually, with a projected 45% increase in municipal waste over the next 25 years. Yet surprisingly, only 13% of urban waste is converted into energy, while 80% of landfill contents could potentially be recycled or composted. In Part 1 of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider the sophisticated management of modern landfills.

Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include

• The profitable side of waste management

• Innovative waste-to-energy technologies

• Successful municipal initiatives making a difference

• Cultural differences in waste handling between North America and Europe

• How landfills can power vehicles

Recommended Resources

• An armchair landfill visit video

• The EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste requirements

• The UN’s Municipal Solid Waste report

• The EPA’s waste data

• The UNEP’s waste report

• Criticisms of Waste-to-Energy conversion

• Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Modern landfills are an impressive enterprise

Episode Transcript

Welcome to this episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir, and my co -host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. There's a big difference between a dump and a landfill, and in fact, dumps are largely banned throughout the world. And because landfills are costly, waste management companies have an incentive for efficiency, which is great because more sustainable practices give them a higher rate of return on their investment. So Jordan, have you ever visited a dump or landfill?

JORDEN

Actually, I've been to a landfill more times than I would like to count in my life. In my early, well, 16 to about 22, I worked at a window and door company. And so almost daily went to landfills with all the waste from those projects. I've enjoyed all the features of a landfill, including popping a tire and having land gulls, you know, and there's no sea around. Give me some gifts. So yes.

KIMBERLY

Ah, yes. I can see how that would be quite possible. I've actually taken my students to the landfill and they were surprised at just how interesting it was and not very smelly also that it was.

JORDEN

You're better than I've been to a range from like ones that you get out of the car and you want to hop back in to like a surprise that you're at a landfill.

KIMBERLY

And the thing is, is that most people have probably seen landfills, even if they haven't actually visited one and not even realized it necessarily. unless they maybe go to a place where it's retired landfill and it's been turned into something else. But active landfills are sort of all around major metropolitan areas anyway, because you need somewhere for all of this garbage to go. And so oftentimes you see these big mounds and otherwise, especially in flat areas around the countries, that if there's otherwise flat terrain and you see like, especially roads and trucks and heavy equipment and so forth, It very well may be a landfill that you're looking at and not realized it.

JORDEN

No, exactly. And I think it's also the consolidation of landfills. As you said, you know, dumps have been largely banned around the world, which is a great thing. And the big difference is the containment of the underground kind of area. But when I was looking at this, I was trying to find out how many landfills there are. And it's actually a little harder to figure out the number. It could not come close to global. The U .S. large range of estimates from 1 ,500 active to 2 ,500 active landfills. In Canada, it was a little easier. The government just gave me the number. It's 1 ,500 active for us, which I kind of found shocking as a Canadian that, you know, our firm, this is how many we have, is at the low estimate of U .S. for total landfills when the amount of waste produced is largely disparate. But I did find how much waste is produced globally each year going into these landfills at 2 billion tons. Now, I know, Kimberly, you... Have a fondness for your elephants. I went to convert it in elephants and it was drastic. So I had to scale up this time. Even my Eiffel Tower didn't work. Today we're using aircraft carriers at 100 ,000 tons. So the world produces the equivalent of 20 ,000 aircraft carriers worth of waste per year. There really is no way to put this number in any context that can make sense to the brain of how much we're flooding into landfills per year.

KIMBERLY

That is a lot of waste. I did see that the UN, according to the UN, municipal solid waste is expected to increase approximately 45 % in the next 25 years. So I'm not sure exactly off the top of my head how many aircraft carriers that is. Also, this means, though, that it's estimated to incur $640 billion in hidden costs of pollution and health issues and climate change due to mismanagement of these waste disposal sites. One thing I did find, although like you, I had a difficult time finding like any sort of accurate numbers of the number of facilities. One thing I did find, though, was that in the United States, and I think this also was... actually worldwide, 13 % of urban waste actually goes to waste to energy conversion sites, which we'll talk about a little bit later what that is. But that gives us at least an idea of that. So 85 % of waste is probably going into... We hope a landfill that's managed, 85 % of that is not going into a landfill that's managed. We know this for sure, right? And that other 15%, though, is actually being converted to energy, which is good. So that's a start, but it's still a very small percentage.

JORDEN

a start,

JORDEN

Well, no, and I think it's great for how we, you know, you framed the start of this episode with like the incentives, both financial for the companies and political for politicians of reducing waste, right? Like it is a large problem. And as you noted, the UN sees it growing. But I think the interesting thing is this is a time where a lot of the incentives are going to be driving for something to be done. And we have a lot of things to point to today of seeing progress in this area.

KIMBERLY

Well, and that was an interesting thing I found that was that when it comes to, in the U .S. at least, according to the EPA's most recent data, which was from 2018, so that's changed a bit. I'm not sure how much. The main fill comes from 25 % of it is food waste. About 20 % of that is plastic waste. 15 % of that is paper and cardboard. 10 % of that is yard trimmings. And 10 % is metal. So right there, that's a, what, 2046? I should have done the math ahead of time here, but we're talking about like 2046. I'm going to start that bit again.

JORDEN

going to

KIMBERLY

In the U .S., according to the EPA's most recent data, the main fill actually comes from 25 % food waste, 20 % plastics. 15 % paper and cardboard, 10 % yard trimmings, 10 % metals. And so if we add all of that up, that's like 80 % of stuff that actually could be reduced like food waste or diverted from landfills, which could be through recycling or composting.

JORDEN

No, the thing about it is we talk about landfills and waste as a broad category, and it makes it all sound like useless garbage, right? That just has to go to a landfill. And I think getting into the numbers like that is a great way to start breaking it down and seeing the value in each of those streams in an independent way. I was just thinking, I know in my city, we have a great municipal composting program for yard waste and for all kitchen scraps. And every year as like... It's spring planting time. They open it up to you can come down and get your compost and your soil for the year. So it comes back to a public benefit in a good way, too, and gets it out of those landfills. And that's a good thing if you're a city that you can do that and give your actual citizens basically a return on their investment,

KIMBERLY

that's a good thing if you're a city that you can do that and give your actual citizens basically a return on their investment, which is separating that stuff out. If it's private companies that do this and from what I understand, most municipal waste is actually collected by and managed by private companies. They also have an incentive, too, because they can also then sell that off. But this gets to what this. So on the one hand, we've got the good news is that a lot of what goes into landfills could be reduced like food waste. Right. And so forth. But the bad news is, is that these things actually have to happen right now. We mostly depend on the incentives that corporations have to recycle or to compost. So it's really up to the government to make laws to do this. So when it comes to. these waste management companies having self -interested incentives, you know, there are the political incentives and benefits that are in place. So, okay, it dumps have largely, especially in developed countries have been banned, right? Full out banned. So we need to have some other way to go about this, but getting landfills, like consent for landfills, that's quite a bureaucratic process. You need to get permissions and you need to, having taken my students to the landfill sites, I know. that they talk about how difficult it is to get, even where they're already located, to get new areas expanded, to expand further out for that landfill area and for waste removal.

JORDEN

No, and it's a great point because no one wants the landfill. It's a prime example of not in my backyard that I think everybody can kind of understand. They have to be somewhere, but no one wants them. And the other thing is that that pushed a corporatization. Actually, I was looking into in the U .S. at least because most couldn't find almost any city run facilities. And a lot of it has to do with the cost increasing of building these as regulation is increased. So it is one of those cases where government regulation has made it so large companies have to do it in a large way. And that's fine. We just need to keep increasing those standards because at the end of the day. I was looking at an article on how much a landfill can generate in terms of a profit a year. And even a small one was returning, returning. So that's profiting over 1 .5 to 2 million a year for a small landfill. So there is money in this. But to your point, building out the new ones actually is very capital intensive. And then the regulatory process. So they have every drive to open up space within their existing landfill to find ways to generate more of what they're already doing.

KIMBERLY

Yeah. And so we've got these concerns about the need for management sites to be controlled, right? There are obvious reasons. And in part two of this episode we're doing on landfills, we'll get into the environmental reasons for this, but just basic things. People don't want them in their backyard because they're concerned they're going to be stinky, right? The odor, the debris, as you talked about, the scavengers and the land gulls that are who want to frequent the place to clean it out. And the noise also, because there's a lot of truck traffic and heavy equipment that's moving through on a regular basis. And I'm always surprised when I go by. I think it was our local landfill. It's not anywhere close to my house, but it's off of an interstate. And off of that exit, there are plenty of houses not that far from the landfill.

JORDEN

So I was going to say, it's funny, my local landfill is actually probably only a 10 -minute drive away. And it's a landfill we actually used frequently. almost 14, 16 years ago when I was working in construction. At that time, it was at the very edge of the city, surrounded only by industrial. But in that 16 years of, you know, continued sprawl, their communities rate up against it now. And mine's only two communities out from it.

KIMBERLY

Yeah, I am someone who's very sensitive to noise and smells and all sorts of stuff. I don't know that I could live like near either a land for or an airport for that matter. Air traffic would probably drive me insane.

JORDEN

I'm glad I don't live over an airport, although it's weird. I lived downtown, well, just off downtown once. And once we moved away for the longest time, not hearing sirens at night actually was the thing that my brain was missing. So it's weird, but we can adapt to.

KIMBERLY

Oh, yeah, for sure. It's just a matter of adjustment. When it comes to financial incentives and benefits, corporations and municipalities, as you cited, basically, these can be huge moneymakers. And that also goes into the reasons why we see some of the very same companies are the ones who are buying landfills in around the region. Right. So the Rumpke who started in Kentucky runs a lot of it for like the southern half of Ohio. and the northern half of Kentucky and the eastern half of Indiana and so forth, because they have that capital that they've already gotten from their investments. And they are, in fact, and it's family run, and they are one of the richest families in the area. And, you know, of course, people will say, oh, how'd you make your money? Well, you know, but nevertheless, I mean, that's a lucrative industry.

JORDEN

Yeah, no. And so I cited the small landfills. I did want to just to kind of give perspective for those large landfills that you see outside of major cities. It's estimated about 43 .5 million a year. So like these are massive. And again, the economies of scale for somebody to do that, it also makes it easier to implement some of the innovations we're going to talk about in a second, because, you know, you've piloted it, you've learned it at one facility, you can roll it out rather than having, you know, it take multiple companies to do it in the same area. Now, again, the other side of this is always that government has to be continuing to increase those regulations and stay on top of them. Because the downside of that concentrated power is industry capture, so easier to push on regulators. So I don't want to say it's all rosy having it in the hand of a few small, large operators. But I wanted to talk a little bit about just the... The cost of building a site. I know in the next episode, we're going to go into what's actually there for the environmental protection. But I don't think people, when they think of landfills, I think we'll still think dump at the end of the day, just kind of a hole where you're putting something. So do you want to talk a little bit about what like that is not anywhere close to and especially having seen this and gone on tours of actually seeing them in the process of putting these layers into.

KIMBERLY

is not anywhere close to and especially having seen this and gone on tours of actually seeing them in the process of putting these layers into. into the ground to be able to manage and all of the it is expensive it is expensive to to do it's expensive to manage and it requires regulation for typically after 30 years after closure as well so this is like a long -term investment that we're talking about it is very highly regulated In terms of the number of layers and the prepping that goes into the site because of the environmental concerns, then they're also because of the technological innovations that are out there. And as you mentioned, and of course, just makes sense, they want to pack as much into the already approved sites as they possibly can. And so now there are a lot more technological innovations to try to mitigate environmental damage and maximize landfill space to compact the waste, to optimize fill capacity and to make it more stable. Because that's another thing we might think too, you know, it's like, okay, so you put in a hole in the ground. That's not exactly right. It's like it is building up. You might start with a hole in the ground, but you're building up and these layers are going on top of each other. It's pretty wild actually to witness. And so then on top of that, we have to monitor the fill site and the environmental impact of that. And then there are, you know, like obviously insurance and all sorts of other things in case something happens, it closes, like the company goes bankrupt. And so all of these other things that have to be put into place to make sure. that this landfill isn't just going to suddenly go defunct. And then, you know, there are birds flying over and, you know, streaming out of it and emissions going up into the environment and so forth.

JORDEN

No, or some of the, you know, the, I know there were cases in the, what's called early two thousands of, of like communities built on old dump sites from the sixties. Right. That like had like, what's called. Oh, ground collapse, essentially. Sink holes.

KIMBERLY

Sink holes. Thank you.

JORDEN

you. I don't know why that word is eluding me. But I mean, you I think you can tell that you've been on this tour many times because both the excitement you brought to it and just the like, like rattling off the cost so comprehensively. And this is all driving them to find more ways to make money from that waste. Right. I know which one I like the most. So I'm going to lead in with mining waste. So not even, and we'll talk about recycling in a second, but actually looking for metals in the waste. This one's driven a lot by the waste stream going into the landfill and the price of commodities. So it really depends because, you know, in 2011, there was a case of a company in Maine making $7 million over four years from mining the four metals in a landfill. In contrast, in 2017, Denton, Texas stopped their program because it wouldn't be worth the return on the commodities alone. But when I looked into this one a little bit more, it was an interesting case because the city on a cost benefit had to just look at the price they'd get back from the metals. And that didn't make it. But I found an interesting article from a professor who was talking about if you look at the amount of space it would open up. And add that in. So going back to the point about not having to build a new landfill and opening up space, it becomes super profitable. So I just really, I like the idea of, you know, going to this landfill where we've dumped things without any kind of thought of if it should be there or not. And people, you know, literally mining it for some of the most valuable resources.

KIMBERLY

The obvious no brainer idea is just keep it out of the landfill in the first place. Right. Yeah. And so that and of course, because that's exactly the direction that these mace management companies are going in, because the more they can keep out in the front end, the less they have, you know, more fill they have, the more room they have to work with. And and so there, of course, there's that cost that goes along with how much is it going to cost to actually. have separate bin curb and collection and those sorts of things. And so the more established ones are going to be able to have more invested and be able to invest more to be able to have more collection. And one thing that's really interesting to me is that in developing countries,

JORDEN

Yeah.

KIMBERLY

developing countries, like the poorest places I've been, they like they just garbage anything. What we think of is just garbage that we would toss is almost. invariably reusable to them in some way. There are very little things that end up actually being true waste that there's just nothing that you can salvage from it. And it is also true in cities in developing countries where there are people who can't be bothered to basically what's considered harvest. what goes into your waste, you know? So instead of harvesting those resources, you put that onto somebody else. And in Global North countries, we definitely just mostly put that onto somebody else. And so in the emerging economies, there are still places like cities. It is not uncommon to see people who are considered rag pickers is basically what they're called, rag pickers. But other people who go around and they'll go to apartment buildings and they will pay people to basically sort through their waste. They take the cardboard, they take the metal, they take whatever it is that they know that they can go down the street and sell off. And even in other places that don't have a formal sort of. uh or whatever system whatever people who do this they i have seen especially india is the one place that sticks in my mind where you just see places like sort of in rural areas where people sort of put metal all in one place there's plastic in one place and it's really interesting how they self -segregate that waste maybe with maybe someone's paying them to put it there i don't know and then they're going to collect and do something with it later i wasn't quite sure how the system worked but they clearly have a system in place

JORDEN

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's it's more effort to set up, but it makes so much more sense. Like one step after you set it up, you see the benefit of this. I've always been amazed as a kid, I'd go back up to the Yukon a lot. And, you know, it's a Whitehorse, a small, small town of 30 ,000 people, which is a community down here. And I was always amazed because their recycling facility has been better since I was a kid, like full separation of everything. Like even now in Calgary, what I'd say, you know, we have pretty good recycling. It's still like, I'd say. a layer a layer above i'm i don't know like we put like mel cartons like plastic all into one kind of blue bin right you have a dream single stream yeah but you have to separate that to another like layer down up in white horse still and so and but it's also it means that it's easier for them to manage their waste in a small isolated community right and i think that part of the reason why in in the global north and more so in north america even once we start looking into some of the waste energy we're going to see europe really outperforming on some of this Because we have space, so it's easier to build the landfill and think about this all as one kind of, you know,

KIMBERLY

a dream

KIMBERLY

to build

JORDEN

the landfill and think about this all as one kind of, you know, municipal waste stream. Whereas, you know, when you broke down the stats earlier on the EPA, it's really not. It's, you know, seven different streams of a resource. And I know in a couple episodes we'll be talking about the circular economy. And as you were talking there about, you know, different countries and different approaches. It made me think about it as almost a cultural approach to these resources, right? And so I'm thinking about it as a resource or us and our kind of relationship with it culturally as just garbage.

KIMBERLY

For sure. It's basically the difference between we think of recycling as the stuff that we separate out and put at the curb. But in fact, that's actually just waste. So someone else is actually doing the recycling. Someone else is doing the harvesting from what we, especially the single. the single bins, single stream recycling, because we're not even separating stuff out. We're just throwing it all into one bin. And, you know, that's actually, there are pros and cons to that because more people are more likely to participate if they don't have to sort those things out. Recycling rates have surely gone up from the time where there had to be individual. I remember we have a very long driveway. And I remember we first moved here. My spouse, Michael, actually rigging up our, we had those short sort of green bins. And they were open, but they were like little tubs. And he rigged up a thing where he could pull all of them like he was the sled dog, pulling them up the driveway to take them out in one trip. But because we had to have separate bins, four paper, four glass,

JORDEN

up the driveway

KIMBERLY

four metals, and so forth. And so that's great when you can have single stream. Of course, there's a downside to that because then the facility has to be huge and be able to manage all of that. Unlike what you described at Whitehorse, which is... You know, they've got it sort of already pre -sorted for them. And that's good. Yeah,

JORDEN

I know. Well, they forced that back on to the citizens. Now, to your point, though, that's, you know, again, a small town of 30 ,000. And scaling it up is some of the challenges. You keep saying small town.

KIMBERLY

You keep saying small town. I grew up in a town of like 20 ,000. I don't know. Mine was even smaller than that. Of course, it wasn't a capital of the province either.

JORDEN

And maybe it's just because to like get there always, it's like a 24 hour drive through through like forest. Right. So it feels, you know, so maybe I should stop. And it's grown. I will say Whitehorse and Yukon have grown. Shout out to the north.

KIMBERLY

So it's like a metropolis now. It's not just a town. It's a metropolis.

JORDEN

In comparison. But so one of the things that I think that people would be interested to like know is that like everywhere else, technology and the Internet are making their way to landfills. I when I first started looking into this, I kind of had the backlash to the last 10 years of technology of like, oh, yes, let's put sensors on another thing. What are you going to do with it? But it's actually really interesting on both the gathering and collection to the sorting to the monitoring of the facility. I didn't realize how much you could actually improve the both on the environmental side, but then again, on that economic side by integrating some of these technologies.

KIMBERLY

Yeah. And amongst these are things like, obviously, the one getting out any recyclables in the first place, but the biogas capture. That's something that mostly methane is piped out of landfills. It decomposes pretty quickly. And that's something that they can capture and with the right technologies they can use. And in fact, the one like my frame of reference for this entire segment is going to be the one in Cincinnati, but they actually use it to run their trucks. So, yeah, that's what they repurpose it for their own. Right. Reinvesting it within their own company to do that. And also the composting, as we talked about earlier in the episode, that you can make money from having that very rich waste that you can turn or turn around into then use that for fertilizer and gardening.

JORDEN

something that mostly

KIMBERLY

that you can turn or turn around into then use that for fertilizer and gardening. But also like things that that actually. accelerate the rate of decomposition, because if you have stuff that ends up in the landfill and it's going to decompose anyway, the faster you can do that, the more you can turn around those resources that are released from that and also free up space. Right. So we've got that as well. I had not heard of the IOT Internet of Things before before this. I had to look it up, honestly. But yeah, I know I you know, I'm a dinosaur. Come on. Yeah. But this enables waste management systems to actually gather data from bins themselves, but also then the landfills. And then as they're filling landfills, they can figure out schedules of what's the best way to strategically put garbage in various places without actually having to cover it over yet or do the next layer of covering yet to still be able to maximize that because of where the rate of decomposition is because of whatever happened to be dumped in that space from the trucks at the time. Which I thought was pretty cool.

JORDEN

I thought was pretty cool. No, that's what I, yeah, I think it's really cool. Like imagine thinking of a dump as like a three -dimensional, you know, cube or kind of rectangle of stuff, right? And fully knowing what each, you know, sub -segment of that is, how long it's been there, what it was composed of, and what it should be roughly at. I think that's, it's really cool at the end of the day. And then, you know, I think the one of the best ones. And so I'm going to confess something. I have known about waste energy and land landfills for a long time. One of the first examples I ever saw was, oh, it is a Nordic country. And they had actually built it into a ski hill, like the facility they covered and turned it into a ski hill because they didn't have a lot of ski hills. They're one of the flatter Nordic countries. And I always thought this was cool. I never had looked into too deeply. the emissions profiles in comparison to other stuff because it it seems at the end of the day burning garbage you just you're burning something it always seemed like it was not going to work out but i was really excited for this episode to dive into it a bit more and look into like is this even you know a good thing or or not should we be encouraging this over so i'm really interested to hear where you ended up on this one well i thought it was really interesting because i i was aware of it and

KIMBERLY

i thought it was really interesting because i i was aware of it and First of all, what waste energy is, it creates energy from biomass because this municipal solid waste, it's burning semi -solid and liquid sewage waste. And so you get this mix and it generates fuel and electricity and heat. So you get all of those things. And also they can capture steam from it too. And so I don't, my gut reaction is like you though, right? burning. Burning is like, to me should be like the absolute last thing that we do. And it better be really well managed because the last thing we need is more emissions or whatever going into the atmosphere. And I, this is always something I associated with Europe because like you said, in the United States and Canada, we've got vast, like I always, I always used to joke that I guess I'm still going to joke that we've got, you know, you jump in Nevada and most people aren't going to care because there's not like how many people are in Nevada. And I'm sorry, Nevadans, anyone who's listening, but you know, like, You got a lot of land there. There's a lot of land there that you could just like move all of the waste from probably all of North America there. And only a few people are going to care.

JORDEN

land there. There's a lot of land there

KIMBERLY

But in the grand scheme of things, when we look at especially the Benelux countries, low lying countries already being threatened by part of their territory is underwater and more of it's being encroached by rising sea levels. I always sort of associated this with Europeans. But then because of that, I also thought, well, this must not be a bad thing. Because if the Europeans who are so much more progressive about green issues than we North Americans, or I should just speak for Americans at this point, not all of North America. that that then it then it probably actually is well managed but they do it out of necessity and that's why they have become so good at it because they had to do it not i mean if they had as much to like terrain and extra territory laying around as the rest of us they'd be doing the same thing we do well so i 100 agree no a couple things i just want to i was surprised at actually how much waste to electric energy generation is in the states

JORDEN

so i 100 agree no a couple things i just want to i was surprised at actually how much waste to electric energy generation is in the states So 8 .9 % of the total waste generated in the U S goes to waste to energy. It's only about two gigawatts of power. So roughly, you know, 1 .5 to 2 million homes is what it's generating. So it's very small, only 60 sites, but it goes to, I was surprised to see even that much, you know, when I think about the U S waste system. And the other thing I wanted to add is we talked about, you talked about what could be burned just in terms of like the actual amount and like what can be burnt in this. Sweden has got it down to only 1 % of their waste goes to landfills.

KIMBERLY

Wow, that's really impressive.

JORDEN

99 % is either recycled, composted, or incinerated. So I thought that was a really interesting stat. Now, on the emissions, so I was looking into this, it really, really depends on what emission you're talking about, right? So I narrowed in on Sweden because they've really both promoted this and have a lot of data available. But between so it's about a 50 percent decrease in their carbon emissions from their combined heat and power sector over the last 20 years from switching or sorry, in the 90s, they began switching into the bioenergy. And so, yeah, they saw a 50 percent decrease. Now, the problem and opponents of it will point out that your sulfur dioxides, your other particulates have increased in this first generation. So just straight burning it. And so it really. it's kind of half a dozen one way, six the other. They've seen a massive carbon emission decrease, but the other gases that are quite harmful have increased. And those typically, just to be fair, have more of an impact on local health and air quality, right? So it's almost like the trade -off here on the incineration was global, like heat warming emissions versus local air quality, which is really... It goes to your point about the necessity to do this from a space requirement, because that's not typically a tradeoff most politicians will make.

KIMBERLY

Or in the Scandinavian, at least the Norway, Sweden and Finland examples, they have more territory, but it's territory that we were really hard to crack through and break into. And because of the climate challenges to really sufficiently shore up to make sure it's not causing other problems.

JORDEN

Yeah, no, and so the thing that I'm looking for in the next, and like you said, the Europeans are a little more ahead on pushing for some of these plans, but really looking to see Sweden actually move forward on some of their carbon capture and storage plans, because they're kind of second generation of combined heat and power is adding carbon capture storage or actually looking at some, you know, bioenergy carbon capture and storage BEX plants. So I haven't seen one built yet and haven't found an industrial carbon capture on any combined heat and power yet. But that's what I'd be looking for to see if this is something sustainable as an option going forward is really do they kind of move forward with those plans.

KIMBERLY

And despite all of what Sweden is doing and as a leader, very much so in what it's doing, it's not the biggest in terms of. The waste to energy conversion because and that's just a population factor. Germany actually leads Europe with the UK second. Right. So that totally makes sense. China is totally into this, too. And they lead Asia and India is second, but they're a distant second. And that totally makes sense, too, in terms of, yeah, they're both emerging economies. But when we look at the GDP and GDP per capita of China versus India, there is an enormous gap between the two of them.

JORDEN

Exactly.

KIMBERLY

And so when we look at also the amount of pre -sorting that goes into this, this is something that actually is an argument then for what we talked about earlier. Just keeping stuff out of the stream in the first place. Another thing along those lines is actually streamlining the process to one site. Because if you have, especially, and this is something that where that leapfrogging is much more possible in emerging economies and hopefully eventually developing countries, the rest of the developing countries, that because many of them are starting from scratch in a lot of cases, that they can actually, if they can put everything on one site and actually sort out the recyclables and the compostables and all of the other waste. all in one place and then have that place next to all of these other things and kind of have them in a row in the same general vicinity, geographically speaking, that actually also saves a lot in terms of building up infrastructure and the amount of cost and having every collection sites and so forth. And so I think that when it comes to this pre -sorting, The waste to energy is also something that they can more easily add in.

JORDEN

No, exactly. And I think the other thing, too, is district heating. We didn't mention it in the European example, but district heating is actually, and that's why they're combined heat and power plants. They're, you know, driving, again, because I'm stuck on it as an example, but Sweden, 25 % of all district heating in Sweden is provided by waste, the waste to power plant. Sorry, excuse me, industry. But again, because they haven't built up a lot of this infrastructure, you can do it now. And it struck me, it really, as you were describing that, it's no different than any other kind of industrial complex or industrial sector that we think about. And we see these synergies emerge when you put them together. And really, maybe we've kind of said it a lot this episode, but even in my own mind, really just driving forward that this isn't waste or it's not landfills. There shouldn't be one term that can sum it all up. Because it almost allows you to not think about it like that. But when you start describing like building, you know, like the kind of base sorting into the recycling, into the composting and the synergies you get from that and looking at as an industrial sector, I think that that's a really interesting mental shift.

KIMBERLY

And not only that, but industrial sector has a much more like positive ring to it to anybody who might want to get involved. Right. Instead of being like, oh, you. Run a landfill. OK, you run a basically a dump because that's the that's equated in people's minds. And and and the fact of the matter is, is that we I mean, I always kind of feel like you want to shut a city down. Stop collecting the garbage. This is something that I know that in Beirut, in Lebanon, they do this pretty regularly in the summertime and also in various cities in Athens and Spain and various countries like Greece. I've seen this where they want to get their point across. They want to like, you know, collectors want to raise or they need to increase taxes or whatever it is. That's the time to do it because nobody wants that stench sitting around on city streets uncollected for any length of time. And that also is unfortunate. That's the kind of view we, like you've mentioned, this is very much cultural thing that. That we look at it as garbage. We look at people who collect this people as garbage collectors. And we don't. I feel like they don't get the respect that they deserve because I value the people who come and take away this waste for us that I don't have to deal with it.

JORDEN

Well, no, it's another one of those perception problems, I think, of the modern, like, you know, a modern lifestyle in Global North is when. you know, even or cities, sorry, anywhere in the world, really, once you're removed from the, you know, in some way, so it's growing food from episodes we've done or making your clothing, or in this case, waste, it's so easy to have those problems just be pushed off. And, you know, waste might be the most close one that actually those issues that I just mentioned, but it's still just, you know, this dump somewhere out there. And I think that it allows it to be an issue that you don't have to think about.

KIMBERLY

Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, the less we have to think about it, then that means the less we actually consider what the environmental consequences are of our actions, what the health implications might be if we're if governments aren't able to manage these sites, have laws in place that that make sure that they're well managed. Also, that the economic benefits that we as people are missing out on, whether it's like you who get the compost for free, I would love to have somebody just say, hey, here's a bunch of free fertilizer and compost and whatever at the end of the day when it's time to garden. But but that's not the reality of where I live. But that means then that would be that's one thing that is not collected here is. is they collect yard waste. So they will, you have, that's a separate bin that people actually put out themselves or else they have to buy paper bags to put their yard waste in, which, cause those are compostable too, but they sell them at, you know, big box stores, big giant recycle or compostable bags, but not food waste, not at all. And that's unfortunate. We are able to do that at our house cause we have a big enough property that we can do that. But, but. There is a lot of food waste. And that goes back to that 25 % of what's going into landfills in the United States. We could eliminate that. But that means upfront costs. That means that there have to be resources that come from somewhere. Certainly people don't want to pay higher taxes for anything ever. And so that's a non -negotiable, seems like always non -negotiable issue. But then also, I think what it comes down to is that we very much in global North countries take for granted is just the security that we get from this. We get the security of having clean streets and we don't have to worry. We are less likely to have to worry about the environmental consequences of poorly managed sites and so forth. And this is something that in the global South, people face on a regular basis.

JORDEN

Well, it's exactly it. And we didn't talk about it in this episode. And it's what we're going to get to in next week's episode, but it's really the environmental and safety considerations. And, you know, we talked a lot today about how. regulated these are and even you know around the world it is an air it is an area that has regulation because this is a like nuts and bolts level government that you have to see but as you pointed out it varies drastically around the world and how easy how easy it is for that contamination to break through i think is really the some of the major differences so i think sort of in sum the good news is that a lot of what goes into landfills can actually be reduced

KIMBERLY

i think sort of in sum the good news is that a lot of what goes into landfills can actually be reduced But we actually like every other sustainable issue we talk about, we actually need to do something about it to make sure that that's the case. So we can be hopeful on that hand. On the one hand, there is a lot of room for expansion and growth. We also have seen this happen in other places. So we've got that as well. But we still, at the end of the day, have to make it happen.

JORDEN

Yeah. And that's it for me that this isn't one where the solutions are 10 years away. Right. We can start dealing with this now. We have to make a choice to make an investment.

KIMBERLY

For part two of Landfill's episode, tune in next Thursday. Until then, if you enjoyed our episode of Sustainable Planet, or even if you didn't, let us know at splanetpod at gmail .com. We're on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You'll find these links on our show notes and our website, as well as additional resources from today's episode at splanetpod .com. You can read more on my substack posts. We'd really appreciate it if you would rate, review, tell everyone you know, read aboutSustainable Planet. And thanks for listening and have a sustainable day.