A Story of Trash at the Miramar Landfill
February 15, 2010
It doesn’t feel like I’m standing on trash. In this wide expanse the sky is a clear blue and the grass and vegetation interspersed in the dirt below me are alive and growing. Continuing on into the distance would make a calming hike, nevermind the tons of garbage buried below my feet. Two planes power down the runway of the nearby Marine Corps Air Station, probably trainees beginning practice for the day. Otherwise the acres of trash at the Miramar Landfill in San Diego lie dormant, in cognito below a serene San Diego landscape.
It is relatively easy to throw things away. You can pop your disposable coffee cup or your soda can into the trash can with a good flick of your wrist, or eat take-out and quickly dump the remains. Eventually it all goes out to the curbside and the next thing you know – poof! – no more trash! It’s so easy you may not think much about it – and who would want to? There are more glamorous thoughts to occupy ourselves with than smelly bags of discarded goods.
But there is a life cycle to the stuff we buy that doesn’t end with a disappearing act. In our consumer-driven society, we buy and waste a lot. In 2006 Americans were third in the world in waste generated per capita. Each day the average American throws away 4.5 pounds of trash. Compare that with Canada or Japan, where the average is around 2.5 pounds – almost half of what we throw away.
There are four processes to get rid of our stuff: composting, recycling, incineration, and landfill burying. In America 13% of our municipal solid waste was combusted, 33% was recycled or composted, and 54% was buried in landfills in 2008.
The Miramar Landfill opened in 1959 and serves as the City of San Diego's only active landfill. Spanning over 1500 acres, it could house 1,134 football fields. Last year around 950,000 tons of refuse were deposited in the landfill. The average American generates 1,672 pounds of trash per year – that is roughly equivalent to hauling two grand pianos out of your home every year. The 1.2 million people in San Diego are sending just under 1 million tons to Miramar in one year. Burying refuse on this scale is like entombing 6,333 large blue whales in the landfill.
That is a lot of waste to manage.
And the Miramar Landfill manages it quite well. It is the nation's first municipally operated landfill to receive international certification for environmental management. There are several green operations at the landfill. Methane, the toxic gas released by decomposing trash, is sucked to the surface and collected through wide black pipes that snake across the ground perimeters. These pipes transport the methane to a biosolids center, where it is recycled into fuel to provide 90% of the power for the electrical generators at the Metropolitan Biosolids Center and the North City Water Reclamation Plant.
Yard waste is processed into compost, mulch, and wood chips. The decomposing, steaming mulch is piled into towering rows and emits a slightly dank and dirty smell. A red fleck of rotten apple shows through a mound of brown mulch. A deer briefly emerges and flits back into the distance. Gigantic row upon row of mulch sits atop a plateau overlooking a verdant canyon. San Diegans can take up to two cubic yards of compost or mulch for free. The landfill is also home to a greenery where native plants are cultivated and reintroduced in gradations to the surrounding landscape. Bees are brought in and help pollinate the closed sections of the landfill.
At the center of the action, huge tractors with steel-spiked wheels crush the trash that is hauled in to be buried. Waste is compacted and buried into landfill modules, huge sections that are dug out of the earth and thickly lined with dirt and plastic to isolate the contents from everything else. The Miramar Landfill is down to its last module. Now in operation for over 50 years, the landfill was originally scheduled to close in 1995. Then accommodations were made to build the modules 20 feet higher. With the additional space added, as well as the City's waste reduction and recycling programs and some innovative engineering, the landfill is now scheduled to close in 2019.
The last module at Miramar is a huge basin carved into the earth. Black sheets of plastic liner scale the walls where so many blue whales of trash will be buried. The actual tipping area is not so large. The activity of the trucks, the waste haulers, and the tractors is relatively small and contained. Only small, low-flying birds circle the module. There is not a seagull in sight – a good thing, since the seagulls are strictly prohibited. It would be serious trouble for a seagull to end up in the engine of a plane from the nearby Marine Corps Air Station, so the landfill employs an effective Bird Control Program. Distress calls and occasional shots into the air keep the seagulls a good distance away, and the program makes an effort not to hurt the birds.
What are we tossing away that will end up encapsulated below the earth? It might pay to think about what we are wasting. For the City of San Diego, the landfill is a profitable but limited resource. After the landfill closes, the City will divert refuse to private sites, where it will no longer make a profit from waste management. At the Miramar Landfill the motto “reduce, reuse, and recycle” is as much about economic incentives as it is about going green. The less waste that is brought to the landfill, the longer it will stay open and generate profits.
For now, operations at the landfill will continue 361 days a year, rain or shine. Garbage will pile higher and deeper. When the landfill closes, it will be covered by native vegetation and monitored for signs of leaking contaminants.
The next time you throw something away, you might just be sending it to a long, preserved rest in a graveyard deep below the earth.