what is a landfill?

Answer 1

a low area of land that is built up from deposits of solid refuse in layers covered by soil

Answer 2

What is a Landfill?

According to Zero Waste America’s web site, a landfill is a carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is isolated from the surrounding environment. The purpose is to avoid any water related connection between the waste and the surrounding environment, particularly groundwater. This isolation is accomplished with a bottom liner and daily covering of soil. Basically, a landfill is like a bathtub in the ground; a double-lined landfill is one bathtub inside another. Unfortunately, unlike bathtubs all landfills eventually will leak, out the bottom or over the top.

What is the composition of a Landfill?

There are four main components of any secured permitted landfill; a bottom liner, a leachate collection system, a cover and the natural hydrogeologic setting. The natural setting can be selected to minimize the possibility of wastes escaping to groundwater beneath a landfill. The other components must be engineered. Each component or element of a landfill is critical for success.

Regarding the Natural hydrogeologic setting, you want geology to do two things that are in fact contradictory. To prevent the wastes from escaping, you want rocks as tight (waterproof) as possible. If leakage occurs and it will, you want the geology to be as simple as possible so you can easily predict where the wastes will go. This is the reason why the type of soil around the liner is vitally important. Another crucial element in any landfill is the Bottom Liner. The state of art bottom liners on the market today are plastic (HDPE) liners, which are only 100 mils or 1/10 of in inch thick. Liners may be clay or made of a synthetic flexible membrane. The bottom liner in effect creates a bathtub in the ground. If it fails, wastes will migrate directly into the environment. Even though these tough plastic polyethylene liners (HDPE) are recommended by EPA, a number of household chemicals will degrade HDPE, permeating it (passing through it). This will cause it to lose strength, softening it or making it become brittle and crack. In addition to common household chemicals, items such as mothballs, margarine, vinegar, ethyl alcohol (booze), shoe polish, peppermint oil will all degrade HDPE and render it dangerous to the surrounding environment. Studies show that a 10-acre landfill will have a leak rate somewhere between 0.2 and 10 gallons per day. The Leachate collection system is also an extremely important component to any effective landfill. Leachate is water that gets contaminated by contacting wastes. It seeps to the bottom of a landfill and is collected by a series of pipes. Pipes laid along the bottom of the landfill capture the contaminated waste and other fluid (leachate); this leachate is then pumped to a wastewater treatment plant. If leachate collection pipes clog up or if they are crushed by the tons of garbage, they may become weakened by chemical attack (acids, solvents, oxidizing agents or corrosion). If this occurs and leachate remains in the landfill, fluids can build up in the bathtub. The Cover is generally several sloped layers; clay or membrane liner (to prevent rain from intruding and to prevent leachate formation) overlain by a very permeable layer of sandy soil, overlain by topsoil in which vegetation can root and stabilize the underlying layers of the cover. If it is not maintained, rain will enter the landfill resulting in buildup of leachate to the point where the bathtub overflow and waste enter and contaminate the surrounding environment. Covers are vulnerable to erosion, vegetation, burrowing soil-dwelling mammals, reptiles, insects and worms, sunlight, cave-ins and rubber tires which “float” upward in a landfill all present constant threats to the integrity of the cover. (Zero Waste)

Answer 3

A centralized location where the garbage and refuse of a community is taken to and buried.

Answer 4

PC name for garbage dump.

Answer 5

land filled with rubbbish of all sort's , and after a few year's built on

Answer 6

That is where all the garbage goes.