Landfills Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Landfills - Essay Example This paper includes the history and development of property type of landfills in Australia. The story of how the Australian comes up with this method is also discussed in this paper. The development and application of various methods for this property type is also described. This paper shows the comparison of landfills in Australia with other countries such as the USA, Canada and New Zealand. Graphs and tables are included in this study as your reference about landfills in Australia. The management of wastes is an important environmental issue. Some wastes are toxic and can harm living organisms and their disposal is of particular importance. Other wastes, while not directly toxic, can physically harm the environment. Effective maintenance of waste can help us a lot. Landfills were introduced in England in 1912. It was formerly called as the Controlled Tipping and involves natural fermentation brought about by microorganisms. Waste materials or refuse are deposited in shallow layer, compacted and covered within 24 hours with earth or other chemically inert material from an effective seal. (Britannica, 2006). United States of America and New Zealand are among the countries that use landfills and experienced controversy in using landfills as waste management. Below are some details about the history and development of landfills in both countries. United States of America At the end of World War II, urban growth accelerated. With this growth came increased refuse generation. The impacts of open-burning dumps on public health became a concern. Experience in the military with sanitary fill methods and the interests by some local governments in eliminating open dumps led to increased efforts to dispose of refuse in a sanitary manner, but what prescribed a sanitary manner was unknown. Many local governments that bragged about using the "sanitary landfill" method were actually using modified open dumps. The landfill in 1940 was described in a report prepared by the Sanitary Engineering Research Project of the University of California in 1952.1 The landfill studied in 1949 was described as a refuse dropped and spread out over a large to allow scavengers easy access. At the end of day pigs were allowed on the spread-out refuse for overnight feeding. It is in this year that the landfills made their appearance. Most of the landfills were located on former wetlands. This 1 Sanitary Engineering Research Project. "An Analysis of Refuse Collection and Sanitary Landfill Disposal." practice does not take long and was subjected to change because of obvious reasons. Open burning of refuse created air pollution. Allowing the pig to eat raw garbage was not a sanitary . During this time there were no minimum requirements set as to what constituted a sanitary landfill. Like the landfills in Australia, most of the landfills in USA where also subjected to closure because of the following reasons; it can cause air pollution, the leak is unsafe for the residents that surrounds the area, groundwater contamination and others that affect the health of the people. The commitment of the US Public Health Service (USPHS) to provide national leadership to eliminate open-burning dumps and replace them with sanitary landfills also served as the basis for a broader national strategy to improve the management