Landfills In The United States

Landfills are growing at an exponential rate in the United States; this is a big concern for many people. Many years ago people just threw their garbage in dumps and forgot about it. Then it started to become a problem as the dumps got fuller and just kept growing. People have to put their garbage somewhere; they produce over 4 pounds of garbage everyday per person, that’s about 250 million tons for the country (EPA.gov). The population is growing at a very quick rate also. Some people try to reduce their refuse and waste, but it is very difficult when just about everything we use has some form of waste, and it’s been going up to all time highs. Packaging alone makes up a third of all waste. America has over 3000 landfills that are in use and about 10000 that have been closed (EPA.gov). A vast amount of different ideas and problems come along with landfills and there are many ways to stop them from growing. The pollution associated with landfills is a problem, as well as the massive size of them, and solutions need to be found to stop them from growing. A landfill is an area of land that is groomed for intake of garbage and waste of many kinds which is covered
Apex Regional covers 2200 acres and has only been open since 1993, which in landfill years is not much. It is currently holding about 50 million tons of trash now, but that will change quickly as it takes in about 15000 tons of trash everyday (reviewjournal.com). Apex Regional is operated by Republic services which is one of the largest waste companies in the world (epa.gov). Bob Cole, who is vice president for public relations for Republic Services, has said that Apex Regional could handle garbage for the next 200 years (lasvegassun.com). People can only imagine how much refuse will be in those 2200 acres, that’s why Apex Regional is now the country’s largest active landfill