Have you ever thought, what happens to the garbage or litter that we just throw away in the dustbins?
Sometimes we don’t even bother to throw it in the dustbins and just throw it away in the open. All these garbage and waste is collected by the municipal corporation and is dumped in to the landfills or dumping yards, usually an outskirt of the city.
Above is the image of a landfill area. Landfill?? A place where all the garbage of the city is dumped.
In countries like India these landfills sometimes looks like range of hills from far are actually abodes of diseases, pollution of different sorts and irreversible damage to the environment that we should be ashamed of.
The major part of the garbage or solid waste is inorganic waste and the other part is household waste, kitchen waste, vegetable extract, dry leaves, etc., other than that the garbage includes paper waste, glass waste, plastic waste, metal waste and other miscellaneous waste.
The unavoidable consequences of disposing garbage into landfills are leachate generation (water that has percolated through a solid waste) and release of gas which occurs owing to the climatic conditions, microbial decomposition and landfilling operations.
The types of visible pollution generated due to landfills are land pollution, water pollution and air pollution. Along with this the major issue are the diseases spread due to disposal of garbage in the open.
Let us take a detailed look at these issues.
Land pollution:
You might have seen big dumps of waste at the outskirts of any city. The landfill and nearby land where the leachate and affected underwater reaches, turns out to be barren land.
This happens highly due to the toxins that are released due to unmanaged landfills. The chemicals from various agricultural, medical and household waste are penetrated inside the land which further makes the land infertile.
Water pollution:
Dump sites are counted as one of the crucial threats to the underground water resources. A study show relatively high concentrations of NO− 3, Cl−, SO2− 4, NH+ 4, Fe, Phenol, COD and Zn in groundwater, apparently indicate that groundwater quality is being significantly affected by leachate percolation.
Waste dumped in landfills are subjected to either reduced levels of groundwater or penetration from drizzle.
Liquid containing numerous inorganic and organic compounds is called ‘leachate’. Leachate gets absorbed into land which as a result gets blended into groundwater. As we know groundwater is stored inside and it keeps moving slowly through soil, rocks and sand. At many places people use borewell for household usages and they seldom find the quality of water being hard.
Air pollution:
In the process of organic matter decomposition, methane gas is produced. Landfills are a larger ground for this process to occur. Not only methane but many other toxic gases are emitted due to many chemical reactions taking place in the landfills but methane is one of the most serious issue.
Researchers have recorded that the release of methane due to organic matter decomposition in unmanaged landfills might trap the solar radiation 20 times more effectively than CO2(Carbon dioxide). Resulting into the rise of global and urban temperatures.
There are also unwanted incidents of fire and explosion due to unmanaged waste. To make the matter worse, agricultural and household chemical waste that results into bleach might react with ammonia, sulphur resulting into emission of more toxic gases which badly affects the quality of air with unpleasant odour near the landfill.
Moreover, particulate matter, dust, other non-chemical contaminants and other anaerobic chemical reactions can also be released in the atmosphere which further degrades the quality of air.
Health issues:
A study has shown that for various pathogenic microorganisms, landfills serve as a breeding ground. It may have poisonous effects too. People living in the vicinity of dumping sites or the workers, are facing health issues such as asthma, skin disease, allergy, etc.
Most of the people living around, lack awareness of hazards of dumps. These dumps are also breeding grounds to various insects, flies, rats, mosquitoes, etc. that spreads infections and germs to the people nearby.
The facts about such hazardous effects of solid waste is disturbing. It is an alarm for us, we must take some concrete steps to reduce generation of garbage as much as we can.
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