Last modified: March 23, 2019

Why End Landfilling?

Landfills are a flawed technology and a cancer on the land. Landfills waste resources and compete directly with beneficial resource conserving enterprises such as reuse, recycling, composting. Even so-called ‘state-of-the-art’ landfills merely delay, rather than eliminate, massive pollution to groundwater and are a leading contributor to global warming. Waste can and should be designed out of our industrial system. Waste is not inevitable. Nor are landfills.
What About Incineration?
So What's the Alternative?

Stop buying energy from garbage!
You, the well-meaning public and business leaders working to offset your carbon emissions, may be inadvertently spending money on renewable energy credits (RECs) that support the destruction of natural resources and the polluting practices of burning and burying garbage.

Wasteful Energy Subsidies for Landfills
The waste industry is working to declare garbage a ‘renewable resource’ and secure federal tax credits for making energy from collecting landfill methane gas. GRRN believes such measures should be required, not subsidized, for such an antiquated technology.

Compostable Organics out of Landfill by 2012 [offsite]
Landfilling food and paper is heating up the planet. Composting is the quickest and cheapest way to immediately reduce a community's greenhouse gas emissions and restore our soils.  

Landfill Resources:  Articles, Technical Publications
A list of publications, and articles about ending landfilling.