While I was putting my garbage out this morning, it struck me how much liquid gets thrown out in plastic bags along with the other trash. Is this water (in the form of wet paper towels, meal remnants, etc.) unacessable for hundreds of years because it’s in plastic? We use at least 200 bags a year,multiple that by the teeming millions and…does anyone know?
Modern landfills are required to have an impermeable liner built under them (usually some combination of clay and plastic liners) and the ones I have been to have systems to drain the liquids out and process them to make sure they do not contaminate the local groundwater.
Some landfills process this “leachate” in a large pond that has aerators in them.
Some landfills have systems to remove methane and other gases from the landfill cells and the pumped leachate and burn them for energy.
After my brother’s basement got flooded, I helped him dispose of some of the furniture and carpeting that was ruined. When we took the stuff to the transfer station, we had to wait for a garbage truck to empty its load first. When it tipped to dump the load, the first thing that came out was a lot of water, like fifty gallons or so. So I think when the trash bags get compacted in the trucks, I think a lot of the water is squeezed out.
In my teens I worked at McDonald’s. I remember one of the guys from the head office telling me that about 80% of the weight of garbage was from liquid (ice, drink, etc). That’s not insignificant!
A couple of years ago I was in Warsaw and noticed all the fast food joints had next to the bins a liquid disposal sink. I don’t understand why I’ve never seen that anywhere else.
In addition to the compacting in the truck that Dewey Finn mentioned, most landfill have heavy machinery that further compact the garbage, all of that will pretty much make sure that any liquid in plastic bags will be released to be collected as also mentioned above