This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome Aquifer
Kit is all about why you should care what goes into your landfill.
We all know how to pick up litter and throw it away properly,
but where does our trash go and how is it taken care of after the garbage truck
drives away?
That’s right! The landfill!
All of the gross things we don’t want near are homes are
going to a landfill. When it rains, the
water infiltrates the landfill. In other
words, it filters down through all the layers of trash to reach the earth. Once the water has trickled down through all
that trash, it starts to look and smell like a garbage soup. Scientists call this soup “leachate”.
Leachate then seeps down into the ground where it can
interact with our groundwater, the same water we pull from our wells to drink
and use in preparing our food. If we are
not careful of what we put in the trash or if the operators of the landfill are
not careful to check the garbage trucks for harmful and toxic items, then our
wells are in danger of critical pollution.
Luckily, there are special landfills for dangerous
chemicals. These can be underground
storage tanks, septic systems, or recycling plants that treat or transform
toxic trash until it is useable again. You can help at home by doing more recycling, even for items like broken electronics, batteries and light bulbs!
You can learn more about landfills here and visit your local
landfill to see what they are doing to keep your ground and groundwater safe.
1 comment:
This is one of the reasons they stress not to throw away electronic waste. The chemicals used in making it can leach out, and end up in the groundwater as well. Last thing everybody needs is elevated arsenic, lead, etc in their water. Cut down consumption, get full use from an item, and recycle. We gotta stress this to future generations.
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