The Hidden Life of Garbage

--By Heather Rogers

Summary

In the essay "The Hidden Life of Garbage" Heather Rogers describe the methods of treating the waste and finally, she puts forward the question. "What happen if we create less waste?"

In the early morning, large trucks collect the garbage and take it to the garbage depot and from there to the sanitary landfill. Land dumping has been the most favorable method of disposing of the waste in the USA because of low cost and enough land. Most of the rubbish from the city area is taken to the rural areas for dumping.

When we see the hillock of rubbish, we are surprised by the eating and throwing habit of the Americans. Different types of machines have made this place strange and unreal. The machines are reshaping the earth. The sea birds have come there to eat the rotten dirt. Wrappers, plastic bags, and shoes have come out of the surface. Geological Reclamation Operations and Waste Systems (GROWS) in the single biggest rubbish receiver project in the country.

In the previous century, Warner Company drags the gravel and sand to make cement on Delaware side, but now Waste Management Inc. (WMI) has used the same land to fill it with forty million pounds of waste from the city every day. Twenty ton dump trucks gather and throw the rubbish, and the landfill compactor presses it by moving forward and backward. The whole area is filled with smoothly running machines, but only handful workers are engaged there.

The dirty place is covered with 35 feet tall fence and is made tidy. A group of workers collect the wind swept dirt and constantly sprayed chemical water mixture pull the bad smell on to the ground. Moreover, the leaked liquid from the rubbish is collected and send to the nearby water treatment plant, so that the underground water will not be dangerously poisonous.

When the cell is filled after many years, it is covered in different layers and made like the capsule so that there will be no leakage. Today's regulation has made the dumping less dangerous than it was in the past. But today's protective capsule method will not last for more than 30 to 50years and the owners of dumping companies also will not be liable after that period.

Dumping companies are always worried about being found out any illegal activities in the process of managing the waste. Latest technologies are very expensive and complicated and the owners have to be more responsible. What happens if we make less waste?