Landfills are destroying the Earth

Research shows that landfills are a much bigger contributor to climate change than we thought .

According to researchers, trash buried for decades is now releasing tons of methane gas into the atmosphere , contributing to rising global temperatures and leading to many problems due to climate change.

This is not exactly a shocking discovery. It has long been known that open landfills are the "perfect" place for methane plumes from rotting vegetables, household appliances and other household waste.

However, new research estimates that the amount of methane from these landfills is three times higher than previous reports , based on measurements from 1,200 landfills in the US.

Methane emissions are higher than we thought and are contributing to a greater increase in global temperatures. (Illustration).

Although methane stays in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time than carbon dioxide, the level of warming effect is 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. This is a really big problem because landfills continuously release methane into the atmosphere.

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that landfills are the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions , emitting as much greenhouse gas as 23 million gasoline cars over the course of a year.

However, these estimates may not be completely accurate because the study also used computer models, not just measurements from landfills.

Because of the danger of direct exposure to methane emitted in landfills, this study primarily used data collected by aircraft and spectrometers flying above landfills.

With hot spots detected in all landfills as well as large methane plumes that persist for months or years, emissions are certainly higher than the results given by the calculators.

Even if some landfills are equipped with pipes to recover methane for reuse to generate electricity and heat, pipes and equipment can still leak, releasing some of the methane back into the atmosphere.

Of course there are many ways to reduce the amount of methane produced from landfills, one of which is to classify waste from the source, eliminating waste that can produce methane during the decomposition process.