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magazine / mj99
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May/June 1999 issue |
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FEATURE
Landfill landscapes
Photography by Nancy Ackerman
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| Meadowview Landfill, Kentville, N.S. |
Waste, rubbish,
garbage. Largely forgotten, rarely eliminated. Once burned or
dumped, now each day’s offering is crushed then interred — mummified,
in fact — beneath a mantle of soil.
Plastic bags
and tires — post-consumer castoffs — are hard to keep down.
Compression and expansion force tires to the surface,
like noodles in a boiling pot, says garbologist William Rathje.
But some good is coming from what we dump. Light and heat is
produced from methane — a result of biodegrading organic material
— at almost three dozen landfills across Canada.
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| Graywood Transfer
Station, Annapolis County, N.S. |
A medley of
debris and wildlife. Once an integral part of the dump, scavengers
— human and animal — are no longer as welcome. Fear of toxins
and leachates (contaminated water) leads us to bury most of our
refuse, leaving it little air, moisture, disturbance, or chance
of reclamation.
It can take as
much as a month for a love letter to decompose. Two to five centuries
for an aluminum can. A glass bottle? No one knows. Despite growing
enthusiasm for recycling, there will be no shortage of 20th-century
artifacts from which future archeologists will interpret our
habits and priorities.
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| Moncton Regional Landfill, Moncton, N.B. |
Meadowview Landfill, Kentville, N.S. |
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