Uncontrolled chemical reactions fuel crises at LA County's two largest landfills (phys.org)
from anticonnor@lemmy.world to losangeles@lemmy.world on 25 Dec 2023 01:51
https://lemmy.world/post/9947349

#losangeles

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Alexstarfire@lemmy.world on 25 Dec 2023 04:18 next collapse

They don’t have the market for 11 million tons of waste to compost? Isn’t California one of the major food producers in the world?

Also, even if they don’t or can’t use that much, isn’t compost effectively just dirt? A canyon full of compost has to be better than one full of random shit.

Kabaka@kbin.social on 25 Dec 2023 10:55 collapse

I recently asked about this while touring a landfill in northern California.

Only some types of waste can be composted, and large scale compost buyers are very picky about what went into the compost. Residential compost tends to have very unpredictable contents, so it's basically impossible to sell it to anyone but small businesses or individuals, and some of these programs end up giving it away for free.

But yeah I don't think most of this could be turned into compost anyway, especially at this scale.

Jaytreeman@kbin.social on 25 Dec 2023 11:03 collapse

I used to do work at a municipal dump.
A few years before I started, the biggest city in the municipality started a composting program. They built a large industrial sized building to put the compostable waste into while it rotted away.
The ammonia from the waste was so bad that they had to abandon the project. All of the metal beams in the building were rusting out by the time I had gotten there.
They ended up shipping that waste to be someone else's problem.

[deleted] on 25 Dec 2023 09:26 collapse
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TammyTobacco@lemmy.ml on 25 Dec 2023 13:09 collapse

And I bet they use that same groundwater for watering the course.