What you Should Know About Landfills - Wirral

Landfill sites exist not only all over the UK, but also all over the world. Basically, a landfill is a hole in the ground that is filled with rubbish which consists of a mixture of household and commercial waste. 

Landfills are one of the options that garbage removal companies use for disposing of our waste, and is one of the easiest methods available to them. It is also a method of waste management that enables the containment of garbage in one area, effectively ensuring that mountains of trash generated by households and businesses are not dumped randomly.  

Landfills – Problematic or Beneficial

Waste management companies are always looking for ways to lessen the garbage problem and the resultant pollution that ensues from this.

Here are some of the problems of landfills:

• No matter how big landfills are, they will eventually run out of space to contain all the garbage that is dumped in them. To begin another landfill can run into environmental problems when permission is needed from the authorities, as landfills can ruin the natural habitat of an area.
• The danger that different types of waste in a landfill presents to humans and the degradation that normally happens to the environment, leads most people to object to landfills in their areas – a not-in-my-backyard attitude.

The benefits of a landfill:

• Landfills are one of the cheapest ways to deal with rubbish, although the taxes or tipping fees on dumping in landfills are rising sharply.
• They are a good alternative to sending tons of garbage into our oceans.

Landfills - The Effect on the Environment

Landfill sites are not pretty, but the problems they present are more than just the huge piles of unsightly waste. Landfills effectively take trash and keep it until it degrades and disappears, which is fine for garbage that decomposes fast. But what about the many items that do not decompose quickly, or never decompose at all? This is where the many health, economic and environmental issues come into play.

• When garbage consisting of a variety of materials is thrown into landfills and decomposes, the toxic blend of these materials mixed with the chemicals that form is called leachate. This toxic leachate can leach into groundwater and affect the local environment
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• Organic material in landfills should decompose quickly but because they are deprived of oxygen they decompose anaerobically and release methane which is a greenhouse gas that is 28x more potent than carbon dioxide. This methane gas finds its way into the environment and acts as a blockage in our atmosphere by not allowing heat to escape the earth. This is called the greenhouse effect that is one of the main contributors to the ongoing climate change crisis that has such negative effects on global weather conditions.
  
  
• Toxins are present in many different materials that land up in landfills. These are eventually released and seep into the air, soil, and groundwater, creating a polluted environment that impacts on the lives of people living near landfills.
  
  Electronics such as computers, TV’s and even batteries that find their way into landfills, contain substances such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and more that are toxic to humans and leach into soil and groundwater. Mercury which is a particularly nasty toxin and comes from fluorescent light bulbs is also found in our landfills. 

Landfills – What Waste is Accepted

The following types of waste are accepted by landfills

• Household trash
• Yard waste
• Construction, demolition, and renovation waste including concrete and tarmac. This type of waste is sometimes used as a layer over the top of organic waste.
• Broken furniture and other items from home cleanouts

The following are accepted for recycling or must be dumped in special areas of the landfill. 

• Old appliances (without refrigerants and other gases)
• Electronic waste from office cleanouts or home cleanouts.
• Roofing and metal scraps
• Old tires

These types of trash contain materials that could potentially pollute the environment and they should be recycled. At Junk Removal Wirral we recycle as many of these materials as possible to keep them out of the landfills. These materials are remanufactured into raw materials and can be reused again in industries. 

The following materials are toxic and should not find their way into landfills.

• Hazardous waste including medical waste
• Asbestos
• Chemicals including fuels, oils, cleaners, bleach, pesticides, refrigerants, acids and paints.
• Explosives
• Auto body waste
• Contaminated soil
• Anything containing heavy metals such as mercury.

These can contaminate waterways and pose a danger to air and soil to the surrounding environments. These materials require specialised disposal processes to ensure they pose no danger to the environment.

Landfills - Alternative Waste Disposal Procedures

Many of the materials that are currently disposed of in landfills can be 

• Recycled
• Composted
• Reused

Completely eliminating waste or reaching zero waste is not a realistic goal for everyone, but waste prevention is probably the best waste management option. Waste prevention requires a conscious effort to reduce consumption and wastage. 

Recycling and composting can benefit the planet by reducing the release of greenhouse gases. Recycling can save energy by circumventing the need to use raw materials in the production and manufacturing of goods. Using recycled products (for example, tires or plastic) to manufacture a new product saves energy, raw materials, water, and reduces air pollution. An interesting fact is that a single sheet of paper can be repurposed 7 times. 

Junk Removal Wirral offers junk removal services in the Wirral, Chester, Liverpool, Ellesmere Road area. We are your local junk haulers, licensed by the local authorities, and we will responsibly dispose of your waste. We recycle what we can, thus diverting as much trash as possible from the landfill, which we only use as a last resort. We are committed to preserving our environment as much as you are.

We offer the convenience of removing your unwanted waste after hours or on a weekend, and we even offer same day junk removal if that suits you.

Please contact us at enquiries@junkremovalwirral.co.uk and we look forward to giving you a free, no obligation quote for all your waste removal and disposal.

Wirral and Liverpool: 01518 080407

Chester: 01244 953100

www.junkremovalwirral.co.uk