Nowadays, sanitary landfills are designed to bury waste anaerobically - which means without oxygen. Landfills are managed to ensure that very little material really degrades, even if organic. Excavations in landfills have revealed, for example, that newspapers are still legible after almost forty years, that after ten years buried carrots and oranges still look fresh and that after twenty years there is still meat attached to bones. Biodegradation is an aerobic process – which means respiration with oxygen. In order for good biodegradation to take place, the compost should be placed in vessels which maintain a carefully controlled balance of humidity, nutrients, temperature and particle size.
Therefore, sending biodegradable material to a landfill is not a good practice. Sending organic material to composting plants instead of landfills helps the sustainability of the planet and allows these products to be reused. |
