A landfill may sound simple, a hole in the ground you fill with trash, but like the electricity running to your home or the wastewater leaving it, it’s more complicated than it appears. That’s why Lauri Davis, Education Outreach Coordinator with The City of Springfield's Environmental Services department, is leading tours of the Noble Hill Sanitary Landfill just north of Springfield.
“The landfill is so often an out-of-sight-out-of-mind resource,” Davis explained. “We take it for granted and it's very easy to do that with something you don’t see and interact with on a daily basis.”
Davis and staff with Springfield Environmental Services say the landfill currently takes in 1200-1400 tons of waste a day, from Springfield and surrounding communities, that number has doubled since 2013.
At that rate and with current space the landfill may be full by 2075. They expect the amount of waste will only go up, but they also know a lot of that waste could go somewhere else. Almost half of all waste is cardboard, paper, plastic and food waste. Metal and glass combine for about five percent of waste. Many things that could be recycled, or composted.
Ashley Krug’s job title is Market Development Coordinator for Environmental Services. She works with waste like recyclables that could have a market value.
Krug said a recent study found 42% of items sent to the landfill could have been recycled. She emphasized the word could and explained that once trash enters the landfill it is a federal crime to remove it. Items must be sorted and diverted before they reach Noble Hill.
Spending extra time sorting your trash may just sound like more work, but expanding the landfill is no easy task either. The landfill is about 1,200 acres, but only 213 acres are approved for waste. A significant amount of space has to be left as a buffer, and you can’t just dump trash anywhere in those 213 acres. It must go to a prepared cell. One cell is in operation now.
Monday night, Springfield City Council approved almost $24 million to build three new cells.
What's a cell?
Essentially, a very large and specially designed pit for trash. Staff said each cell is about five to seven acres and built on impermeable rock, in this case shale. The cell is lined with layers of clay and special plastics with built-in systems to vent off methane and the soup of liquid runoff professionals call leachate. Staff say it can take two to three years to build a cell. When a cell is full of trash and finished, it's capped off with more clay and monitored for decades.
With 50 years and counting left before the current available space is full, staff say now is the time to talk about creating more space in the landfill and diverting more waste to recycling and compost bins. For the staff of Springfield’s Environmental Services department, now is also the time to educate the public.
Davis explained, “when we are all having that same view of what can we as citizens do to impact the lifespan of our landfill and make it last longer, then that combined effort is what’s going to eventually make that long-term impact.”
You can tour the landfill yourself, one trip is still scheduled this month, next Wednesday April 30 at 10 a.m. Find more information at springfieldmo.gov/landfill
Find information on City of Springfield recycling services and composting programs and more at Environmental Services | Springfield, MO - Official Website