What Happens to All That Stuff?

Mr DiMilo's power point presentation was "What happens to all that Stuff?" which focused on what goes to the land fill.  The IWMA program is the county' household hazardous waste program.  There are drop off sites.  Our county goes to Sacramento for money in order to operate the program.  AB 939 - make sure we are current on this.  Educational programs are very important.  Blue bin:  recycling.  Goes to the land fill.  ColdCanyon gets 1 million pounds a day of 'stuff' and some of it is recyclable.  Once it is in a truck no one sorts it out.  There is an 80,000 pound machine that drives over the trash.  People think everything decomposes; it doesn't.  Things are mummified as opposed to decomposed.  The object is not to have the land fill decompose.  There is methane gas and we have to get it out. In the middle of PriceCanyon they inject steam into the wells.  They use the gas by having it transported through a pipe across the land into the landfill.  There are thousands of sea gulls that visit the landfill.  There is a county regulation that states it is against the law for sea gulls to be at the landfill.  Therefore falconers help at the landfill.

We dump 4½ pounds of garbage per day per person.  32% is recycled.  There is a resource recovery park at the landfill.  You can separate what you bring in.    There is a household hazardous waste facility at the landfill.  It is free to use.  Takes in televisions, computers, paint, and chemicals.  There is an educational site.  There is a Material Recovery Facility. The recycling truck goes through a 27 foot door.  There are several trucks.  The trucks have 140,000 of recyclable trash a day.  Sort of the products are sorted by hand.  Some are sorted by machine.  Metal sticks are designed in an upward mode with 8" slots.  Cardboard cartons are kicked out of the way.  Separates paper from cardboard; each has different fiber markets.  There is a machine that creates a current for aluminum cans; acts as though they are magnetic.  There is a crusher for the cans.  There is a bailer.  There are standards that have to be met.  If not met, the entire load may be rejected.  The paper mills make the paper into pulp.  There is a machine that waters down the paper until it is 99% water and 1% paper.  67% of our county's solid waste is in the land fill.