Aug. 9, 2021 at 4:44 am Updated Aug. 9, 2021 at 4:29 pm In the Pacific Northwest, shrinking glaciers, extreme heat waves, worsening droughts and acidifying oceans are all symptoms of climate change, which is affecting every corner of the globe and intensifying as emissions rise. That’s according to a blunt assessment of our warming world, which says that it is “unequivocal” that humans are heating up the planet and doing so at a rate not…
Chemical recycling may not be the holy-grail solution to the plastic crisis after all. Advanced recycling boom fizzles out
The concerns about long-term landfill management expressed by experts across scientific disciplines like Wanless and Sachs are shared by Nick Lapis, the director of advocacy at Californians Against Waste. “The problem with landfills is that they never go away. You have to manage them in perpetuity, and there isn’t a liner or cap that is warrantied to last for that long,” he says. “And they’re not stable. They move and shrink as their contents decay, and the plastic liners will get brittle and crack as the pressures cause them to fold over on themselves. Sooner or later they will fail, as will the clay liners, and the effects of any failure can be absolutely devastating on the environment.” He adds, “From a financial standpoint the original owner, if [the landfills] were privately owned, is often long gone by the time they fail, so taxpayers will be left on the hook.”
