CEDAR HILLS REGIONAL LANDFILL

24 February 2010

 

The Green Mission team ventured over to the Cedar Hills Landfill on Wednesday.

The facility itself is surprisingly beautiful.

The knowledge we gained was eye-opening.

The tour guide, Wally, was more than helpful.

And we will never look at garbage the same again.

 

 

A few facts:

-          Cedar Hills opened in 1964. It is the only remaining active landfill in King County and is scheduled to shut down in 2018 after the last remaining plot is filled with trash.

-          After 2018, King County’s trash will be transferred east of the pass to a landfill.

-          Presently, Seattle’s garbage is being shipped via train to Eastern Oregon near Bend.

-          Seattle has a separate agreement with another vendor concerning trash management.

-          Cedar Hills receives an average of 187 eighteen-wheeler truckloads of garbage per day.

-          One truck can carry up to 10 tons of garbage.

-          In 2008, just over 933,000 tons of solid waste was disposed at the landfill.

- 933,000 tons is a lot of trash (but that's merely my opinion).

 

 

On a clear day (which we witnessed for about ten minutes),

Wally said you could see Mt. Rainier to the south,

The Olympics to the west, Seattle to the North, and Issaquah Valley to the east. Surprising for a dump, right?

The facility has a 1000 foot “buffer zone” of trees between the residential properties and the landfill. The surrounding area is home to several families of deer, some bears, coyotes, and (possibly) cougars. The deer visit the garbage mounds often to feed on the grass (the fact that there are acres upon acres of trash below the grass does nothing to deter the deer from visiting).

The mound you see above was filled in the 1970s.

 

 

Wally told us more than half of the trash they receive, on average, can be recycled.

This is a sad fact, but this only makes the GM team (and you if you’re reading this) more aware of how we need to spread the knowledge of composting and recycling.

Recycling and composting are some of the easiest most important things you can do as a mindful human being.

Yes, recycling demands non-renewable resources, but it is better and more beneficial than letting the same product set in the ground for centuries.

 

 

This huge contraption is called the “Tipper”. A truck backs up onto the Tipper platform, detacthes its garbage bin, and up it goes! Since its inception a few years ago, the Tipper has streamlined the process of unloading garbage and trucks no longer have to wait for hours to dump their load.

 

 

Seen above are the incinerators designated for the collected methane from the landfill.

The 920-acre landfill is monitored relentlessly with methane emission probes.

Cedar Hills developed a process of gas suction. The methane gas is trapped here at the incinerators and is burned. Cedar Hills also has a client that takes a portion of their trapped methane and adds it back into the natural gas grid.

 

 

This beast is called the Masher. It takes three trips over a pile of garbage to comapct it to the preferred pounds-per-square-inch.

 

 

Here’s Mary for a size comparison. Thanks Mary.

 

 

Detail of the business end of this monster.

 

--

 

The Green Mission Team encourages everyone to

be as aware as possible of what you place in the garbage.

Wally told us about a time recently when he dug up 50 year-old trash from the landfill.

He said he found some newspaper wrapped in some plastic.

He read the newspaper, front to back.

The plastic had not decomposed at all, after 50 years,

leaving the newspaper wrapped beneath it preserved!!!

 

Some pointers before you go:

First off, reduce!

If you can't reduce, buy compostable items and stray away

from products that come in landfill-bound packaging.

If you can't compost it, recycle it!

And lastly, support companies that consciously consume!

 

Thanks for reading,

 

The RSQ Green Mission Team

 

 

 

 

Duncan Hauenstein

Data and Technology Specialist

Green Mission Store Representative

Whole Foods Market RSQ

Seattle, WA

206.985.1500 ext. 265