Field Trip to the Landfill

I went on a field trip with my granddaughter's third grade class to Cold Canyon Landfill.

We probably, all of us, would have rather been at the beach on such a beautiful day, but this process of dealing with so much trash is a good thing for students or for anyone to see.  Even though it looks like we're standing on regular dirt, we're not--the whole area--I think 150 acres is compacted trash layers.

Trash that is thrown out, is not picked through--it all goes on the ground creating a flat?  or a level?  anyway...a layer of trash on top of a plastic ground water protector, then dirt, rocks, more trash and so forth till they reach a level where grass is planted on the top.  They have to stop at a certain height, then use more land.  I could have the order of the levels mixed up, but what is important to remember is that whatever you throw out goes into the ground.  There is way too much plastic!

This machine rolls over the day's trash crushing it down.  This person drives back and forth over this newly dumped area of trash all day!  The kids were more excited than I to see this little explosion--something popped under those big metal wheels and emitted this yellow cloud that slowly drifted our way--lovely.
What I learned...If you don't know if something is recyclable, recycle it, because the recyclables do get picked over, your trash doesn't!