How can pollution be caused by burying garbage?

Answer 1

First lets define Garbage. Garbage from household day to day living, and from industrial stores or industry and even from heavy industry, could all be defined as garbage.

If garbage is simply food waste, the organic food matter is likely to break down quickly and combine with the soil, and may even compost and create enriching qualities. If introduced into an area that has large amounts of water flow, or poor organics in the soil, it may not break down, and may contribute to an imbalance in the usual flora/fauna bacteria, and environment of the area that its dumped/buried into.

But if we consider garbage to be all that is thrown away, there is no doubt the possibility that non organic, non compost-able materials, or chemicals, plastics, machinery (like a washing machine, or refrigerator) toxins like batteries made of lead and acid and exotic metals, and other items that can leach and pollute the air water or soil are going to be in that garbage.

Anything introduced into the ground, can be transferred to other parts of the earth by breaking down the products by bacteria, and water and carrying some of the elements in the garbage/waste into the water table. If the earth is later dug up, and subjected to air currents, the elements that were introduced and absorbed into the soil can be spread to other parts of the earth via dust. If elements are introduced that react with the earth, or rock within the soils, vapors or fumes could be created that are pollutants too.

Pollution is the introduction into the ground, air, water, with unnatural and not-normally occurring items. Whether its dangerous to humans, animals, ecosystems, water, air, or soil, plants, or micro organisms, are the measure of whether such pollution is "bad" "harmful" or "toxic" (or other qualifiers) in order to determine the degree to which it should or could be described. But the act of placing it where it didn't naturally occur is pollution.

To the extent that a 'landfill' is 'designed' to take garbage, then its not a act of pollution from a legal sense, but it is no doubt polluting that area of land from a scientific sense. To the extent that later some part of the garbage is penetrated, such as when someone builds on a waste site and drill down through the waste, wastes away and leaks, reacts, rusts, or otherwise and some component of the waste gets into the water table, or percolates to the top and gets in air, streams, dust which is airborne, or otherwise, well, then, you have harmful pollution, possibly.

Think of it like this. If someone wanted to plant the materials you are calling garbage under your skin, even small chopped up pieces of it, in the variety that you are supposing is called garbage - would you think it was okay? If you can't put it in your cells, you probably shouldn't put it in the land. Or, at least, if you DO put it in the land, consider that you are doing some polluting. There is rationale reasons to do some polluting, from a economic and commercial and political and planned survival point of view, but it is not without a trade off in a loss of land, or loss of health, or loss of ecosystems, or otherwise. And, some good can come from composting and return of organic material to soil.

Finally, not all organics are good. For the most part any concentration of anything in one place is probably not 'good' for the earth. Manure from pigs and cows, severely causes poisoning of watersheds, underground water tables and wells, and surface land, not to mention the air quality. So while a pile of dung in the prairie or middle of a field may be fine, and decay, and fertilize, and result in enrichment of the soil in that one spot, a feed lot or a barnyard, may have so much in one place that run off, and leaching into and (if buried) out of the ground can cause real damage.