unless the garbage truck failed to show up. It's not been a last resort — 

 it's been my only resort for everything except the recyclables I proudly 

 fish out and present at my curbside. 



But I should have known better. Four years ago, as a newspaper 

 reporter in South Carolina, I discovered that documents landfilled years 

 earlier, sprayed with sewage and buried 12 feet underground could still be 

 read. I was part of a reporting team that picked through a bulldozed pit in 

 the landfill in search of records discarded in violation of a court order. And 

 we weren't disappointed. The pages were dirty, and they smelled awful, 

 but they were nonetheless intact. 



I question how many people realize that landfills are little more than 

 trash storage sites. The contents are slow to decompose because they're 

 usually buried and sealed without air or water. Garbage archaeologists 

 have proven this by excavating organic garbage still intact more than 



30 years after it was buried. 



Still, it's no wonder that we rely so heavily on the convenience of 

 landfills and incinerators. The roots of our disposal habits run 

 deep, back to the early Roman empire where wastes were 

 kept hidden from the privileged. By law, trash was carted 

 out under the cover of night and dumped a mile outside 

 the city limits. The crematorium — a cart-drawn trash 

 burner — was invented in the late 1800s and early 

 1900s and pulled through the cities to collect wastes. 

 This incineration tactic worked until waste began to 

 include glass, aluminum and plastics. 



Now, as the 20th century draws to a close, 

 North Carolina's landscape hosts about 370 solid 

 waste disposal sites: 66 municipal waste landfills, 



31 industrial waste landfills, 150 land-clearing 

 landfills, four incinerators, 14 yard waste 

 composting facilities, 1 1 mixed waste processing 

 facilities and 94 scrap tire collection sites. 



The amount of trash flowing into these and other 

 sites across the country continues to grow, but at a 

 slower pace than in years past. 



Nationally, landfills are projected to receive less 

 waste in the year 2000 (about 109 million tons, or less than 

 half of what is generated) than in 1980 (about 123 million tons, or 

 81 percent of what was generated). Of course, better disposal habits are not 

 fully responsible for this decline. The glass, plastic and metal containers 

 that we toss out today weigh considerably less than they did one or two 

 decades ago, thanks to new manufacturing processes. Meanwhile, the use 

 of incinerators has been slightly on the rise. 



In North Carolina, the amount of trash buried has decreased per capita 

 for three years straight, due largely to tipping fees, disposal bans, source 

 reduction and recycling programs, and separation of land-clearing material 

 from general waste. On average, just over 1 ton of waste is landfilled or 

 incinerated per person annually. This is a 6.4 percent reduction over 199 1- 

 92, the year against which most state improvements are measured. But it's 

 still a far cry from the 40 percent goal that looms six years off. 



Continued 



Statistics show that most 



North Carolinians and Americans 



still dispose of the bulk 



of their trash in landfills, 



although the rate of growth is slowing. 



COASTWATCH 15 



