Landfills --- Enormous Cost, Enormous Consequences

Residential Recycling of Texas is a strong believer in a cleaner environment for the future of our communities. Our goal is to make it more economical for neighborhoods and businesses to recycle, lessening the need for burning waste and building more landfills. The environmental impact of landfills is a concern for communities and most citizens are aware of the problems and expenses that landfills cause:

Short-term effects associated with disposal to landfills include:

• Noxious gas emissions
• Toxic leachate entering ground water and ultimately adjacent waterways.
• Loss of amenity to communities

Long-term effects associated with disposal to landfills include:

• Landfill closure costs
• Centuries of monitoring
• On-going contamination
• Degradation of agricultural soils associated with the loss of organic material to landfill
• Ever increasing costs of building new replacement landfills

Here are some basic facts about landfills you may not know:

A landfill can take as long as 10 years just to plan, and the cost of construction can top $30 million dollars. That's just the beginning. Add to that an annual operating expense of $5 million. And a landfill may only last 50 years.

Recycling is a simple cost effective answer: take away a large percentage of the costs mentioned which states, municipalities, counties and the federal government must bear and replace it with the cost of recycling. RRT can help alleviate these problems.