Do It Yourself

into the local water supply. This is only one example of how our brimming landfills are racking up the points against us because we continue to use up and discard, rather then support more fully the concept of recycling and reusing. We’ll take a look at the circumstances in Florida and talk about just how it illustrates the potential for landfills worldwide to end up being recognized as bona fide nightmares of an ecological sort.

According to a current commentary from WUSF http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2010/12/16/sinkhole_under_landfill_is_growing), the radio station of the University of South Florida, apparently a sinkhole is opening underneath a landfill which serves Hillsborough County about 20 miles from Tampa, Florida. Even as the authorities continue to try and figure out what to do regarding this predicament, it looks like a catastrophic one, to say the least. Official measurements say the sinkhole is as deep as a 4 story building is tall. Literally tons of waste from Tampa Bay area households has already fallen into the hole.

What’s a major reason for alarm is the indisputable fact that leachate could very well begin to leak downward into the local water supplies. Leachate can be described as substance that is a fluid containing adverse chemical elements, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leachate). This type of toxic fluid seeping into the area’s wells is definitely terrible news for the drinking water in this part of the Tampa area, but it is also a potential signal of a larger scale dilemma.

Tampa, Florida is in no way the only soft soil region in the world where all the tons of human compiled garbage may possibly fall through the ground and then directly into the water supply. Whereas solid waste is generally regarded as easier to manage than other varieties of human produced pollution, as soon as it starts to break down into leachate, the situation changes. Things like detergent containers as well as typical plastic shopping bags contain petroleum based compounds we will not want in our drinking water.

As it is unquestionably difficult to singlehandedly take on the impact of an entire landfill, these garbage disposal locations are all comprised of garbage from countless individuals. That means each of us plays a role in how hastily they are filled. Such options as utilizing eco friendly recycled bags rather than typical plastic bags could seem unimportant, but when you consider how things add up, it has a huge impact. Once we choose to recycle through the use of green shopping bags instead of choosing conventional bags, we’re putting a foot forward for a cleaner world.

So while a sinkhole may not open in the Earth beneath a landfill close to you any time soon, rest assured that if we take no action similar events are likely to continue happening worldwide. For this reason it is not just Florida experiencing this predicament – all of us play a role in making daily decisions that impact the earth.