Each week, refuse trucks pick up rubbish from our homes and take it to landfills. Landfills are huge holes in the ground. Refuse trucks tip the rubbish into the hole. Then bulldozers bury the rubbish.
People do not like living near landfills. So some towns burn their waste. They use giant ovens called incinerators.
Refuse trucks collect your rubbish.
In many countries, a refuse truck visits once a week to collect waste. The collectors empty dustbins onto the truck, where the rubbish is squashed so more fits in. The full truck then drives to the landfill site.
The trucks tip the waste into landfills.
Many landfill sites are old quarries. The trucks dump their load, and then bulldozers pack the rubbish down and cover it with soil to prevent it blowing away. Modern landfills have a plastic liner to stop poisonous chemicals from leaking into the soil.
This golf course was a landfill. A layer of soil covers the rubbish.
Landfill sites are an easy way to get rid of lots of rubbish, though they are often smell and look ugly. Once a landfill is full, a thick layer of soil is added. The landfill may then become a park or golf course. It may be hard to see that a landfill was ever there!
An incinerator burns rubbish to make energy.
Paper, plastic and other rubbish give off heat energy when burned. The heat is used to boil water to produce steam. This steam is used to generate electricity. However, incinerators can create poisonous gases that pollute the air.
Rubbish rotting in landfills gives off a gas called methane. This can be burned as fuel. Pipes set into the landfill draw off the methane gas, which flows along a pipe to a power station.
Picture Credit : Google