Our landfills are much bigger climate change drivers than we previously believed, a new study has shown. In the paper, researchers argue that decades of buried trash is now releasing tons of methane emissions into the atmosphere, driving globally changing temperatures that could lead to more climate change issues.
This isn’t at all a shocking discovery. It has been known for some time that open landfills are a perfect place for belches of methane to come bubbling up as old vegetables, appliances, and other household waste sit there and rot away.
However, the new study argues that methane emissions from landfills are exponentially higher than was previously reported to federal regulators. Up to three times higher, in fact. The researchers involved say they measured around 20 percent of the roughly 1,200 large, operating landfills in the United States.
During these sessions, they found evidence that landfills are indeed a significant driver for the release of methane and, thus, a huge drive for climate change as a whole. Riley Duren, a former NASA engineer and scientist who helped with the study and has since founded Carbon Mapper, says that we have mostly been in the dark when it comes to the emissions from landfills.
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But this new study provides very damning evidence that suggests the methane emissions from operating landfills is far beyond anything we might have imagined. This is, of course, disturbing because of the consequences the runaway greenhouse effect might have on Earth.
While methane does last a shorter time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is far more potent, the researchers say, with it causing a warming effect up to 80 times more potent than the same amount of CO2 over a 20-year period. That’s a huge issue as these landfills are constantly pumping methane into our atmosphere.