Behind the scenes at the landfill

I'm so sorry if you're reading this while having your breakfast, but yesterday I popped down to a Suffolk landfill site to do a brief interview with the BBC's Mike Cartwright for News 24.

The story was to cover the news that landfill tax is increasing and that in Suffolk, we have only six years left before our landfill facilities reach capacity.

Suffolk County Council's Assistant Director for Environment, Bryn Griffiths, was also there and it was very interesting to get some extra background info on the challenges of waste management and the problems of methane gas created by biodegradable waste dumped into landfill.

If you've never been to a landfill site, I fully recommend a visit as it is a real wake-up call, even for ardent recyclers.

Just the sight of the bin lorries dumping the rubbish can make you feel ill. Then there's the smell, which is gross and if you are able to hang around long enough, you'll see all sorts of things that could easily be recycled or reused.

Amongst the gone off food, there were old shoes, plates, socks, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, plastic bags and children's balls, much of which could have been recycled. You name it and it's in there somewhere.


Every time a layer of rubbish is added, the bulldozers cover it with earth. It was a bizarre feeling to realise that I wasn't actually standing on a hillside but on top of a mountain of waste.

At one point Mike Cartwright picked his way through the pile of rubbish, to deliver an intro for the BBC News 24 studio. Now that represents commitment to a job, as does the fact that the news team had spent nearly five hours on location.



Of course a trip to the landfill site wouldn't have been complete without taking my own week's rubbish along, you know the familiar small bag that only the size of my bin's wheel.

But do you know what?

I felt guilty just leaving it there on the side of the bank.


It was a bit like littering.

I know it was a landfill site, but all the same it didn't feel good.

In today's society, we've got so used to throwing things away and today's visit woke me up the fact that there is no such place as away, as once quoted by author Andrew O'Hagan and Anita Roddick.



I once described car boot sales as the graveyard of consumerism. I now know I was wrong. The real graveyard of course is the landfill.

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