Top 10: What are the longest lasting landfill items? (2024)

FAQs

Top 10: What are the longest lasting landfill items? ›

Surprisingly, food is the largest component of what goes into landfills, making up about a quarter of total landfill waste. Another 18 percent of what ends up in landfills is plastic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Surprisingly, food is the largest component of what goes into landfills, making up about a quarter of total landfill waste. Another 18 percent of what ends up in landfills is plastic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

While you might have thought that plastic was the most resistant material to biodegradation, it's in fact glass. A glass bottle could take up to 1,000,000 years to properly biodegrade.

The Uranium isotope Uranium-238 which is most commonly found in nature has half life of 4.47 billion years. And of Uranium-235 is 704 million years. So, technically they are the longest lasting natural things. In fact, Uranium 238 is used to date the age of earth itself.

However, if your metal items aren't properly recycled, they could be placed in landfill, where they will take a long time to decompose. Steel takes approximately 50 years to decompose, while aluminium can last up to 200 years.

Glass – left to break down, glass can take 1 million years. However, when dealt with responsibly, glass can be recycled endlessly with no loss in quality. Plastic – while not endlessly recyclable, many plastics can be re-processed several times into new products before they start to break down.

Plastics: up to 1,000 years

Water bottles, for example, lead the way as far as longevity is concerned; numerous studies suggest they can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

Since microbes degrade most plastics very slowly (and some not at all), these plastic rocks on Earth could be preserved for at least 10,000 years, and probably much longer, up to millions of years. How long exactly depends not only on the conditions under which the plastic is buried, but on what type of plastic it is.

How long does toilet paper take to decompose if buried? ›

Myth: Toilet paper decomposes quickly, so I can just leave it under a rock. In this article, Backpacker reports it can take toilet paper anywhere from one to three years to decompose. Not quite as quick as you might think.

Plastic bags can take up to 1000 years to decompose. They are one of the planet's biggest environmental burdens. Plastic bags are all too often found in the digestive systems of seabirds and other wildlife.

Paper towels are biodegradable, meaning they can break down over time. Depending on the environment, paper towels can take anywhere from two weeks to five months to decompose. However, it's important to note that paper towels may not completely break down and may still leave some traces of the material behind.

Wood, brick, stone, concrete and iron/steel are five long-lasting building materials that have been used throughout history to construct durable structures, from ancient temples to modern skyscrapers.

Xenon-124 is one such elder statesman: Its half-life is one trillion times longer than the age of the universe, and as such, the chance of detecting its decay is very small.

Although modern landfills are designed to keep toxic trash contained, leaks do happen. Therefore, landfills are still dangerous to the environment and human health. The methane that is released due to the decomposing waste is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change.

Most of the waste we create is household waste, including glass, metals, plastics, clay, and electronic items. These wastes may or may not be suitable for recycling but can be easily discarded using landfills.

According to the US EPA, the material most frequently encountered in MSW landfills is plain old paper, it sometimes accounts for more than 40 percent of a landfill's contents. Newspapers alone can take up as much as 13 percent of the space in US landfills.

In 2018, about 146.1 million tons of MSW were landfilled. Food was the largest component at about 24 percent. Plastics accounted for over 18 percent, paper and paperboard made up about 12 percent, and rubber, leather and textiles comprised over 11 percent. Other materials accounted for less than 10 percent each.

According the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, in the United States, food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills, where it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.