What happens when rain falls on mountains of trash? It creates leachate, one of the most pressing, complex, and poorly understood environmental threats hiding in plain sight. Today, however, a powerful tool is changing the game: machine learning. Landfill leachate...
Would you swim in a creek laced with arsenic, radioactive sediment, and lead? Many Pennsylvanians don’t have a choice. Across western Pennsylvania, communities are raising red flags about the growing threat of leachate—a toxic brew of chemicals formed when rainwater...
It’s not just garbage piling up in our landfills, it’s a public health crisis trickling into your drinking water and floating through the air you breathe. Across the U.S., our water systems are laced with a toxic stew of chemicals,...
Landfills are supposed to be the end of the line. But chemicals aren't staying buried. Some are seeping, leaking, and even wafting into the air, threatening ecosystems and public health alike. As landfills grow with rising global populations, so too...
As mountains of municipal solid waste continue to rise, something brews below. That something is landfill leachate, a potent cocktail of household waste streams quietly seeping into our ecosystems and threatening water safety across the globe. Leachate isn’t just dirty...
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is experiencing a renaissance, fueled by innovative strategies that are boosting methane yield, reducing waste, and transforming organic byproducts into renewable energy. Recent scientific advancements are helping operators reimagine the future of AD, from optimizing feedstock to...
Across the U.S., new recycling technologies are transforming how we recover valuable materials and helping protect workers in the process. At WM’s Cascade Recycling Center in Washington state, a $40 million upgrade has created one of the most advanced material...
Electronic waste is piling up fast, with global projections reaching 80 million metric tons by 2030. But thanks to a breakthrough by researchers at Cornell University, that trash could soon become treasure, both for resource recovery and the planet. A...
The U.S. wastes over 30% of all food produced, costing billions and fueling methane emissions from landfills. In response, the USDA, EPA, and FDA recently launched a long-overdue plan: the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling...
