It will benefit Human Health and our Eco Systems
Items in landfill areas leach chemicals into the ground soil which then go into our food and the waterways and down to the sea. Anything made of plastic, containing plastic and metals last for scores and sometimes hundreds of years. This means that years into the future people will suffer health problems because of the rubbish we dump today.
Landfill sites give off toxic air or gases into the air through decomposing waste which are breathed in and cause– headaches, respiratory issues including asthma, lung cancer, nausea and other disorders.
Landfill sites are an “eyesore” and can also cause odour pollution, causing stress.
Fires at landfill sites also give off harmful pollutants.
The gases released also contribute to global warming and climate change. The more stuff we send to landfill the greater our carbon footprint becomes.
Landfill sites take up green spaces that we need for leisure, agriculture.
Altogether this can have a lasting effect on human health and animal and marine life damaging the eco systems which support us.
The stuff we are throwing away is growing into a huge problem.
The total UK waste from households was 25.9 million tonnes in 2023, an increase of 1% from 2022. (See https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-waste-data/uk-statistics-on-waste). Of course this does not include the waste from our industrial and manufacturing/commercial sectors. This stood at 40.4 million tonnes in 2020 according to AI Google. (October 2025)
How are we handling this currently?
The UK and many countries are struggling to find landfill areas in which to dump this waste. When old dumps are full then new areas of land or countryside need to be made available. Obviously in the UK and some other countries space and land for these purposes is limited.
If we cannot deal with waste in our own countries then a common way of managing this problem presently is to send it overseas for example to Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Netherlands. Of course this carries a financial and carbon cost but in addition there is a moral cost. It is difficult to believe that we are dumping our rubbish in pristine spaces in other countries, even though we pay them to do this.
Materials like waste plastics, metals and paper are growing in number. Another growing polluter is e-waste.
E-waste or WEEE – What is this?
Waste electronic and electrical equipment – anything with plugs, cords, batteries and electronic components.
This is another area where there has been an upsurge in the amounts taken to landfill. Again many noxious chemicals leach into the soil for example lead and mercury.
See E-waste page.