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Comment by WirelessGigabit | Hacker News Reader

The US has way too much space for incineration to become more cost-effective than just dumping it in a giant hole in the ground.

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Could be true for small cities. But try to find an empty space suitable for landfill near NYC.

Up until 2001, it was inside NYC.

And now they ship it down south to states who are happy to take it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000

> The Mobro 4000 was a barge owned by MOBRO Marine, Inc. made infamous in 1987 for hauling the same load of trash along the east coast of North America from New York City to Belize and back until a way was found to dispose of the garbage. ...

> In 1987, the City of New York found that it had reached its landfill capacity. The city agreed to ship its garbage to Morehead City, North Carolina, where there were plans to convert it into methane.

Tony Soprano might have an answer.

Until you go to your local landfill and see the massive fuming hellscape spanning thousands of acres with mountains of garbage just laying there and mentally extrapolate how it will look even 10 more years from now.

>and mentally extrapolate how it will look even 10 more years from now.

I did some napkin math and concluded that it's a non-issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38407111

It can look like this

https://freshkillspark.org/

Thus, solving the problem once and for all!

My local landfill is at the southern end of San Francisco Bay and there really isn't anything notable about it.

The landfill here in town has a sledding hill, swimming pool, jungle gym, and a skate park. It was in the hinterlands of the town, but the town grew fast.

The largest landfill in the US was only 700acres after almost 60 years in operation supporting LA.

or ~1 square mile

or ~3 square kilometers

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