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Jose Diaz
Mrs.DeBock
English 4
28 April 2016

Real World Narrative

For my service I went to the landfill where i took a long tour of the place. I was given a
load of information from Mrs. Johnson like how does a landfill help the environment and how I
creates alternative energy. Landfills are place where people cover all of the waste whether it is
household trash, construction trash and etc. Landfills provide many benefits to the environment
like controlling methane released into the air and making the waste decompose in the
underground. Landfills are built with plenty of safety like to keep waste out of the public and
private infrastructures. Mrs.Johnson told me that waste is monitored and regulated precautiously
to prevent these problems from occurring
Mrs.Johnson told me that most of the drainage from the landfill goes to a certain pipe that
is connected to another facility, where the water goes to the Grand Strand Water and Sewer
Authority for treatment. Landfills are beneficial for the communitys environment by keeping
trash out of the lakes and streets. People and the volunteers in the landfill are given jobs to clean
up trash from the streets, in the lakes and rivers. Then, the waste will be brought to the recycling
and convenience center near the landfill, which will end up in the landfill or recycled and will
also be able to dump your trash and undesirables,
The landfill has many beneficial feature where it help the environment, and Mrs.Johnson
showed me one of the features which were the pipes running through the landfill which controls

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the methane released from the trash from underneath the landfill and then the methane is
converted into electricity, which gives additional electricity to the community. This type of
renewable energy is known as Biogas, which is a clean and renewable energy that is a
substitute to natural gas by generating electricity. The process is by collecting as much of the
methane as possible which is later combusted into a flame which will produce electricity, heat
and cleaner air for the community.
For the usable wood and yard waste, Mrs.Johnson showed me the machine that turns
unusable wood into compost which is used for organic soil amendment and conditioner. The
compost produced from the landfill will then be sold to consumers and companies nearby.
Landfills make plenty of revenue off of products from recycled materials. With the money made
off the products, it funds programs for public schools that teaches little kids about the harms of
pollution and how it negatively affects the community. These programs also teach adults around
the community about pollution and the negative effects.
Lastly, Mrs.Johnson talked to me about how landfill are beneficial to the environment as
well as how much money the community save on exporting waste. Mrs. Johnson also said that
landfills also benefit the animals like birds because they eat the food that we through away,
which makes the birds flourish in population. On the last moments of the tour, Mrs.Johnson
showed me the process of how they separate recyclables to non-recyclables from the bags of
trash they collected. Mrs.Johnson gave me so much information about how a landfill works and
the beneficial features on what the landfill is able to do to help the environment.