Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: How Landfills Work
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. Chuck here with your Saturday selects. Pick how
- 0:04Speaker 1: landfills work. J This is a good one everyone. Uh.
- 0:09Speaker 1: This is part of our I guess uh city works
- 0:14Speaker 1: uh suite of podcasts. And how things like landfills work
- 0:17Speaker 1: is super important and very interesting and not quite as
- 0:20Speaker 1: depressing as you might think a little bit. But it's
- 0:23Speaker 1: also kind of a marvel of engineering how these things
- 0:27Speaker 1: actually get pulled off. So take a listen, take a
- 0:30Speaker 1: re listen even how landfills work? Right now, welcome to
- 0:39Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios
- 0:41Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
- 0:50Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
- 0:54Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you should Know. Hi, how's it going.
- 1:00Speaker 1: It's great? Good, Good to yourself. I found this topic
- 1:07Speaker 1: and I was starting to tell you before how interesting
- 1:09Speaker 1: I thought it was. Yeah, you went it's awesome. I
- 1:13Speaker 1: was like, stop, it's gold. So now I'm going to
- 1:15Speaker 1: say it. It's awesome. And landfills the concept of a landfill,
- 1:22Speaker 1: even though it ain't perfect, it's pretty neat. Yeah, And
- 1:26Speaker 1: even though we need to reduce the amount of trash,
- 1:28Speaker 1: especially Americans produce. Yeah, um, there is still going to
- 1:33Speaker 1: be trash in the world and it needs to be
- 1:34Speaker 1: dealt with. And this is way better than the old days. Uh,
- 1:40Speaker 1: when in like pre nineteen thirty New York City they
- 1:44Speaker 1: would dump their garbage in the ocean. And then between
- 1:47Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and we still do that. You realize, well,
- 1:51Speaker 1: New York City doesn't dump it right in the Atlantic Ocean, no,
- 1:54Speaker 1: but a lot of garbage is dumped in the ocean. Yeah. Well,
- 1:56Speaker 1: we talked about the Great Pacific Garbage back um. And
- 2:00Speaker 1: then between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies they
- 2:02Speaker 1: had what they called dumps, which is a big hole
- 2:06Speaker 1: in the ground covered in rats and birds and that
- 2:09Speaker 1: you would just dump garbage to leach into everything. Yes,
- 2:13Speaker 1: which is messed up. And the e p A comes
- 2:16Speaker 1: along and I think the sixties, definitely the seventies and
- 2:19Speaker 1: was like, uh, we need to do something better about this.
- 2:23Speaker 1: But so the the idea of the landfill was born
- 2:29Speaker 1: in about the sixties, I believe. Well, well, the first
- 2:32Speaker 1: modern sanitary landfill was seven and frees Now, okay, that's right,
- 2:36Speaker 1: and it's like a National Historic Place or something. Yeah,
- 2:38Speaker 1: because it kind of kicked off the whole thing. But
- 2:40Speaker 1: it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that they started
- 2:43Speaker 1: passing law saying that, like every state really needs to
- 2:46Speaker 1: start doing the same thing, right And like you said
- 2:49Speaker 1: before that they just dumped their trash and a pit,
- 2:51Speaker 1: which people have been doing for millennia at least um
- 2:56Speaker 1: they were burning their trash also, and it sounds mine
- 3:00Speaker 1: ugglingly awful, and it is, especially from an environmental standpoint,
- 3:04Speaker 1: but they didn't have the trash problem that we have
- 3:07Speaker 1: now in the sixties. Since the nineteen sixties are trash generation,
- 3:14Speaker 1: municipal solid waste generation has um doubled, tripled, tripled, And
- 3:21Speaker 1: I was like, why is that? What's going on? Apparently
- 3:24Speaker 1: it's the advent of cheap packaging. Before styrofoam packaging, before plastic,
- 3:31Speaker 1: before aluminum cans that everybody just threw away. Everything was
- 3:34Speaker 1: wrapped in a T shirt that you could wear exactly,
- 3:37Speaker 1: and like when you weren't carrying around a slab of
- 3:39Speaker 1: meat in the T shirt from the butcher to your house,
- 3:42Speaker 1: you wore your T shirt so you reused it, right, No,
- 3:46Speaker 1: but no, you would you would have maybe, like, um,
- 3:49Speaker 1: do you remember when Sam the butcher brought Alice the meat.
- 3:53Speaker 1: BC Boys reference was just about to say, um, freshman
- 3:57Speaker 1: Stone driving around with two ft bald ft yeah, which
- 4:01Speaker 1: is I guess a really weird way of putting in
- 4:03Speaker 1: his barefoot. Well, it didn't rhyme bald feet anyway. He
- 4:08Speaker 1: would bring it to her wrapped in like white butcher's
- 4:10Speaker 1: paper and she would throw it away and it would
- 4:14Speaker 1: really not take up much space of the dump. It
- 4:16Speaker 1: would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for fifty
- 4:20Speaker 1: thousand years, right, Yeah, And so starting about nine sixty, packaging,
- 4:27Speaker 1: especially very non biodegradable packaging, took off like a rocket.
- 4:31Speaker 1: Yeah you could still go to the butcher, though now
- 4:34Speaker 1: you can, and you get it in paper, but you
- 4:36Speaker 1: go to that big chain grocery store and it's going
- 4:38Speaker 1: to be plastic in styrofoam. So between nineteen sixty and
- 4:43Speaker 1: are packaging waste increased by eight That meant that we
- 4:49Speaker 1: had to do something. We had a lot more trash
- 4:51Speaker 1: and we had to take care of this trash and
- 4:54Speaker 1: ways that we had before. And so the modern landfill
- 4:58Speaker 1: based on that Fresno model uh boomed And fortunately that's
- 5:04Speaker 1: right but even now they're finding we went too far
- 5:08Speaker 1: in one direction. Yeah, now we need to adjust to
- 5:11Speaker 1: massage it a little bit, refine it, and we're we
- 5:13Speaker 1: were coming up with a new generation of landfills. That's right. So, uh,
- 5:18Speaker 1: if you're talking about a landfill, the goal of a
- 5:21Speaker 1: landfill is not to compost trash. And a lot of
- 5:25Speaker 1: people probably don't know this. Yeah, it's not to compost
- 5:27Speaker 1: trash such that it breaks down super quickly, uh and biodegrades.
- 5:32Speaker 1: It is the opposite of that. It is to keep
- 5:34Speaker 1: it as dry as possible in an airtight and and
- 5:38Speaker 1: just bury it, lock it away from the surrounding world.
- 5:42Speaker 1: That's right. And so that's what a landfill is, a
- 5:44Speaker 1: sanitary landfill, municipal solid waste or MSW landfill. Um, they
- 5:50Speaker 1: isolate the trash from the environment. They don't just dump
- 5:53Speaker 1: it on the dirt and let things leach in. And
- 5:56Speaker 1: this thus begins the landfill podcast Sarah. Lot of components
- 6:00Speaker 1: to that, but that's along and short of it. It's true.
- 6:03Speaker 1: And um, what what that's called. The whole idea behind
- 6:07Speaker 1: that landfill that was in reaction to that's one A
- 6:13Speaker 1: dry tomb is the industry lingo for it. It's and
- 6:17Speaker 1: it it was created in reaction to trash just being
- 6:22Speaker 1: allowed to seep into the groundwater and methane to leak
- 6:27Speaker 1: out in the air blow up. Apparently, houses that have
- 6:31Speaker 1: utility pipes that passed by old landfills, methane will get
- 6:35Speaker 1: into those utility pipes and like get in mixed in
- 6:38Speaker 1: with the electricity and when you go to plug in
- 6:40Speaker 1: your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really. Yes, it's a
- 6:44Speaker 1: problem with old landfills because they were all idiots with
- 6:48Speaker 1: trash like up until the sixties, seventies, eighties, um, and
- 6:54Speaker 1: even still we have a big problem with trash, but
- 6:59Speaker 1: nothing like it is before. As far as taking care
- 7:01Speaker 1: of it, we're starting to really get a handle on it.
- 7:03Speaker 1: Americans produce four point six pounds of trash per day
- 7:07Speaker 1: per person. Yeah, and you know what's crazy is you'd think, well,
- 7:10Speaker 1: America is probably like as bad as it gets. Know,
- 7:12Speaker 1: the UK is America is like in the middle roughly
- 7:16Speaker 1: for trash generation, and the UK is the worst. They
- 7:21Speaker 1: produced per capita, They produced the most, and um they
- 7:26Speaker 1: also throw away the most. They have the lowest recovery rate. Um.
- 7:30Speaker 1: Although it's gone up I believe I think they had
- 7:32Speaker 1: like some sort of national initiative because it says here
- 7:37Speaker 1: that it went up from thirty one recovery rate, which
- 7:40Speaker 1: is like recycling and that kind of stuff, um, basically
- 7:44Speaker 1: diverting it from the landfill, to so it's actually better
- 7:48Speaker 1: than America as far as the resource recovery rate goes.
- 7:51Speaker 1: Canada is the worst. I'm sorry, Canada is the worst. Yeah,
- 7:54Speaker 1: that's hard to believe. I would think so too, but
- 7:56Speaker 1: it's true. The standout is Germany. Germany produces way more
- 8:01Speaker 1: trash per person than any other country per capita, but
- 8:05Speaker 1: they also have the highest recovery rate at like almost
- 8:11Speaker 1: of their trash gets diverted from the landfill. That's amazing.
- 8:14Speaker 1: Actually that's efficient. What what's the American number on that diversion?
- 8:18Speaker 1: It hovers about a third for at least a couple
- 8:23Speaker 1: of decades, now, maybe three decades, you could say Americans
- 8:26Speaker 1: diverted about they diverted about a third of their trash
- 8:30Speaker 1: from the landfill. You'd like to see that number get
- 8:32Speaker 1: better in three decades for sure, you know, and it's
- 8:35Speaker 1: always hovers around thirty and it should be a lot
- 8:40Speaker 1: better than that. You know, what that sounds like to me,
- 8:42Speaker 1: whoever is in charge of doing that study is just like,
- 8:44Speaker 1: let's just use last numbers. We can all live with that, right, Yeah, alright,
- 8:50Speaker 1: So if you want to landfill in your municipality, Um,
- 8:54Speaker 1: you're going to have to start with a proposal by saying.
- 8:57Speaker 1: You can't just go start Yeah, you gotta look around
- 8:59Speaker 1: and say we need to landfill everybody. So let's uh
- 9:05Speaker 1: do an environmental impact study and let's let's find an area.
- 9:09Speaker 1: Let's find a lot of acreage. Um. Because I think
- 9:13Speaker 1: they use the North Wake County Landfill in Raleigh, North
- 9:16Speaker 1: Carolina as a their go to example in this article.
- 9:19Speaker 1: So our how stuff works started two and thirty acres
- 9:22Speaker 1: of land, about seventy acres of which is the actual landfill.
- 9:25Speaker 1: So you're gonna need a lot of land, and you're
- 9:27Speaker 1: gonna have to do an environmental impact study to determine
- 9:30Speaker 1: a lot of things. How much land do you have, Yeah,
- 9:34Speaker 1: if there's enough of it? Sure? Um. What type of
- 9:37Speaker 1: soil you have and what bedrock is underneath it? Very important? Um?
- 9:42Speaker 1: How water flows over the surface of the site. Yeah,
- 9:45Speaker 1: does it flow right down into the river? Does it
- 9:47Speaker 1: not perfully? Right? Right? Exactly? Um. And then the uh,
- 9:51Speaker 1: the impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure,
- 9:54Speaker 1: and if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site, yeah,
- 9:58Speaker 1: you don't want a landfill on an archa a logical site.
- 10:00Speaker 1: What's funny is if you, um, if you go back
- 10:03Speaker 1: and look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one
- 10:06Speaker 1: of the biggest in the world New York, right yeah,
- 10:09Speaker 1: and it wasn't even the only one for New York.
- 10:11Speaker 1: It's closed now, right, yes, And the guy who created
- 10:14Speaker 1: the high line, James Corner, is um creating a park
- 10:19Speaker 1: there out of it, like a massive, massive park. Interesting.
- 10:23Speaker 1: I think like three times the size of Central Park.
- 10:25Speaker 1: Are they calling it Cancer Park? I think they're avoiding that. Okay,
- 10:29Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. I wrote a really
- 10:31Speaker 1: interesting New York magazine article about it now it really
- 10:35Speaker 1: well written and clever, um, where it's basically like, that's awesome,
- 10:38Speaker 1: that's awesome, this guy's got this great vision. And then
- 10:41Speaker 1: but it's a landfill, you know. I'm sure at the
- 10:44Speaker 1: end of the day it's still bared garbage exactly. Um. Alright,
- 10:48Speaker 1: So when we talked about the bedrock, that's really important
- 10:51Speaker 1: because if you have what would you really want to
- 10:53Speaker 1: try and prevent when you're building a landfill or operating
- 10:56Speaker 1: landfill is um leakage and seepage. That was like that
- 11:00Speaker 1: that was the big thing. When the e PA came along.
- 11:03Speaker 1: You started saying, like, you can't just bury your trash
- 11:05Speaker 1: anywhere there's groundwater, dummies, and like, as trash decomposes, it's
- 11:10Speaker 1: not just like old coca cola and banana peals. When
- 11:13Speaker 1: those things break down and start mixing together, some really
- 11:16Speaker 1: horrific stuff like ammonia gets produced, and that gets into
- 11:20Speaker 1: the groundwater and all of a sudden you're drinking ammonia.
- 11:23Speaker 1: That's bad for you. Yeah, that's called the it's called
- 11:25Speaker 1: leech eight is the liquid um or garbage juice is
- 11:29Speaker 1: in other words that that's a better way to say it,
- 11:31Speaker 1: because that defines it all in one go, right, and um,
- 11:34Speaker 1: the whole point of the of the dry Tomb landfill
- 11:38Speaker 1: was to do everything you could to prevent this garbage
- 11:42Speaker 1: that you're burying from reaching the the water table. Right,
- 11:47Speaker 1: So you study that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's
- 11:50Speaker 1: not gonna work because it's going to seep into that junk.
- 11:52Speaker 1: No mines, no quarries because they probably already have broken
- 11:55Speaker 1: through the water table before they were abandoned. That's right.
- 11:58Speaker 1: But at the same time, you also need to be
- 11:59Speaker 1: able to say wells in various points, so you can't.
- 12:02Speaker 1: The bedrock needs to allow for that as well. It's
- 12:05Speaker 1: like you're really looking for a specific area. When we
- 12:08Speaker 1: talked about the water flow. Of course you don't want
- 12:10Speaker 1: it flowing near wetlands or any kind of rivers or streams.
- 12:13Speaker 1: That's a no brainer. Fresh Kills is an old marsh
- 12:16Speaker 1: land that they just filled the marshes and lakes in
- 12:18Speaker 1: with garbage. What did they name it? That is that
- 12:21Speaker 1: the area or like that, Kills is a Dutch word
- 12:24Speaker 1: for stream. Okay, because I was about to say that's
- 12:26Speaker 1: like the worst name for anything totally unless it was
- 12:30Speaker 1: a butcher. But it really means fresh stream, fresh kills, charcooterie,
- 12:35Speaker 1: fresh stream garbage dump. Yeah, that makes sense. Now what
- 12:39Speaker 1: does kill mean stream a Dutch word because you've heard
- 12:43Speaker 1: it like fowery means really yes, that would be fish stream.
- 12:48Speaker 1: That makes a lot more sense now fresh kills. I
- 12:52Speaker 1: wondered about that for years now, you know st alright, so, uh,
- 12:58Speaker 1: local wildlife, they're going to really study that to see
- 13:01Speaker 1: what kind of UM. You know, it can't be in
- 13:04Speaker 1: the area of a migrate my migratory route for birds,
- 13:08Speaker 1: or like a nesting area a k marsh like Fresh
- 13:11Speaker 1: Kills landfill. That's right. And then once you figured all
- 13:16Speaker 1: this out and they say, oh wait, wait, you skipped
- 13:18Speaker 1: over the historical or archaeological site. Well you already mentioned
- 13:22Speaker 1: that like Fresh Kills landfill. Okay, apparently I think it
- 13:27Speaker 1: was stated at all wrong. Huh. Henry David Thoreau said
- 13:29Speaker 1: that UM arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from
- 13:33Speaker 1: the ground at Fresh Kills before it was a landfill. Yeah,
- 13:37Speaker 1: so archaeological site, wet land and very close to UM,
- 13:42Speaker 1: the groundwater seeping right into it. Unbelievable. UM. And I
- 13:47Speaker 1: believe there was a large bunny rabbit population that they
- 13:51Speaker 1: just dumped it right on top of UM. So once
- 13:55Speaker 1: you figured out this is not Fresh Kills is actually
- 13:57Speaker 1: a great spot, you're gonna get your permits you and
- 14:00Speaker 1: raise your money. UM. This one in North Carolina costs
- 14:03Speaker 1: about nineteen million to build cheap. That seems a little cheap,
- 14:07Speaker 1: but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah, that's
- 14:09Speaker 1: probably from the nineties, and then you probably have a
- 14:12Speaker 1: public vote because you're probably gonna be using public dollars
- 14:15Speaker 1: and no one will know that that vote takes place,
- 14:19Speaker 1: and you're going to get a landfill built. Boom. Yeah,
- 14:23Speaker 1: they just build it in the night. All right. So
- 14:26Speaker 1: let's take a little break here and we will talk
- 14:28Speaker 1: about building that landfill right for this. All right, So
- 14:50Speaker 1: you've got your permits, you've got your money raised, it's
- 14:54Speaker 1: time to build a landfill. Yeah, you shouted down the
- 14:57Speaker 1: old guy at the board of come a shioner's meeting.
- 15:00Speaker 1: Who objects, old man, McLean the tree hugger. Let's recycle
- 15:08Speaker 1: all our garbage, crack pot. So we will list the
- 15:13Speaker 1: basic parts of a landfill and then go over them
- 15:15Speaker 1: in detail. How's that sound. It sounds like a bulleted list.
- 15:18Speaker 1: You've got the bottom liner system, you've got the cells,
- 15:22Speaker 1: you've got the storm water drainage, you've got the leech
- 15:25Speaker 1: eight collection system a K garbage juice methane collection system,
- 15:29Speaker 1: and you've got the cap the covering. Actually, that's the
- 15:35Speaker 1: opposite of what you want to happen with the cap
- 15:37Speaker 1: covering system. You don't want to kaboom. So start with
- 15:40Speaker 1: the bottom liner man. Again, this is the original purpose
- 15:45Speaker 1: of all landfills that are in use today, unless they're bioreactor.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Although it's it's part of it. But this dry tomb landfill, Uh,
- 15:55Speaker 1: it's the main part is the bottom liner. So they
- 15:59Speaker 1: use a very thick like um sometimes a hundred million
- 16:03Speaker 1: millimeter thick, very sturdy like polyethylene liner synthetic plastic that
- 16:10Speaker 1: they line the whole place with, puncture resistant, strong able
- 16:15Speaker 1: to withstand a lot of trash being dumped on it.
- 16:17Speaker 1: And just to be a certain they'll often use some
- 16:20Speaker 1: sort of like um fabric matt that they'll lay down
- 16:24Speaker 1: first and then put the the the liner on and
- 16:28Speaker 1: then put another mat on top of that to help
- 16:32Speaker 1: prevent it from being punctured by rocks or garbage. Rocks
- 16:35Speaker 1: below or garbage above. Everything's trying to puncture this mat. Yeah,
- 16:39Speaker 1: it's a moisture barrier, right, But that liner is the
- 16:42Speaker 1: main component, the the initial component of the landfill. That's right. Next,
- 16:47Speaker 1: we have our cell, and a cell is basically the
- 16:52Speaker 1: day's garbage. Yeah, it's the day's garbage that you dump
- 16:54Speaker 1: in there. Um, you compacted airspace is is key. That's
- 16:59Speaker 1: where uh, the more airspace you have the more trash
- 17:02Speaker 1: you can bury, so they want to keep it as
- 17:04Speaker 1: compact as possible. And they do this by rolling over
- 17:07Speaker 1: it with bulldozers and flatteners and rollers and graters, and
- 17:12Speaker 1: they smush it down. And a cell is um, it's
- 17:14Speaker 1: a it's a it's a hole in the ground. Apparently
- 17:20Speaker 1: in the North Carolina landfill that how stuff works went
- 17:22Speaker 1: to back in the day. A cell is fifty ft long,
- 17:25Speaker 1: fifty ft wide, fourteen ft deep, and all the trash
- 17:29Speaker 1: is put in there. Like you said, there's heavy equipment
- 17:31Speaker 1: that rolls over and compacts it. And did you read
- 17:34Speaker 1: the Atlantic um article I sent you about Pointe Hills.
- 17:39Speaker 1: They said that there's an added benefit of compacting trash.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Not just doesn't take up less space, it also kills
- 17:46Speaker 1: about fifty of the rats in there. Oh good. And
- 17:49Speaker 1: then at the end of the day, when the cell
- 17:52Speaker 1: is filled, they cover it over with about six inches
- 17:56Speaker 1: of dirt that they then compact. That kills the other
- 17:58Speaker 1: fifty of rats where the other half goes. And that
- 18:01Speaker 1: makes that type of landfill what's called the sanitary landfill,
- 18:04Speaker 1: which means rat free, because they're all dead, they're squished,
- 18:10Speaker 1: or they're suffocated by this process of compacting and covering
- 18:14Speaker 1: over and the By covering over this stuff every day,
- 18:17Speaker 1: you protected from being blown away by the wind, by
- 18:20Speaker 1: being carried away from by the rain. You protected from
- 18:23Speaker 1: being dug up by coyotes or trash scavengers. Right. Um,
- 18:27Speaker 1: and so that's what makes it a sanitary, dry tomb
- 18:31Speaker 1: landfill is what we've described so far. That's right. And
- 18:35Speaker 1: to get this thing as compact as possible, they're gonna
- 18:38Speaker 1: weed out things like that huge roll of carpet that
- 18:40Speaker 1: you took out of your uh, nineteen seventies bedroom, or
- 18:43Speaker 1: that mattress that has a you know, brown stained like
- 18:48Speaker 1: looks like the map of Asia from the sixteen hundreds, right,
- 18:50Speaker 1: because you raised that one Lady from Hell, raiser from
- 18:54Speaker 1: the dead. Yeah, so we're gonna take out all that
- 18:56Speaker 1: stuff and make it um you know, all the yard
- 18:59Speaker 1: ways to make it as compactable as possible. And then
- 19:02Speaker 1: um that is compacted at a rate depending on where
- 19:05Speaker 1: you are, about pounds for cubic yard. Yes, so boom,
- 19:09Speaker 1: flat dirt is over it now, and now we need
- 19:12Speaker 1: to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically, once you created that cell,
- 19:17Speaker 1: you've just completed a portion of the landfill. Right, yes,
- 19:20Speaker 1: for the day, um, one day's trash. It's so weird,
- 19:23Speaker 1: it's like yours Tuesday's whole, right, sixty five days a
- 19:28Speaker 1: year and those well, those UM the Points Hills people
- 19:31Speaker 1: in that Atlantic article, we're saying that they in retrospect
- 19:35Speaker 1: figured out that they could have predicted the economic crisis
- 19:39Speaker 1: because about a little less than a year before it happened,
- 19:43Speaker 1: the UM they would fill up their days cell by
- 19:46Speaker 1: like one pm and closed. Now they stay up until
- 19:49Speaker 1: five and it's not even necessarily full. So they know
- 19:52Speaker 1: it's like a huge downturn in building materials and consumer waste. UM,
- 19:58Speaker 1: like a year or two before where the actual crisis
- 20:01Speaker 1: happened before they collapse. Well, you know what the the
- 20:03Speaker 1: old saying, if you want to know the state of
- 20:07Speaker 1: the country's economics, go to a landfill. It's a good thing.
- 20:11Speaker 1: That's what I think. Jimmy Carter first said that. So
- 20:15Speaker 1: you don't want liquids in that solid waste as much
- 20:18Speaker 1: as possible, So they test the solid waste for liquids,
- 20:22Speaker 1: and um, if it's not liquid, then it's fine to
- 20:25Speaker 1: go in the hole, right, So they put that in there,
- 20:27Speaker 1: and the other way that they want to keep liquids out.
- 20:29Speaker 1: And again, what they're doing is trying to prevent garbage
- 20:32Speaker 1: juice from forming. That's right, is to um have storm
- 20:35Speaker 1: raw storm, water, runoff, drainage going on, so all of
- 20:41Speaker 1: the First of all, you never want a flat landfill. Ever,
- 20:45Speaker 1: you want to mount it at least slightly. You never
- 20:47Speaker 1: want a plateau um, and so you want the water
- 20:52Speaker 1: to run off, and then when it runs off, you
- 20:54Speaker 1: want to collect it into pipes. You want to basically
- 20:56Speaker 1: create an eves system like you have on the roof
- 20:58Speaker 1: of your house, and then shoot it all down to
- 21:00Speaker 1: some concrete gulches or if French strains at your house
- 21:04Speaker 1: roos shepparls. What else? Uh gutters yeah, habitasher right, um,
- 21:14Speaker 1: and all that goes to a collection pond. That's right. Uh,
- 21:18Speaker 1: this is not the kind of thing you want to
- 21:20Speaker 1: swim in. What they wait for there is for um
- 21:24Speaker 1: the suspended particles to kind of settle on the bottom,
- 21:27Speaker 1: and then they will test the water for those the
- 21:29Speaker 1: garbage juice, and depending on how nasty it is and
- 21:34Speaker 1: riddled with chemicals, they'll go from there. They may um
- 21:38Speaker 1: treat it like regular wastewater. Well that depends like if
- 21:41Speaker 1: they if just the storm water shows some leech, they'll
- 21:45Speaker 1: send it to a leech a collection pond. If it's
- 21:48Speaker 1: if it turns out to just be normal stormwater, then
- 21:50Speaker 1: they'll let it flow out of there. That's trying to
- 21:53Speaker 1: like whatever river or whatever. Yeah, and sometimes it's gravity.
- 21:56Speaker 1: Sometimes they use a pump. It depends on the lay
- 21:59Speaker 1: of the land. But if it's leech, they have a
- 22:01Speaker 1: separate collect collection system for leachate. Yes, which is um
- 22:05Speaker 1: basically perforated pipes that are running through the cells and
- 22:10Speaker 1: the leach it is gonna happen, Like they try and
- 22:12Speaker 1: prevent it as much as possible, but there is no
- 22:15Speaker 1: hole in the ground where you're not gonna have any
- 22:16Speaker 1: garbage juice right exactly. Um, So they collect that garbage
- 22:20Speaker 1: juice as it's forming, and they run it out to
- 22:22Speaker 1: a separate collection pond that's the leech a collection pod.
- 22:25Speaker 1: And if you don't want to swim in the stormwater
- 22:27Speaker 1: collection pond, like you don't even want to look at
- 22:29Speaker 1: the leech collection pod. So again they let the particles settle,
- 22:34Speaker 1: they test the concentration of the leech a in the pond,
- 22:37Speaker 1: and then they send it either to an on site
- 22:41Speaker 1: uh water remediation system like a wastewater plant, or else
- 22:46Speaker 1: they send it to like the local city or county
- 22:48Speaker 1: wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah, boy, we gotta do one
- 22:51Speaker 1: in wastewater treatment at some point. You got to talk
- 22:53Speaker 1: about fascinating you poop in the water and eventually water.
- 23:01Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable of what we've learned to do. Uh
- 23:03Speaker 1: you know yep. So Uh. The other big thing that
- 23:07Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier was methane, and that is a byproduct
- 23:11Speaker 1: that's a gaseous byproduct um of anaerobic decomposition. And about
- 23:19Speaker 1: fifty of your your gases coming out of this thing.
- 23:22Speaker 1: We're going to be a methane about carbon dioxide and
- 23:26Speaker 1: they say a little bit of nitrone, little bit of oxygen.
- 23:28Speaker 1: I guess not even enough to be a percentage point,
- 23:30Speaker 1: almost negligible. So methane is um can be dangerous and hazardous,
- 23:35Speaker 1: but it can also be very useful. So these days
- 23:39Speaker 1: they're finding ways to harness this methane and use it
- 23:41Speaker 1: as fuel, right, which is pretty great. Yeah, it is
- 23:44Speaker 1: very great, and actually there's a lot of money in
- 23:47Speaker 1: it they're finding too, especially if you go to the
- 23:49Speaker 1: trouble of building an on site power plant where you
- 23:53Speaker 1: just basically extract the methane from the landfill gas l
- 23:56Speaker 1: f G is what it's called. And then you burn
- 23:58Speaker 1: the methane. You pow. You can create electricity. Right, you
- 24:02Speaker 1: can power a turbine and boom, there's electricity being produced.
- 24:05Speaker 1: And actually at Fresh Kills, New York City gets ten
- 24:08Speaker 1: million bucks a year from a company that has exclusive
- 24:11Speaker 1: rights to extract the methane from this place. It's pretty great.
- 24:14Speaker 1: Ten million. That's not something it needs that UM and Lincoln,
- 24:17Speaker 1: Nebraska did a pilot study in two thousand and ten
- 24:21Speaker 1: and found that they could make about three hundred thousand
- 24:23Speaker 1: dollars a year from methane collection from their landfill. That's awesome.
- 24:27Speaker 1: So if you're a city that's trying to like figure
- 24:29Speaker 1: out ways to at least keep your landfill open, methane
- 24:34Speaker 1: collection I call my my worst days l f G.
- 24:37Speaker 1: Actually when I have landfill gas, it's the worst worst.
- 24:43Speaker 1: Uh So, then you've got your covering and your or
- 24:46Speaker 1: your cap is the final piece of the puzzle here
- 24:49Speaker 1: and UM it depends on what kind of a landfill
- 24:53Speaker 1: it is. Generally it's going to be covered with six
- 24:55Speaker 1: inches at least of compacted soil. And that's to keep
- 24:59Speaker 1: you know, rats and stuff out the ones that aren't
- 25:01Speaker 1: killed and getting back into the trash. But um, like
- 25:04Speaker 1: we said earlier, airspace is key. So like six six inches,
- 25:08Speaker 1: if they could find a way to make that one inch,
- 25:11Speaker 1: that would be much better. And so they've been experimenting
- 25:13Speaker 1: with that too, like UM paper or submit emulsions instead
- 25:18Speaker 1: that you just spray on top instead of that six
- 25:20Speaker 1: inches of soils like a quarter inch. Yeah, and then
- 25:23Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have five and three quarters
- 25:25Speaker 1: extra inches for trash, straight inches for more trash. That's
- 25:28Speaker 1: a lot man speaking about this, which we are right
- 25:32Speaker 1: now absolutely uh. And then eventually though, when you it
- 25:36Speaker 1: will have a permanent cap um some sort of polyethylene
- 25:39Speaker 1: cap on top. And so even after it's closed, that
- 25:43Speaker 1: points hills Um landfill outside of l A that was
- 25:47Speaker 1: the focus of the Atlantic article or fresh kills out
- 25:50Speaker 1: in New York when that when it's closed, you don't
- 25:53Speaker 1: just walk away from a landfill. You plant stuff on it. Well, yes,
- 25:57Speaker 1: you have to plant stuff on it because when you
- 25:59Speaker 1: cover it over with dirt, you want to plant something
- 26:01Speaker 1: with um, a low roots system that won't go into
- 26:04Speaker 1: the landfill, but we'll still hold the dirt and place
- 26:07Speaker 1: to prevent it from a roading. So like grass cut zoo,
- 26:11Speaker 1: not trees. I don't want to plant trees. But you
- 26:13Speaker 1: also have to stick around and leave some people behind
- 26:16Speaker 1: to monitor the groundwater for temperature changes. Change in temperature
- 26:21Speaker 1: suggests that it's um. There's leachate that's intruded. Yeah. Sometimes
- 26:26Speaker 1: you can see the leech seeping up through the ground,
- 26:29Speaker 1: and that means that there's you need to address an issue.
- 26:32Speaker 1: It looks like the Beverly Hillbillies thing where Jed shot
- 26:36Speaker 1: and missed that rabbit and instead oil comes up. That's
- 26:39Speaker 1: what leech kind of looks like, bubbles up. But you
- 26:42Speaker 1: have to keep an eye on this place for decades
- 26:45Speaker 1: and decades and decades. Yeah, I think they sit in
- 26:49Speaker 1: here like thirty years. It needs to be maintained and
- 26:52Speaker 1: monitored at least at least I think that's definitely in
- 26:55Speaker 1: the line. So we'll talk a little more about UM
- 26:57Speaker 1: operating a landfill and how to well, I guess alternatives
- 27:02Speaker 1: lamb fills is a way to put it. Yeah, right
- 27:04Speaker 1: after this, So Chuck, let's say you are Tommy Landfill
- 27:30Speaker 1: and you want to fulfill your birthright and open your
- 27:32Speaker 1: own landfill, Tommy Landfill. And you got everything all set.
- 27:35Speaker 1: You got the municipal bonds. Old man, what was it, McTavish, mcvain,
- 27:41Speaker 1: something like that, McLean McClean. He he's been shouted down.
- 27:45Speaker 1: You've got the place open. How are you going to
- 27:46Speaker 1: operate a day to day? Well, what you're gonna do
- 27:50Speaker 1: is it's gonna be open to a couple of different things.
- 27:53Speaker 1: It's going to be open to the um municipality that
- 27:56Speaker 1: collects the trash. Of course, it's gonna be open to
- 28:00Speaker 1: militian companies, construction companies, and many of them, including the
- 28:04Speaker 1: one I go to, is open to you and me. Okay, um, so,
- 28:08Speaker 1: let's say I'm doing work on my house, which I've done,
- 28:11Speaker 1: and I end up with a bunch of junk in
- 28:12Speaker 1: the back of my pickup truck. I think it's called
- 28:14Speaker 1: construction waste. Yes, construction debris, which I try and re
- 28:18Speaker 1: use as much as I can. But you still end
- 28:20Speaker 1: up with construction debris. Did we do like a green
- 28:22Speaker 1: Renovation episode? Once? Yeah? I think so, And um, I
- 28:27Speaker 1: will drive my truck out there to the landfill into
- 28:29Speaker 1: Cab County and I will drive up onto a platform.
- 28:34Speaker 1: Is the first very first thing you do with a
- 28:35Speaker 1: it's a way station. Does it make you go up
- 28:37Speaker 1: on two wheels? And then you drive through the landfills
- 28:40Speaker 1: just on two wheels, off the stuck carn um. Then
- 28:45Speaker 1: you drive up on the way station and they weigh
- 28:47Speaker 1: your truck or your car or whatever with full of trash.
- 28:51Speaker 1: You go dump it. There's gonna be various stations. Um,
- 28:54Speaker 1: there's like a recycling station. There's a here's where a
- 28:58Speaker 1: yard waste goes. Kissing boo, just a kissing booth. Uh,
- 29:02Speaker 1: there's a dunk tank, you know, the traditional Catholic school
- 29:08Speaker 1: carnival um at the one into Capp County there's actually
- 29:12Speaker 1: free mulch and um compost if you want to pick
- 29:16Speaker 1: up stuff, which is kind of neat. But then eventually
- 29:19Speaker 1: you will be directed to, uh, here is your dump
- 29:22Speaker 1: and I pull up my truck at dump it in
- 29:24Speaker 1: a big dumpster. Then that dumpster has then taken to
- 29:27Speaker 1: the cell. I imagine I don't follow the route, but
- 29:31Speaker 1: that's what's supposed to happen. Does it make that bugs
- 29:34Speaker 1: Bunny conveyor belt song? Yes, someone wrote in and had
- 29:37Speaker 1: a bunch of song was Powerhouse. Yeah, Powerhouse. If you
- 29:40Speaker 1: look up, was that the one that you were thinking, Yes, totally. Um.
- 29:44Speaker 1: I can't remember the composer's name, but it was the
- 29:47Speaker 1: twentieth century composer who I think it was a old man.
- 29:49Speaker 1: It was something something Quintet. Yeah, I can't remember the
- 29:53Speaker 1: guy's name, but anyway, look up to something something Quintet, powerhouse,
- 29:58Speaker 1: and then I think it starts about Oh my us
- 30:00Speaker 1: a minute and a half in you'll be like, yeah,
- 30:01Speaker 1: that's it, ye dat dude, d d D you know
- 30:06Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Yeah. Absolutely, when I heard it, it
- 30:08Speaker 1: it was unmistakably looney Tunes. So I dump on my garbage, um,
- 30:14Speaker 1: and then I drive back out onto another platform, and
- 30:18Speaker 1: then they rewagh my truck. They do the math, and
- 30:21Speaker 1: then when they weigh it, um, they charge you a
- 30:23Speaker 1: tipping fee yeah, which is usually a per ton amount,
- 30:27Speaker 1: right yeah, and so you know it's not that much money.
- 30:30Speaker 1: Like I'll have a truck full of junk, go dump it,
- 30:32Speaker 1: and then it's like ten or twelve bucks. Of course,
- 30:36Speaker 1: it depends on how heavy the junk is, but in
- 30:38Speaker 1: my case, it was always you know, uh, light wood
- 30:42Speaker 1: and stuff like that. That I couldn't reuse nails. So
- 30:45Speaker 1: that's that's basically everything we just described as a dry
- 30:49Speaker 1: tomb landfill, right, that's right. But as as UM companies
- 30:54Speaker 1: like waste management and local municipalies have figured out, like, hey,
- 30:58Speaker 1: there's actually money in this rotting garbage. They've been looking
- 31:02Speaker 1: into ways to get more methane out of it. And
- 31:04Speaker 1: what they figured out is that you don't want a
- 31:08Speaker 1: dry tomb. You want to kind of moist a little
- 31:11Speaker 1: wet to moisture. Yeah, I was really surprised that this
- 31:16Speaker 1: isn't how it's done by now, because you can They said,
- 31:19Speaker 1: you know, what could take decades and a dry tomb
- 31:21Speaker 1: to break down, you can take just a few years
- 31:24Speaker 1: if you just add a little water, just a little
- 31:26Speaker 1: bit of water, Like there's already about ten to fifteen
- 31:28Speaker 1: percent moisture in a dry tomb, no matter how much
- 31:31Speaker 1: you try to keep it out, there's gonna be about
- 31:33Speaker 1: ten to They figured out that if you add another water,
- 31:38Speaker 1: you're going to greatly increase anaerobic um decomposition and it
- 31:43Speaker 1: can be leech aated. It's not like they have have
- 31:46Speaker 1: spring water exactly. It can be that stormwater you're collecting
- 31:49Speaker 1: it can be leech eight um, it can be gas
- 31:52Speaker 1: condensation from the gas that's coming off, and and basically
- 31:56Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're speeding up that anaerobic decomposition
- 32:00Speaker 1: that's already going on. So these things are breaking down
- 32:03Speaker 1: the organic stuff, the banana peals and the grass clippings
- 32:06Speaker 1: and all that stuff that's already in there. They're not
- 32:08Speaker 1: breaking down the styrofoam, at least not very quickly, so
- 32:11Speaker 1: that stuff is still going to be left behind. But
- 32:14Speaker 1: that's kind of that bury and walk awayte mentality as well. Still,
- 32:18Speaker 1: but at least the the density of your um landfill
- 32:22Speaker 1: is going to increase tremendously as all that other stuff decomposes,
- 32:26Speaker 1: and you're gonna have the added benefit of a lot
- 32:29Speaker 1: more methane production. Yeah, and a lot more methane and
- 32:32Speaker 1: a lot shorter time span. So what they've had to do,
- 32:35Speaker 1: because this is basically accelerated production, is create collection systems
- 32:41Speaker 1: that can handle They can't just throw the old methane
- 32:43Speaker 1: collection system in there that's used to collecting slowly, but
- 32:47Speaker 1: surely they have to do something collect a lot and
- 32:49Speaker 1: a little bit of time. Yeah, because they used to
- 32:51Speaker 1: collect the methane and that they would harvest it and
- 32:54Speaker 1: then burn it, which is sounds horrible because you're just
- 32:57Speaker 1: releasing all that stuff into the atmosphere, But it's better
- 33:01Speaker 1: than just vending it. Just vending methane. Methane is a
- 33:04Speaker 1: um much more potent greenhouse gas than even like c
- 33:09Speaker 1: O two like by far, so you don't want to
- 33:12Speaker 1: just vent that stuff, so you burn it off. But
- 33:14Speaker 1: even better is if you're going to burn it, at
- 33:16Speaker 1: least use it to power stuff. So by adding just
- 33:19Speaker 1: a little bit of water you can create this. You
- 33:22Speaker 1: can accelerate the anaerobic decomposition. And since the anaerobic decomposition
- 33:27Speaker 1: is what makes the landfill like a moving, living, evolving pile,
- 33:33Speaker 1: once that's done in ten years, you've got all the
- 33:36Speaker 1: methane you're going to get from it, the things that
- 33:39Speaker 1: can settle anymore, and you can walk away without monitoring
- 33:42Speaker 1: it for the next fifty years. Yeah. So the bioreactor
- 33:45Speaker 1: model seems like far and away the wave of the future,
- 33:48Speaker 1: right for sure. Um, I guess it's just a matter
- 33:51Speaker 1: of like building more of them. Yes, so we got
- 33:54Speaker 1: a couple of more things here before we close. For sure,
- 33:57Speaker 1: this is very interesting. One Neto thing that I didn't
- 34:00Speaker 1: I think I knew about Giant Stadium, but I didn't
- 34:02Speaker 1: know that. I just heard Jimmy Hoff was buried there. Well,
- 34:05Speaker 1: he might have just been in the in the landfill.
- 34:09Speaker 1: Apparently some sports arenas like Kemiskey in Chicago, Mile Haun
- 34:12Speaker 1: Stadium in Denver, Giant Stadium in New Jersey built on
- 34:16Speaker 1: landfills because they're cheap, cheap land and some speculation that
- 34:22Speaker 1: it might give athletes cancer. Yeah, apparently there are a
- 34:25Speaker 1: lot of Giants players are several um that came down
- 34:30Speaker 1: with cancer that one of the linebackers, Harry Carson, told
- 34:33Speaker 1: The New York Times, Um, it makes you wonder what's
- 34:36Speaker 1: going on around here, referencing the fact that it was
- 34:38Speaker 1: built on an old landfill. Yeah. And apparently there was
- 34:41Speaker 1: a game at Kemiskey Park in Chicago where there was
- 34:46Speaker 1: a I think a short stop like ran into a
- 34:51Speaker 1: piece of metal sticking up from the diamond and like
- 34:55Speaker 1: started like kicking away and didn't realized it was getting
- 34:58Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and the ground crew came out and investigated,
- 35:02Speaker 1: and it was Jimmy hoffa right, It was a copper
- 35:04Speaker 1: cuttle from the landfill they had moved its way up.
- 35:08Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Yeah, so they had to dig it
- 35:10Speaker 1: up and then refill it. Unbelievable. I'm sure that was
- 35:13Speaker 1: a lovely break for the fans. Yes, because around so
- 35:17Speaker 1: fast moving that they needed they needed to breathe. Uh.
- 35:22Speaker 1: I read an article on Slate called go West garbage
- 35:25Speaker 1: can exclamation point, and the main gist of it is,
- 35:31Speaker 1: when are we going to run out of space? It's
- 35:33Speaker 1: a great question. You can't keep bearing trash right? Um?
- 35:37Speaker 1: Apparently you can, because what they're doing now is there
- 35:42Speaker 1: there are fewer landfills than ever before. They're making these
- 35:44Speaker 1: huge landfills. Yeah, in nine six there were close to
- 35:50Speaker 1: seventy dumps in the US, and by two thousand nine
- 35:54Speaker 1: there were just under two thousand. Decline in less than
- 35:58Speaker 1: twenty five years, and so essentially what they're creating of
- 36:02Speaker 1: these super landfills. Um, which is kind of cool, fewer landfills, right,
- 36:08Speaker 1: But what's the problem, Um, do you know stinkier landfills?
- 36:14Speaker 1: What the problem is is you're now trucking garbage sometimes
- 36:18Speaker 1: five miles away to dump in the landfill because your
- 36:22Speaker 1: state may not even have one. So then they're looking
- 36:24Speaker 1: at you know, how much c O two is used
- 36:27Speaker 1: to do that. Um, like, is it really greener to
- 36:30Speaker 1: have fewer landfills and truck your garbage on a train
- 36:33Speaker 1: or in a truck every day? Uh? And they basically
- 36:37Speaker 1: say they don't really know which is which is more
- 36:41Speaker 1: environmentally friendly. Um, in different states, apparently there's a lot
- 36:45Speaker 1: of money in it. Different states have way more room
- 36:49Speaker 1: than others. And then some states don't even want that stuff.
- 36:52Speaker 1: Of course in the Northeast, like Massachusetts are like, we
- 36:54Speaker 1: don't want landfills than our state, Rhode Island. Same way
- 36:59Speaker 1: they send a to Springfield, they send it to Kentucky. Well, no,
- 37:02Speaker 1: remember the Trash Commissioner episode. Yeah, he accepted other states
- 37:07Speaker 1: to waste. Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Um, let me see,
- 37:11Speaker 1: Arkansas has enough capacity for more than six hundred years
- 37:15Speaker 1: of trash without any more facilities being opened. There you go,
- 37:18Speaker 1: We'll just send it all to Arkansas, whereas Rhode Island
- 37:22Speaker 1: only has twelve years remaining. New York State only has
- 37:24Speaker 1: twenty five years of capacity left. Send it to Arkansas.
- 37:28Speaker 1: So that's what they're doing. Um, Kentucky is ty dollars
- 37:32Speaker 1: per Ton making about six billion dollars a year, Ohio
- 37:36Speaker 1: twenty one billion dollars a year of available landfill spaces
- 37:40Speaker 1: because Ohio knows how to negotiate. That's right, the Buckeye State,
- 37:44Speaker 1: that's right. Don't tread on me White, that's New Hampshire Party.
- 37:50Speaker 1: I think it's either New Hampshire Vermont, one of those.
- 37:53Speaker 1: You know New Hampshire's is lived for your die right
- 37:56Speaker 1: and make their inmates make those license plates. Yeah. No,
- 37:59Speaker 1: don't tread on me was in a state motto. And
- 38:01Speaker 1: I think that was just flag with the cut up
- 38:03Speaker 1: snake right that the Tea Party adopted. Remember did they
- 38:07Speaker 1: adopt that? Yeah? So yeah. If you see a bumper
- 38:10Speaker 1: sticker with one of those flags on it, they're not
- 38:12Speaker 1: just like a history buff or anything. Yeah. Or if
- 38:14Speaker 1: it says who was John Galt? Yeah, and that that
- 38:17Speaker 1: that'll tell you something about the driver of that vehicle.
- 38:20Speaker 1: Was that a Tom Cruise movie? No, John Galt was
- 38:22Speaker 1: the main character, and Atlas shrugged. Oh yeah, I ran,
- 38:25Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Jack Reacher. If you want to know
- 38:29Speaker 1: more about landfills, you can type that word into the
- 38:32Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com And uh, I
- 38:34Speaker 1: said search bar. So it's time for listener mail I'm
- 38:38Speaker 1: gonna call this, uh, very sad email, but uplifting at
- 38:45Speaker 1: the same time. Hey, guys, two weeks ago, my amazing
- 38:47Speaker 1: and wonderful father in law, Walter passed away. We had
- 38:50Speaker 1: to drop everything, my husband and son and I and
- 38:53Speaker 1: fly from Florida to Germany, where he lived. He's been
- 38:56Speaker 1: in my world for twenty four my fifty years, and
- 38:58Speaker 1: I was so sad. I felt like I was going
- 39:00Speaker 1: to throw up all the time. When we arrived in Germany,
- 39:03Speaker 1: walking through the front door of the family home without
- 39:05Speaker 1: him there was one of the hardest things I've ever
- 39:07Speaker 1: had to do. It was and is devastating. My husband
- 39:10Speaker 1: and youngest son and I sat in a dark days
- 39:13Speaker 1: for days, mixing the crying mixed with crying and feeling lost.
- 39:18Speaker 1: Always listen to podcasts while I run, though, which I
- 39:20Speaker 1: do every day, And after ten days of being there
- 39:23Speaker 1: in Germany, I finally decided to cue up one of
- 39:25Speaker 1: your podcast while running. It was Blood Types. I laughed
- 39:28Speaker 1: for the first time in two weeks out loud. Guys.
- 39:32Speaker 1: It was so nice to laugh again, and it really
- 39:33Speaker 1: opened the door for me. I realized that we as
- 39:36Speaker 1: a family are going through was so tough, but I
- 39:38Speaker 1: also started to realize that if I could laugh, then
- 39:40Speaker 1: I could heal. Uh. Yesterday, my husband and I, still
- 39:44Speaker 1: in Germany, decided to go uh to walk to the
- 39:47Speaker 1: nursing home where my aunt lives, which is two and
- 39:50Speaker 1: a half hours through the forest, up and down hills.
- 39:53Speaker 1: I love this family. By the way, walking to the
- 39:55Speaker 1: nursing home like that, we of course, brought our thirteen
- 39:58Speaker 1: year old son, Oliver, who has mon After about twenty
- 40:00Speaker 1: minutes of walking, I handed on my phone and he
- 40:03Speaker 1: listened to UH three Stuff you Should Know podcast along
- 40:06Speaker 1: the way and is now hooked. He loves you guys.
- 40:10Speaker 1: My husband and I had a badly needed quiet, get
- 40:12Speaker 1: in touch with nature walk as a result, and we
- 40:14Speaker 1: didn't have to listen to our sun moan at all.
- 40:17Speaker 1: Uh more, long walks are in his future as long
- 40:19Speaker 1: as I have you guys on my phone. And Oliver
- 40:22Speaker 1: also asked me along the walk, wait a minute, mom,
- 40:25Speaker 1: These guys get paid to do this. And when I
- 40:28Speaker 1: said yes, I saw a sparkle in his eye. I
- 40:33Speaker 1: love this email boom that is from Jennifer and Jennifer
- 40:37Speaker 1: that is awesome. I Uh those mean the most to us. Yeah,
- 40:41Speaker 1: I mean that was a great top not to email,
- 40:43Speaker 1: great email and there was more to it even I
- 40:45Speaker 1: had to leave out some of it from link Jennifer right,
- 40:48Speaker 1: Jennifer and Oliver her Son and she doesn't even anonymous
- 40:52Speaker 1: husband anonymous husband named not But yeah, thanks a lot, Jennifer.
- 40:56Speaker 1: We appreciate you letting us know that that's a again
- 40:59Speaker 1: great email. And uh, if you out there want to
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