Posted by Ruth Abatzoglou on February 22, 2006

Q: How long does it take to recycle a candy bar in a landfill in California?

A: I think you mean "how long does it take for a candy bar to completely breakdown in a landfill". Right? The answer will surprise you. Our current landfills are designed to prevent ANY breakdown of the materials present. Landfills today exclude water and air as much as they can and the bacteria that would normally compost the organic materials are unable to live. So, your candy bar will sit there year after year and not change. One professor took his students to a landfill that was many years old and they dug it up and were able to read newspapers that were 15 years old and also found totally intact hotdogs. Landfills are not a good answer to our waste materials.

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Rather than have material just sit in our landfills, we need to do much more recycling and put fewer items in the landfill to begin with. For items like food scraps, composting is an excellent way to return these nutrients to the soil for use in gardens, landscaping and even farm fields. I hope this helps you a bit. Thanks for asking.

John Wiessinger ( February 22, 2006)