Ok, obviously not what your were expecting me to lead with today, but it’s true.  Last week I go to spend the day at South Florida’s largest landfill owned and operated by Waste Management.  I wanted to see first hand how landfills actually operate and if my preconceived (misconceived) assumptions about landfills were actually remotely accurate.   I’ll start by saying this- it didn’t smell!  Unbelievable, I know, but true.  Maybe it would have been worse on a hot day, but if you couldn’t see the rectangular grassy hills, you wouldn’t know where you were.

Landfills today are very high tech, sophisticated, efficient operations.  They line the landfills so that nothing seeps into our water supply, only have one cell open at a time, harvest the methane, incinerate whatever possible, and clean the fumes so they never enter our atmosphere.  Moreover, the people who work there are very serious about protecting the environment and the safety of their fellow co-workers.

All that being said, these landfills are huge and that’s our fault.  We as a country produce such an obscene amount of garbage it’s truly baffling where it’s all going to go.  The landfills are brilliant, but things end up there because we haven’t found a better solution.  I’m glad our bags are going to help chip away at the problem.

I could go on and on, but her are a few shots from my excellent field trip…