The book begins at the Puente Hills landfill, an artificial mountain near Los Angeles. It is thebiggest dump in America, 30 years old, 150 metres high and containing 130m tonnes ofrubbish within a 700-acre footprint. If it were a building, it would be among the 20 tallest inthe city. Building a rubbish pile is, it turns out, surprisingly high-tech. The mountain is agiant, putrid layer-cake, with dozens of strata of rubbish separated by soil and plasticliners designed to contain the brew of noxious chemicals that would otherwise leach intogroundwater. The rot produces methane, which is collected via a network of pipes thatpenetrate the mountain, and burned to produce electricity.
本书以朋地山垃圾场开头,朋地山垃圾场,靠近洛杉矶,大得看起来像一座假山。是美国最大的垃圾堆,30岁高龄,150米高,1.3亿吨,700英亩。假如它是一座建筑物的话,那就能名列该城市前20名了。建一座拉一堆可不是易事,事实证明,技术含量出奇的高。这座大山犹如一个腐烂的大蛋糕,几十层的垃圾,由土和塑料管隔开。设计塑料管的目的,是为了防止变质中的有毒化学物质浸入地下水。腐烂物产生沼气,经由管网收集,管网贯穿大山之中,然后燃烧发电。
From there, Mr Humes traces the history of garbage in America, beginning with New York sWhite Wings, an army of municipal rubbish collectors created to clean the city s stinkingstreets in the 19th century, through the heyday of backyard incinerators to the modern day, where the most common solutions often involve burying thestuff in the ground or dumping it in the sea. He talks to the researchers who are chroniclingthe plasticisation of the oceans, a swelling suspended solution of pulverised plastic. Andhe describes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous expanse of the Pacific Oceanwhere currents concentrate the trash over a continent-sized area.
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