Mountains of decomposing garbage release about 10 million metric tons of methane each year in the United States alone. To reduce gas from landfills, communities should start treating them more like backyard gardens, a report in an upcoming Environmental Science & Technology suggests.
In field tests at a landfill in Louisville, Ky., Morton A. Barlaz of North Carolina State University in Raleigh and his colleagues tried a new twist on the practice of covering garbage with soil. That practice keeps odors and rat populations down, but the North Carolina researchers reasoned that using compost laden with microbes could have the additional benefit of reducing methane emissions.