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How Fast Is the Landfill Filling? A County Trash Hearing

Grade 8 argument practice: county landfill records show how population growth and trash per person change land, air, water and habitats.

Grade 8ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS3-4

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
10 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students analyze population and per-person data to explain changes in total resource use and waste.
Students argue from evidence how growing waste affects the atmosphere, water, land and living things.

How to use

Use during a unit on human impacts. Let students check each total in Table 1 with a calculator, then hold a short mock hearing using their open responses.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS3-4

Argue how growth in human population and resource use affects Earth's systems.

Preview

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Name Date

How Fast Is the Landfill Filling? A County Trash Hearing

Use county trash records to argue how population growth and per-person use affect Earth's systems.

Part 1: People and trash

Read the passage and Table 1, then answer questions 1–5. 1 tonne = 1,000 kg.

The Hollow Creek Landfill

1Almost all of Kestrel County's household trash ends up in one place: the Hollow Creek Landfill, built in an old valley pasture beside a small creek. Next month the county board will hold a hearing on what to do when the landfill fills up. Some residents want a bigger landfill, while others want the county to send less trash there in the first place. Eighth grader Saoirse Mbatha plans to speak at the hearing, so she asked the county's waste planner, Mr. Tobias Lindgren, for the records behind the debate.

2Mr. Lindgren sent the numbers in Table 1. The county weighs every truck that enters the landfill, so the totals are measured, not guessed. The "per person" column is the total divided by the number of people in the county. In 2012 the county started picking up bottles, cans and paper at the curb for recycling. In 2020 the landfill had room for about 1,260,000 more tonnes of trash. The county's population is expected to reach about 160,000 by 2030.

3A landfill affects more than the ground it sits on. When food scraps, yard trimmings and paper rot under layers of trash, with little oxygen, they give off landfill gas that is about half methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Hollow Creek has pipes that collect much of this gas, but some escapes. Rain that soaks down through the trash picks up dissolved substances and becomes a dark liquid called leachate. A plastic liner and drains catch most of it, but the county tests wells near the creek every few months in case any leaks. Every day, workers also dig soil from a hillside to cover the newest trash.

4The board is weighing two plans. Under Plan A, the county would open a new 30-hectare landfill area on forested land next to the old site when the current one is full. Under Plan B, the county would also collect food scraps and yard trimmings to turn into compost at a farm. Mr. Lindgren estimates that Plan B would cut the trash landfilled per person to about 450 kg per year. The graph shows what the landfilled trash was made of in 2020.