I have been searching for landfill decomposition time of several items commonly found in our municipal solid waste (listed at the end). While there's an abundance of estimates in the popular press, they do not cite peer-reviewed sources. Most of the articles seem to be citing each other. The numbers, as best as I can tell, originate from NOAA research in a marine context, not a landfill context. I have found some research on biodegradable plastics, but not on conventional plastics.
Does anyone know of good papers that estimate decomposition time of these (or similar) items, or a lab doing this research?
Many thanks in advance.
Plastic water bottle.
Plastic bag.
Cardboard box.
Stack of office paper.
Aluminum can.
Tin (steel) can.
Glass bottle.
Styrofoam food container.
Waxed milk carton.
When I did research about disposability of polymers in the mid 1990s together with two other colleagues, the research did not end due to some "obstructing" problems which I cannot talk about openly. We gathered "shocking" information such as:
Plastic items were manufactured without care or thorough studies about their later future disposal. For example, the polymers used in plastic bottles need 450 years (or more) to decompose in landfills. Plastic bags, that are used widely, take from 10 to 1000 years to decompose. Many man-made plastic items can take up to 1000 years to decompose in landfills but few of them take 10-50 years to degrade. {All these occur if there are no external interventions}.
Research into biodegradable polymers started few decades ago but we still cannot see big breakthroughs for extensive applications.
This " recent " article supports what we found in our relatively older research that has been stopped for unfortunate reasons.
https://www.longevitylive.com/live-better/how-long-does-it-take-for-your-plastic-trash-to-decompose/
To read it well, you may copy/paste it into winword & then select all to change the text into bold letters, as you know.
"longevitylive.com" is hardly a technical or academic journal. Can you provide a better data-based source of information? And please tell us more about research being stopped for "unfortunate reasons."
The late Bill Rathje from Ariz. St. published relevant data back in the 80's and early 90's relevant to the subject. His observations were practical - from mining of landfills. I was fortunate enough to have been associated with some of his work through my employer at the time. Dr. Rathje described ancient dried out food and newspapers dating back 30 and 40 years. Please remember, landfills are designed and operated to be stable, dry and anaerobic - effectively to slow if not eliminate biodegradation. The numbers in Nizar's article are inconsistent with Dr. Rathje's data-based findings. I can't find an accessible article but offer link to this summary - https://p2infohouse.org/ref/30/29559.pdf .
Nizar Matar Thank you for answering. I've seen a few articles like the one on longevitylive.com, but for my purposes I need an academic journal to cite.
Phil Geis Thank you for the resource of Bill Rathje - I've now looked him up as well as the article you posted. Also, always a good reminder to recall that landfills are designed to slow biodegradation.
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