Is compacting trash good for the environment?

Actually that is bad. Today's land fills are not dumps. The bottom is lined with heavy vinyl plastic that keep the fluid from leaching in to the ground water. The leach is then pumped back to flow over the trash again and again. This helps the waste and paper decompose faster.

As the waste decomposes, it emits methane gas that is collected and used to run the power and heating of the facility making then totally self sufficient from the power grid. Also the waste shrinks to a smaller size.

This gets even more complex from here. But back to your question . By cramming your paper into a bottle, it can't decompose properly and it also adds to the cost of recycling the bottles.

Check out "How Landfills Work"

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/gre...

Herb

I do the same.

I think it's good because:

1. Compacting the garbage means using less plastic bags. Great for the environment.

2. It means Garbage Trucks can make less trips back and forth to the dumpster - Great for the environment.

P.S. for the same reason, when I recycle plastic, I take out all the air from the bottle, squieze it tight and close the cap to keep it that way...

When the garbage truck comes to empty the dumpster, it uses its compactor to crush all of the garbage together, anyway.

When it comes to being environmentally friendly, volume isn't really very important. Even uncompacted, space itself isn't exactly the problem--it's the actual amount of material being thrown out. So compacting the garbage after its picked up is useful so more garbage can be packed into the truck, but it's not really environmentally friendly.

However, because you compact it and such before throwing it out, that means you're using less garbage bags, which means there's actually less material going into the truck. What you do saves on materials and on garbage, so that's environmentally friendly. It'd be much better to reduce the actual amount of garbage, of course, as the bags only make up a small part of what gets thrown out.

I don't think it is either, saving space is probably good, but i don't think it's really going to make a difference either way. It wont help the decomposition process because its the same amount of garbage. Also bottles should be recycled and stores like HEB have an area which you can recycle plastic bags.

~*Elle*

Yes, because it limits the amount of waste in landfill which means the landfill sites will take less time to decompose.

May be,It reduces volume,I doubt,It may produce the harmful gases,after some times due to the process of degradation.

it would be compacted but doing it beforehand helps cut down on the number of bags used to cart it away

I can be