Landfills: a lucrative and highly polluting market
Landfills: a lucrative and highly polluting marketReporterre - 22 Sep 2022
What to do with waste? They largely end up buried (and therefore not recovered) in landfills. These overflow, catch fire, pollute, smell bad... In short, they are very poorly managed.
[INVESTIGATION 1/4]
December 2021, Saint-Chamas, on the edge of the Etang de Berre, north of Marseille. A gigantic metal hangar vomited molten waste in a terrible smell. Toxic fumes saturated the surrounding air. The levels of fine particles measured were "equivalent to those of Beijing", says Dominique Robin, general manager of AtmoSud, the air quality control body in the region. For nearly a month, the fire ravaged this warehouse filled to the roof with ordinary industrial waste, DIB in administrative jargon: cardboard packaging, plastic, scrap metal which companies are trying to get rid of, in return for finance. Recyclage Concept 13, the company that owns the hangar, held an authorization to store 1 cubic meters. On the spot, the firefighters discovered thirty times more…
