Free Republic

“While in use, solar panels safely generate electricity without creating any air emissions. However, like any source of energy, there are associated wastes that need to be properly recycled or disposed of when solar panels reach their end of life,” said the EPA. “As the solar photovoltaic (PV) market grows, so will the volume of end-of-life panels.” By 2030, the United States is expected to have as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste. For comparison, the EPA says the U.S. municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2018 was 292.4 million tons. By 2050, the United States is...

The progressive Seattle Times has issued a warning to residents of the city by turning on neighboring Portland, Oregon, referring to the city as 'a landfill.' Columnist Jon Talton penned the piece, 'A tale of two cities: Portland offers a worrying example for Seattle,' writing that citizens should be concerned. In the article, Talton shared that one person he spoke with said Portland 'looks like the road to the landfill and, in some areas, the landfill itself.' The person who spoke with the author blamed the city's own 'preoccupations with grand abstractions such as 'social justice,' liberal policies, and high...

Heaps of trash, clothing, and items such as birth control pills are scattered across the southern border, John Rourke of Blue Line Moving discovered as he went to the Southern border ahead of his annual cleanup, documenting his findings along the way. Rourke, owner of Blue Line Moving, previously spoke to Breitbart News at the Turning Point Action summit in July, detailing his annual border cleanup, as he heads to the southern border every year on September 11 to clean up trash. “So I have the great American cleanup where I go to border towns, and I pick up trash...

ANDERSON, S.C. (WSPA) – From the smell to the unsightly view and constant noise, living near a landfill can be a raw deal. What’s worse, is finding out an expanding landfill is taking in out-of-state trash from as far away as New York. In this Consumer Investigation, 7NEWS learned for one county in particular, that violates a written agreement, and dozens of irate homeowners nearby have filed a lawsuit against the landfill. ... The landfill used to be owned by Anderson County but in the 90s it was sold to private owners, changed hands a few times and has grown...

On any given day, hundreds of birds gather at Baltimore County’s landfill in White Marsh, an unincorporated community just west of aptly named Bird River which drains...eventually the Chesapeake Bay. These massive flocks of birds... are doing what birds do: pooping and eating, then dropping landfill trash in nearby neighborhoods. And that’s not a fun reality for residents, good for environmental water quality, or the sanity of neighbors. So Baltimore County officials are considering hiring some aerial muscle to frighten away the nuisance birds. Early last year, Dan Vitilio, who lives in nearby Kingsville, made a trip to the landfill...

Newly released monitoring data shows that San Francisco’s Millennium Tower tilted a quarter inch during the four days it took to install the first test pile to bedrock last month. Veteran geotechnical engineer Bob Pyke said the sudden fluctuation is a telltale sign. Other experts say the water pressure drop is evidence that the method designed to limit settlement may not be working as well as hoped.

A home in a neighborhood near Chattanooga stands out -- it has hundreds of Amazon packages spread across its lawn. A neighbor said new boxes arrive daily, and many are half-full or empty. People who live in the area have contacted the police and city and written notes to the people who live in the home. "When it started out there were maybe 20 packages out there, and then 100 and then thousands," said Andrea Ellison, a neighbor. Neighbors say the pile of boxes in the front yard has been growing for months, and it's been worse than it is...

Wind energy companies will have the option of using decommissioned wind turbine blades as backfill material when reclaiming surface coal mine sites soon, thanks to a new bill signed into law earlier this year. But first, the state needs to set the rules. ... The blades.. are made of fiberglass. Fiberglass is a tricky material that can’t be recycled or easily repurposed. And as utility companies look to replace aging wind turbines, the machines’ blades are being buried in stacks at a handful of landfills around the country, ... old mine sites to suddenly become a landfills, which could affect...

Funny, no one seemed to consider what to do with the massive amount of wind turbine blades once they reached the end of their lifespan. Thus, the irony of the present-day Green Energy Movement is the dumping of thousands of tons of “non-recyclable” supposedly renewable wind turbine blades in the country’s landfills. Who would have thought? What’s even worse, is that the amount of wind turbine blades slated for waste disposal is forecasted to quadruple over the next fifteen years as a great deal more blades reach their 15-20 year lifespan. Furthermore, the size and length of the newly installed...

Normal, Ill. (WEEK) – We are about a year away from seeing self-driving vehicles on the road in Normal and industry leaders at Rivian Automotive say people should be excited for more jobs. The future is now, or at least right around the corner for Rivian. On Sunday, residents got to see the pickup and SUV models with a glimpse of what’s to come with the company’s skateboard technology. This was the first time the public and Governor JB Pritzker saw the models up close. Pritzker believes Rivian will boost our local economy. “I’m thrilled though also for the people...

CASPER, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now) One wind farm in Glenrock and two from the Saratoga area have partnered with the Casper Regional Landfill to dispose of their old wind turbine blades. More than 900 blades will be brought to the landfill beginning now until the end of next spring. The Casper Solid Waste Manager, Cynthia Langston, said that though most turbine blades can be reused, there are some that are simply un-recyclable. "Ninety percent of the turbines are completely reclaimed, recycled, and reused, but there is ten percent that is fiberglass, so those are coming to us from three different...

wind turbines only last for twenty years, and after that time the turbines must be torn down .. wind turbine blades cannot be recycled ... more than 100 wind turbine blades measuring 120 ft long have been dumped in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, landfill, but there’s a problem: the massive blades are taking up too much room ... A wind farm near Albert Lea, Minn., brought dozens of their old turbine blades to the Sioux Falls dump this summer. But City Hall says it won’t take anymore unless owners take more steps to make the massive fiberglass pieces less...

Amazon destroys millions of brand-new items including televisions, books and nappies it cannot sell, an investigation has revealed. Lorry-loads of goods, many still in their packaging, are dumped in sprawling landfill sites or incinerated. The shocking waste was revealed by undercover investigators who secretly filmed in one of the multi-billion-pound company’s enormous warehouses. Reporters posing as Amazon workers discovered an area called the ‘destruction zone’ where they covertly filmed staff loading pristine toys, unused kitchen equipment and flat-screen TVs into skips to be transported to dumps.

(CNN) -- Adrian Lamo, the former computer hacker who tipped off federal authorities to WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, says two men in the Boston area have told Lamo in phone conversations that they assisted Manning. Lamo said both men attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he refused to identify them because, he said, at least one of them has threatened him. One of these men allegedly told Lamo they gave encryption software to Manning and taught the Army private how to use it, Lamo said. Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, is being held in solitary confinement at a Virginia...

As Paul noted last night, Democrats (and some Republicans) turned John McCain’s funeral into an orgy of Trump-bashing. Evidently they thought it made political sense. It reminds me of another politicized funeral, 16 years ago. In the fall of 2002, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was running for re-election against Norm Coleman. Tim Pawlenty was running his first race for Governor. And, of course, it was the first midterm election of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the last days of the campaign, Wellstone’s campaign airplane crashed in northern Minnesota, killing Wellstone and a number of others. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale was...

In the middle of Rome's trendiest neighborhood, surrounded by sushi restaurants and nightclubs with names like Rodeo Steakhouse and Love Story, sits the ancient world's biggest garbage dump--a 150-foot-tall mountain of discarded Roman amphorae, the shipping drums of the ancient world. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around Monte Testaccio, from the Latin testa and Italian cocci, both meaning "potsherd." But despite its size--almost a mile in circumference--it's easy to walk by and not really notice unless you are headed for some excellent pizza at Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally stuck into the mountain's side. Most local residents don't know...

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against the city of Laredo's ban on plastic bags, and Austin's could be next. The Laredo Merchants Association brought a lawsuit against the city arguing that a state law on solid waste overrides the ban. Laredo passed the ordinance in 2014 banning plastic bags to cut down on the amount of waste in landfills and city streets. The city tried to argue that the bags did not fall under the definition of what the state considers a "container or package," but the Supreme Court decided it did. The Supreme Court ruled that the appeals...

ST. LOUIS – Beneath the surface of a St. Louis-area landfill lurk two things that should never meet: a slow-burning fire and a cache of Cold War-era nuclear waste, separated by just 300 meters. Government officials have quietly adopted an emergency plan in case the smoldering embers ever reach the waste, a potentially “catastrophic event” that could send up a plume of radioactive smoke over a densely populated area near the city’s main airport. Although the fire at Bridgeton Landfill has been burning since at least 2010, the plan for a worst-case scenario was developed only a year ago and...

Apple on Monday said it's on pace to beat last year's iPhone first-weekend record, and the stock opened higher on the news. "Customer response to iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus has been extremely positive and preorders this weekend were very strong around the world," the company said in a statement. "We are on pace to beat last year's 10 million unit first-weekend record when the new iPhones go on sale Sept. 25." According to an iPhone Inventory blog which tracks the back-order status of the various iPhone models, the wait time for the big-screen iPhone 6S Plus in China...

In a fitting honor of his legacy, the state of North Dakota named its new monster landfill as the Barack Hussein Obama Memorial Landfill to underscore the feelings of most Americans with an IQ above 10. "We wanted to do something to honor the president," says Republican State Senator Doug Perlman, who was the lead sponsor of the bill. "And I think a pile of garbage is a fitting tribute to Obama's presidency."