TOO MUCH STUFF

ONE FREEZING COLD MORNING, I drove past the outer edge of Denver, Colorado, past Buckley Air Force Base, past the suburban neighbourhoods huddled at the edge of the Great Plains.

- By Chip Colwell

I saw rising from the prairie several low bumps, lifting from the horizon like icebergs. As I got close to them, I saw they were encircled by barbed wire and knew I had reached my destination.

I pulled into the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, cutely known as Dads. I was part of a tour, arranged by a local reporter. Ten people gathered around our guide, Doc Nyiro, a Dads manager, middle-aged, with a studious, geeky demeanour.

Nyiro began by telling us that Dads is open 24 hours a day, six days a week. Every day, 800 trucks arrive, culminating in about 2m tonnes of refuse a year. We watched the trucks pulling into the weigh station. "It just doesn't slow down," Nyiro said. "Truck after truck." Nyiro took us to an area where a new cell was being constructed: the foundation for a new mountain of trash. It was 10 hectares in size and lined with clay and crushed glass to prevent the liquid that would gather as the rubbish breaks down from leaking into the groundwater.

Once completed, the cell will be filled with waste, and would reach 90 metres high within two years.

Next, Nyiro took us to an active landfill area. We watched as a line of trucks stopped around us to empty out everything imaginable. "It looks like they just took all the contents of my apartment and dumped it here," a man on the tour said, not joking. The wind whipped trash into the air like snow as 100-tonne tractors compressed couches and cookie boxes and everything in between into thick strata that contain the full record of modern life. The result: a dry tomb of waste that will endure for millennia.

Nyiro then led us to a tragically small area of Dads dedicated to gathering recyclable and compostable materials. At the final stop, we visited an electricity plant, with old train motors powered by methane released from decomposing trash. The plant produces enough electricity to power 2,500 homes a year.