 So when we toss away our trash, it doesn't disappear. It goes somewhere, and where it goes is to a landfill. And in the metropolitan area, it heads down the pike about 140 miles to Arlington, Oregon. Now it's a large landfill. It's managed by Waste Management Corporation. We're at the Columbia Ridge landfill about 140 miles from Portland out in the Columbia River Gorge. This is Will Spears, former site manager. Will, can you tell me what we're going to actually see here in the train yard today? Well, right now you're seeing the train pull into the yard. This train is carrying waste from the city of Seattle. It currently has 43 cars on it. We receive six to eight trains a week from the Seattle area. These primarily have household waste on them. We receive approximately 7,000 to 8,000 tons per day at this facility. And does all of the garbage that comes to the landfill come in by rail? The garbage comes in by both rail and truck. We try to study what's the most fuel efficient manner. Portland metro area is actually close enough to us that it's actually more efficient to haul that garbage by truck. But with the Seattle area and the distance that it is from the landfill, it's most efficient to haul it down by rail. We're watching them unload the intermodal containers of waste off of the train and loading them on the trucks to head up to the landfill. So Will, you said that everything that's here is household waste. Can you explain to me exactly what household waste is? Household waste is really just everything that you and I throw out at our homes. It's what's left over after we've recycled. Hopefully we've done a good job of recycling and we've taken as much out of that waste as possible but this is basically what's left over. So everything that's here today, this is its final home. This can't be recycled. This is what ends up in a landfill. This is the final resting place for this waste, yes. Okay, sure. We're standing within the lined area of the landfill right now and this is where we unload the garbage out of the containers. Right behind you is the tipper and the truck backs up on that tipper, the truck unhooks and then that picks the entire trailer up and it dumps out the garbage. Over here you're seeing our compactors running. What they're doing is they're packing waste into place. They're making a good solid deck. They're maximizing the airspace that we use here in the landfill. So I see, Will, that here there's some soil that's kind of a different color. It's darker black and they're pushing it around. What's that all that about? Down below us here, this dirt is basically waste soil. The waste soil actually comes on the train with the garbage from industrial cleanups. We take that soil and we actually stockpile it until the end of the day and then we actually use that soil to cover the waste at night and that basically helps keep everything in the landfill and it also, you know, helps keep the birds away and things like that. If you look around, you don't see really any seagulls or anything like that. We do that every day and then as the landfill comes up eventually when it's complete then we'll place a final cover over the top of the landfill and that final cover will be seeded back to the natural grasses that were here originally. If you look around, you'll see that there's a lot of windmills here. What that means is that there's a lot of wind every day. So what we put in for one of our environmental protections is this 30-foot wind fence right here behind us and this fence is meant to contain any blowing plastic or other litter and keep it contained within the landfill. Environmental protection is just a number one thing for waste management. We've been operating for nearly 20 years and we have an excellent environmental track record. Some of the features of our systems, our protection systems are one, we have groundwater monitoring wells around the landfill to ensure that there's nothing getting out also gas probes that are around in their monitor on an ongoing basis. And then we have our liner system. Methane is generated from the decaying garbage within the landfill. These are collectors. These actually draw the gas out of the landfill. We have 65 of these throughout the landfill. That gas will be routed over to this energy plant and inside the energy plant are engines which will turn generators, which will then create electricity. This is the generator. This unit is 0.8 megawatts, which is approximately enough power to power 800 homes. And is waste management really invested in this as a strategy for the future? Yes. Energy plants are definitely an investment that waste management is making across the country. Waste management currently has over 100 of these plants and is building another 60 more. So Will, where are we? This is a good perspective of our site and a lot of the buffer property that we own. Waste management owns 13,000 acres. 10,000 of those acres are really set aside for wildlife and agriculture. You also see the Leaning Juniper Wind Project that's behind us. That is, we have 67 wind turbines on site. Those generate over 100 megawatts of power. So what are some other avenues that waste management is exploring that are both sustainable and profitable for them in the long term? We really see waste as a resource. Between the green energy and the recycling, that accounts for roughly 49% of waste management's annual revenues. First thing is environmental protection. That's A number one. Up in Seattle, we have a large fleet of collection trucks and we just recently changed all those trucks over to press natural gas to reduce the pollution in Seattle. With the recycling, we have just recently constructed in Washington County a processing facility to remove concrete, asphalt, cardboard, and any other metals or any other recyclables that we can get out of that waste stream. You've said that we're getting better and better at actually producing less waste, but with what you see actually coming into the landfill, can we do better? You are going to see that there are things that could have been recycled. But at this point, now that they've been co-mingled with the garbage, they're contaminated and can no longer be recycled. So that's why we go back to that point that it's really important to separate that from the very beginning. There's always more that we can do and really I think where that starts is at home. I think if we can reuse things rather than throwing them away, if we can repair things rather than just going out and buying something new, if we can look to buy things that aren't heavily packaged, all those things are good things that we can do at home. And I think there's more that we can do. But we all need to do our part to make sure that less stuff actually gets to the landfill. I'd like to thank Will for letting us be at the Columbia Ridge landfill today. And thank you, Lisa, for all your work in advancing sustainability. It was pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Lisa Bell, bringing you the tools to be sustainable today.