Talking Trash About Climate Change

When most people think about greenhouse gas emissions, they think about gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants. They don’t talk trash. That’s not the case with Environmental Integrity Project attorneys Ryan Maher and Leah Kelly. They recently authored a ground-breaking investigative report that revealed that Maryland’s landfills are releasing four times more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the official state estimates. When EIP’s report, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Maryland’s Landfills,” was released, the Maryland Department of the Environment immediately issued a statement confirming the report’s conclusions and correcting the state’s greenhouse gas inventory. Across the country, researchers are finding far higher than anticipated methane emissions from municipal landfills and their decaying food waste – and the issue is stirring government action. Maryland is now holding a series of public meetings as it looks to issue new regulations to better control methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from dumps. We take a road trip out to one of Maryland’s largest landfills – Baltimore’s Quarantine Road landfill – with Maher and Kelly to get down into the nitty gritty about calculating greenhouse gas emissions from waste – a major global issue.