LEMBAR KERJA PESERTA DIDIK

HORTATORY EXPOSITION KELAS XI SMKN PRIGEN

Where does your trash end up?
Hey, I’m Amir and today you’re gonna find out what happens to your stuff, when you throw
in a magical place called “away”. “Wow!”. Have you ever wondered exactly where your stuff
goes when you throw away? Probably not. I mean, why should you? You’ve already done your
job, sorting through your waste. Isn’t it someone else’s problem now? Let’s dig a little deeper.
And get out of this “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Because “away” is actually a lot of
closer than you think. If your waste isn’t sent to an Asian country, it ends up here, in one of
the active landfills in the U.S.

So, what exactly is a landfill? It’s a pretty simple. Cities pay a company to dig a hole in the
ground, toss in the stuff we want to forget, and then put a cover on it. So we never have to
look at it again. Take this for example.

This is the Puente Hills Landfill, just a 10 minutes drive from West Covina, California. It’s 500
feet tall and covers 700 acres of land. It’s the biggest landfill in the U.S. To put in a perspective,
it’s taller than the statue of Liberty. And covers as much spaces as 530 American football
fields. So what actually happens to your stuff when it ends up in one of these landfills? Well,
not much really. It just kind a sits there, decaying itself and everything around it for a while.
But the landfills themselves, that’s a different story. One big problem with a landfill, is they
produce this toxic liquid called leachate. Leachate is basically all the nasty liquids that collect
from all the stuff in the landfill.
When you collect the trash and it’s got this sort of liquidity stuff at the bottom of the bag? It’s
kind a like that. But in a landfill, leachate is made of more than just pasta sauce mixed with
soda. We’re talking paint, pesticide, bleach, pail polish, medicine, battery acid. You know the
wholesome stuff. With tons and tons of garbage stacked on top of itself, all of the liquid waste
oozes down and becomes a slimy cocktails of toxic chemicals.
What are the company doing to make sure that the chemicals stay in the landfill? Engineers
have design liners and systems to collect the leachate, but the problem is the liners can be
punctured. And if the chemicals don’t leak out, wildlife can get into the landfill. And cause all
kinds of problems.

One time, hundreds of gophers and squirrels were killed. To prevent them from digging holes
and potentially leaking toxic chemicals into the San Francisco Bay. Let’s have a moment of
silence for the fallen. “I will remember you”.

Once a landfill is full, companies are required to continue monitoring the groundwater and
repairing leaks for 30 years. But after the post-closure period, their responsibility ends, and
it’s up to the public to clean up the mess.
So if you think about it. We aren’t paying landfill companies to dispose of our trash, we are
paying them to turn into future public health hazards. That we’ll end up footing the bill for.

There are 2,000 active landfills in the U.S, but with the average American throwing out about
four and a half pounds of garbage a day, running out of space is a real threat. Which means

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 LEMBAR KERJA PESERTA DIDIK
HORTATORY EXPOSITION KELAS XI SMKN PRIGEN
we’ll either have to open up more landfills or throw more stuff away to other countries. Those
solution smell like a steaming pile of crap to me.
So what can you do? Well. You can reduce your waste by choosing products that have longer
lifespan. Things can be reused and repaired. Like the good old days before everything was
single-use. And you can also choose to support companies that ethically source the
production of their stuff. And don’t use excess plastic packaging. With 79% of plastic ending
up in a landfill or the environment, more plastic is the last thing this planet needs. What are
your ideas for reducing waste on a systematic level? How can we design a future where we
stop waste before it’s created?
A. Work in a group of 3 students!
Name of group member:
1. …………….
2. …………….
3. ……………
B. Write the result of your discussion on the diagram below!
C. Arrange your group result into a text of hortatory exposition by using your own
words!

thesis

arguments

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