🗑️🌍 How Landfills Create Pollution on Land and in Water (Oceans)

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🤔 What is a landfill?

A landfill is a place where garbage is dumped and buried.

It includes:

• Food waste 🍎
• Plastic 🧴
• Paper 📄
• Chemicals ☠️

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🏞️ How landfills pollute the land

1️⃣ Soil pollution

• Rainwater passes through garbage
• It picks up dirty chemicals
• This dirty liquid is called leachate

👉 Leachate seeps into soil and makes land unhealthy 🌱❌

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2️⃣ Harm to plants & animals

• Polluted soil cannot grow healthy plants
• Animals may eat or step on toxic waste 🐾

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💧 How landfills pollute water (rivers & oceans)

3️⃣ Leachate reaches water

• Leachate flows into:
  • Underground water
  • Rivers
  • Lakes

Eventually, it reaches the ocean 🌊

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4️⃣ Plastic travels to the sea

• Lightweight trash (plastic bags, bottles)
• Carried by wind 🌬️ and rain 🌧️
• Ends up in rivers → oceans

🧠 Ocean plastic harms fish, turtles, and birds 🐢🐟

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🌊 What happens in the ocean?

• Animals mistake plastic for food
• Water becomes polluted
• Coral reefs get damaged
• Microplastics enter the food chain 🍽️

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😷 Other problems caused by landfills

• Bad smell 🤢
• Methane gas (causes climate change 🔥)
• Breeding place for flies and rats 🐀

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🧠 Easy way to remember

Landfill pollution starts on land and travels to water

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🌱 How can we reduce landfill pollution?

• Reduce waste 🚯
• Reuse items 🔁
• Recycle ♻️
• Avoid plastic
• Compost food waste 🌿

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📌 One-line summary

Landfills pollute land and water when dirty liquids and plastics escape and reach rivers and oceans.

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