There are many landfills in the world, but we would like to present the 10 largest specialized landfills in the world, that is, technical landfills that collect a certain type of “garbage” on their territory: tires, cars, trains, etc.

1. Timber Cemetery



Although it is really just an open-air lumber yard, the tens of thousands of fallen dead trees make a depressing impression. The timber warehouses located in Byholm, Sweden are the largest in the world.

2. Tank cemetery

Kharkov Tank Repair Plant in Ukraine. More than 6.5 thousand tanks have accumulated on its sites. T-64, T-72, T-80 - here there is everything for fans of history and tank building.

3. Fire truck cemetery

These machines once helped save many lives, but now they rust and gather dust in the open air. Technicians bring old decommissioned fire trucks from all over Los Angeles to this cemetery.

4. Tire Graveyard

The largest tire dump in the world is located in Kuwait. And it grows year by year.

5. Stunningly beautiful glass cemetery

Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California is the world's largest landfill for broken bottles and glass. When local authorities tried to clean up the beach, they removed all the trash except the broken glass, because it was impossible to remove it. But over the years, the waves have sharpened and polished the pieces of glass, turning the entire beach into something amazing.

6. Car Graveyard

One of the world's largest auto and other vehicle graveyards is located in Tacoma.

7. Bus Graveyard

Murrieta, California is one of those places that showcases human wastefulness. Dozens of buses will no longer go anywhere.

8. Ship Graveyard

These Google Earth satellite images will not leave anyone indifferent. The port of Nouadhibou, located in Mauritania, is one of the largest ship graveyards in the world.

9. Train Graveyard

In southwestern Bolivia lies a desert where more than 8,000 trains rust and gradually collapse.

10. Airplane Graveyard


Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., is home to a massive aircraft graveyard containing $35 billion worth of old aircraft. The 2,600-acre wasteland is home to 4,200 aircraft, 80 percent of which are being scrapped for parts for the U.S. Air Force.

On September 21, the Week of the Global Action “Clean the Planet from Garbage” begins, designed to draw attention to the problem of environmental pollution. Today our selection includes places that need cleaning first.

Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana

All computers end up in hell - the Agbogbloshie landfill in the capital of Ghana, Accra. This is one of the largest electronic waste dumps in the world. Almost all developing countries dump electronic waste at this landfill.

Agbogbloshie in Accra is a workplace for several thousand local residents who try to find the necessary parts among the waste. They try to extract non-ferrous metals from completely faulty devices using the burning method, as a result of which tons of toxins are released into the atmosphere.

Despite the huge amount of harmful substances released by the waste, none of the workers have any protective equipment. The average wage of people working at a landfill 12 hours a day is about $2 per working day.

This is the largest landfill on the entire globe. It is located in the North Pacific Ocean. The main waste exported here is plastic. The area of ​​this gigantic landfill is about 6 thousand square kilometers. Toxins released by decomposing waste poison both animals and humans. It is mainly marine life that suffers from the overgrown landfill, among which there are many mammals: whales and dolphins. The archipelago in the Hawaiian Islands, where garbage is dumped, is incompatible with the life of living organisms. However, a large number of people come to the islands who want to find something useful there. For many of them this is the only source of income.

New landfill, New York, USA

Once upon a time in this largest metropolis there was an old giant landfill where waste from all over the city was taken. In 2001, the old landfill was closed and a new one was opened in its place the same year.

13 thousand tons of waste are dumped daily at this huge landfill. The New York landfill even has its own local attractions, such as a huge mountain of garbage 25 meters high. There are not as many tramps at this dump as at Grye.

Puente Hills, Los Angeles, USA

8,000 tons of garbage per day and several thousand trucks of garbage every day. Quite a lot for the city of angels and the sun, considering, for example, that in neighboring Canada the largest landfill is half the size of Puente Hills in Los Angeles.

UK collective landfills

Although the British are concerned about the huge amount of waste in their landfills, they cannot yet cope with this problem. The UK alone throws out twice as much waste as all the eurozone countries combined, although Britain is far from the first place in terms of population.

Honestly, it's amazing that these places actually exist.

But... humanity is gradually becoming overgrown with garbage. And although the fantasies of the authors of the cartoon “Walli” about how our planet turned into one huge landfill because of him remain a fiction, there is more and more garbage on Earth. But garbage is different from garbage. And if heaps of ordinary household garbage are commonplace, then it’s hard to believe in specialized storage facilities for some things. However, they do exist.

Great American Tire Junkyard

In the 1950s, an American named Ed Philbin decided that sooner or later old tires would be worth serious money - and began collecting them. Over about 30 years, he collected about 42 million old tires - all of them were lying in one big pile near Highway 5 in California and no one really cared - not even local authorities.

In the late 1980s, either Philbin got tired of waiting, or realized that “black gold” is not about old tires, and sold his 42 million tires (but not land) to some private companies that built a small enterprise nearby to convert old rubber into new electricity. It was then that the project attracted the attention of the authorities - they did not like that the plant began to actively burn rubber, smoking (literally) the sky. Their concern was also caused by the fact that the tire dump was not organized, and any fire there could lead to serious problems.
And so it happened - at the end of 1989, lightning struck the landfill and started a fire. The tires burned for a month, and no one could do anything about them - the firefighters simply could not cope with the fire. In the end, millions of tires burned without being converted into electricity. Philbin took the risk of resuming the use of old tires, but the authorities quickly put a stop to his efforts by filing several lawsuits against him.

Chernobyl. Sump for contaminated equipment

Everyone knows about the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, many are aware of the efforts made to eliminate the consequences, and how many human and other resources were involved. But few people thought about what happened to the technology with which they fought the consequences of the disaster.
The most contaminated part of it was either buried in burial grounds, or even placed as the basis of a sarcophagus that covered the affected part of the nuclear power plant. However, until recently, most of the cars and helicopters stood (stood for decades!) in a special settling tank near the Ukrainian village of Rassokha.

A huge field filled with cars makes a depressing impression. Or did it produce? Some sources claim that the equipment has already been disposed of, but photos on Google Maps show that the landfill still exists.

Airplane graveyard in the USA

The Arizona Military and Civil Aircraft Cemetery (Tucson, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base) claims to be the largest aviation necropolis in the world. Its area is more than 6,500 hectares, and on this territory 40 different spacecraft, as well as over 4,000 aircraft, are slowly being destroyed.

It appeared immediately after the Second World War as a kind of storage museum. The location was chosen for its dry climate and hard soil, which made it possible to store aircraft on unprepared sites. According to experts, the total value of all objects located in the Arizona cemetery is estimated at approximately $35 billion.

Giant timber deposits in Sweden

Hurricane Gudrun (Erwin), which hit Northern Europe in January 2005, caused real disasters in Sweden and Denmark - these countries bore the brunt of the disaster.
An unusual consequence of this storm was the creation of the world's largest repository of fallen timber.

The careful Swedes carefully collected most of the trees destroyed by the hurricane and, in the vicinity of the city of Byholm, created a huge warehouse about a kilometer long, consisting of several rows of stacked logs. The total volume of wood collected there “at its peak” was estimated at 75 million cubic meters. Recycling of trees began in 2008 and has not yet been completed.

Glass Beach - the largest repository of small pieces of glass

Many of us as children hunted on the beaches for small colorful pieces of glass - pieces of multi-colored glass that the sea and time had made smooth, round and safe. However, in the USA there is a place where these pieces of glass are in abundance. This beach in Northern California is called Sea Glass Beach, and it is located next to Fort Bragg.

Of course, the pieces of glass appeared on the beach for a reason. The fact is that this rocky ocean coast was actively used as a landfill in the mid-20th century. What else can you do with it? It’s inconvenient to swim there, all rocks. And the garbage had to go somewhere. Moreover, local residents did not stand on ceremony with this landfill and simply set it on fire from time to time to make room for new garbage. It is clear that glass does not burn very readily, so very soon the beach was covered with broken glass, which, under the influence of the waves, became small multi-colored pieces of glass.
At one point, the authorities closed the landfill, the remaining garbage was either washed into the ocean, or was stolen by birds, but the glass... the glass remained. Today you can walk there barefoot and collect small pieces of glass.

Graveyard of Giant Ships

Chittagong is the second largest city in Bangladesh and one of the largest ports in the country and Southeast Asia. And in its vicinity there is the famous cemetery of giant ships, which is annually replenished with dozens of new “guests” simply abandoned by their owners. It’s good for shipowners - they don’t have to pay for the disposal of old ships. Well, for local residents, these ships are an inexhaustible source of income - they carry everything that is possible and what is not allowed, including plating elements.

This business is extremely dangerous - dozens of people die from accidents at the landfill every year, but who will stop such a risk when there is an opportunity to earn money? The authorities pretend that they don’t like this dump, but for a bribe, to this day you can leave literally any ship and in any condition on the shore.

Based on materials:

During the hot summer period, the problem of waste disposal is urgent, in particular the problem of landfill fires, which causes serious damage to the world ecology. We decided to draw attention to the current situation with a selection of the 5 largest landfills in the world.

Agbogbloshie in Accra, Republic of Ghana

All computers go to hell - Agbogbloshie in Accra. This is one of the largest electronic waste dumps in the world. Almost all developing countries dump electronic waste at this landfill. Agbogbloshie in Accra is a workplace for several thousand local residents who try to find the necessary parts among the waste. They try to extract non-ferrous metals from completely faulty devices using the burning method, as a result of which tons of toxins are released into the atmosphere. Despite the huge amount of harmful substances released by the waste, none of the workers have any protective equipment. The average wage of people working at a landfill 12 hours a day is about $2 per working day.

This is the largest landfill on the entire globe. It is located in the North Pacific Ocean. The main waste exported here is plastic. The area of ​​this gigantic landfill is about 6 thousand square kilometers. Toxins released by decomposing waste poison both animals and humans. It is mainly marine life that suffers from the overgrown landfill, among which there are many mammals: whales and dolphins. The archipelago in the area where garbage is dumped is incompatible with the life of living organisms. However, a large number of people come to the islands who want to find something useful there. For many of them this is the only source of income.

New landfill, New York

Once upon a time in this largest metropolis there was an old giant landfill where waste from all over the city was taken. In 2001, the old landfill was closed and a new one was opened in its place the same year. 13,000 tons of waste are dumped daily in a huge landfill. The New York landfill even has its own local attractions, for example, a huge mountain of garbage 25 meters high. There are not as many tramps at this dump as at Grye.

Puente Hills, Los Angeles

8,000 tons of garbage per day and several thousand trucks of garbage every day. Quite a lot for the city of angels and the sun, considering, for example, that in neighboring Canada the largest landfill is half the size of Puente Hills in . For extreme tourists, this is not the most attractive landfill, because there are almost no people here.

Although the British are concerned about the huge amount of waste in their landfills, they cannot yet cope with this problem. The UK alone throws out twice as much waste as all the eurozone countries combined, although Britain is far from the first place in terms of population.

In 1948, the Freshkills landfill became the first prototype for burying waste in waste sand and clay quarries, and the technology itself was invented by English engineers before the war. The decision to create Freshkills is made by New York State Health Commissioner William Carey, who a little later will propose the first improvement: layering layers of garbage with layers of ash from local boiler rooms. The ashes, which were considered trash like regular household waste, helped control the terrible smell of rot that was carried by the wind for miles around.

The state leadership considered the project a successful solution to two pressing problems at once: the beneficial use of Staten Island's wetlands and the unloading of old landfills around the city. True, there were timid remarks from biologists and local residents about the strange disappearance of the birds that traditionally lived in those places, but few people paid attention to this: in the 40s, ecology had not yet become a global problem. In addition, the project was planned for 20, maximum 25 years, and in the place of Freshkills by the mid-60s, according to the archives of the urban planning commission, a microdistrict with residential, recreational and industrial facilities was supposed to grow.

Instead of ambitious plans, the state administration decides to strengthen Freshkills with two factories for the repair of landfill equipment: excavators, tractors and bulldozers - piers for unloading garbage barges and several first wooden and then reinforced concrete bridges for city garbage trucks. After some time, 3 administrative buildings and a dozen checkpoints appeared: it became increasingly difficult to control the expanding economy.

Gradually, packs of stray dogs and cats, as well as the traditional inhabitants of landfills - rats, appear at Freshkills. Rodents multiply so quickly that flocks of hawks, falcons and owls are specially relocated to the landfill to combat disease carriers. Miraculously, the birds take root in the ever-smoldering toxic landfill, and Freshkills becomes a wild bird sanctuary, and rat populations actually decline.

For the first time, Freshkills management was forced to think about the consequences of thoughtless waste management by the situation in 1987, when tons of medical waste washed up on the beaches of New Jersey. At first, no one understood where the dangerous gift came from, until oceanologists tracked the current in the area of ​​the incident and found the culprit for the spoiled beach season. It turned out that Freshkills' mountains of garbage were collapsing under their own weight, releasing debris and toxic leachate into the water. The beaches of New Jersey were empty, and the management of the landfill was deciding what to do with the new problem.

However, no protective screens or embankments could save the Atlantic Ocean from pollution: by the early 90s, 90% of the total volume of New York State waste was transported to Freshkills, and 20 barges with a carrying capacity of 650 tons arrived at the landfill every day. It was estimated that if the landfill accepted waste all day long, within 1.5 months the Freshkills landfill would be the highest point on the entire east coast.

The history of the largest landfill in the world ended with the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when the debris of collapsed skyscrapers was transported to Freshkills, as the MSW landfill closest to the city (in total, about a third of the total volume was removed). As the NYPD believed, along with parts of the destroyed buildings, the remains of the dead could be in the landfill, so police officers and forensic specialists continued to search the landfill. The entire time spent by all working groups of specialists on searches is 1.7 million hours. Of course, the Freshkills administration decided to suspend waste collection at this time.

Still more bodies 4 000 the dead are considered unfound, and in memory of the victims of the terrible tragedy, it was decided to erect a memorial in the future Freshkills park.

At the end of 2001, Freshkills management announced a competition for a landfill reclamation project, sponsored by the New York State administration and local charities. The winner was the architect James Corner, who proposed the idea of ​​​​creating a huge park on the site of the landfill, 3 times larger than Central Park. The work is designed for 30 years, because only after 20 years the soil will again be suitable for economic activity, but for now there is an exclusion zone around the reclaimed Freshkills.

And although people are prohibited from coming here, the first four-legged inhabitants of the future park have already firmly settled here: to date, biologists have recorded populations of 200 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, including ontadras, hares, raccoons, white-tailed deer and others.

According to the James Corner project, the park will have 5 zones, with handball and football courts, and tens of kilometers of bicycle paths. The park will produce the necessary electricity on its own: in 2013, authorities announced the start of construction of an array of solar panels, which will also provide energy to about 2,000 residential buildings on Staten Island.

For a very long time, the territory of the former Freshkills landfill will remind humanity why one cannot just consume without thinking about the consequences. Share the story of the Freshkills landfill, tell as many people as possible - the future of ecology is in our hands!

The territory of the United States was almost not affected by global military conflicts, so the country did not need to spend enormous resources on restoring infrastructure and economic structures, and citizens did not have to think about the survival of their families.

Thus, the New World becomes an ideal platform for the creation and implementation of an economic model of increasing consumption: every year more and more goods appear on store shelves, and more and more diverse waste appears in the trash cans of Americans. It soon becomes clear that the old landfills are no longer able to cope with the ever-increasing traffic, so in 1948 a solid waste landfill was created in Staten Island with the telling name Freshkills (fresh - fresh, new, unspoiled; to kill - kill, kill). And although the landfill was intended as a temporary measure, over the 50 years of its existence it grew to 2,200 acres (890 hectares), and among the people the landfill received the nickname “the dirtiest place on earth.”

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