Due to the sheer amount of waste that Americans produce, utilizing landfills is a necessity to appropriately dispose of waste. Humans have possessions that they do not want anymore such as old computers or candy bar wrappers. This trash is why America decided to construct trash cans and create a system of throwing trash away elsewhere. The solution for this trash problem was landfills. Landfills are as enormous as a football stadium and have holes that are filled to the brim with garbage. There are over one hundred million citizens in America. With such a large population, America has ridiculous numbers of landfills. Unfortunately, these landfills are necessary to keep the trash under control. With that, enormous holes are being gouged in the Earth and filling up quickly. This is forcing landfill operators dig even deeper into the ground. Allen Hershkowitz explains in “Recycling Is an Effective Means of Preventing Solid Waste Pollution” that the amount of landfills are going to start to rise (Hershkowitz par. 10). Basically, Hershkowitz is saying landfills are getting bigger as time progresses and are expanding over the United States. There is one glaring issue with this plan: landfills can only take up so much surface area before they take over living spaces for humans. Dottie Brown explains in the article “The environment: Troubled Land and Waters” that ”The Cuyahoga River is a reminder of how harmful toxic waste can be. The river was once so filled with oil and toxic wastes that fish and other wildlife could not live in it” (Brown par. 10). Landfills are starting to consume America and they are destroying everything in their path. Landfills will take over the United States and any other country that believes landfills are the best solution to their trash issues. Due to landfills recent takeover, scientists in America have researched and discovered that packing the trash down will allow the number of landfills to decrease over time. The trash located in landfills is starting to be compacted down to maximize the amount of trash that fits in a single landfill. According to research provided by Issues & Controversies in the article“Anniston, Alabama” explains,“To increase the lifetime, garbage is compacted to as small a volume as possible prior to being added to the landfill. The dense packing of trash in a landfill reduces the oxygen (O) level” (Anniston, Alabama par. 16). Due to having a massive amount of trash, landfills compact the trash down and pack the garbage to more efficiently use space. Another benefit of this practice is, packing garbage forcefully allows oxygen to escape and reduces the amount of chemicals released into the atmosphere. In addition, capping off the tops of the landfills is a partial fix to this problem. Margaret Haerensexplains in “Landfills Are Relatively Safe” that because landfill operators cover the top of the landfill daily, it lessens the number of rodents (Haerens par. 6). This is a great idea because if these landfills were located near schools or neighborhoods, they could have rodents near houses and the schools. However, just because landfill operators pack the garbage down does not mean that landfills are the safest way to deal with trash. Landfills will eventually need to be excavated because trash can only be compacted to a certain point. Packing the garbage down is not a solution to the fact that landfills will eventually take up too much space.