ABSTRACT
Faced with a literal overflow of waste, the fictional United States government physically cuts off parts of northern New England to create the "Great Concavity": an isolated, giant landfill into which the rest of the country can deliver its trash, toxic or otherwise. In particular, the status and usage of American landfills demands more of our attention, and domestic watchdogs should look at foreign case studies to evaluate the potential of placing a tax on landfill use as a waste management system. The higher fee for active waste places a greater incentive to divert materials that can readily be recovered resources if recycled through a process that, without the tax, would be more expensive. Landfills also present many problems across the environmental, economic, social, and political spectrum. An active landfill then presents two major environmental drawbacks: the loss of potentially recoverable resources and the emission of landfill gases.
