Wake County’s 1.2 million residents collectively produce a staggering 2.3 billion pounds of waste each year. Per person, they generate more waste (5.3 pounds per day) than the average American (4.9 pounds). Some of that gets reused or recycled, but most of it goes into the South Wake Landfill in Apex, where it takes hundreds of years to decompose. The landfill has a 180-acre footprint, roughly equivalent to 136 American football fields. It opened in 2008 and is currently at 58% capacity. It will be full by 2045, possibly sooner.
The South Wake Landfill is a sprawling, carefully engineered, mostly buried trash heap, which from November until March functions as an all-day buffet for an enormous flock of migrating seagulls. During those months, the landfill’s so-called working face, the exposed part of the heap, is overrun by thousands of grayish-white birds that peck, perch, swoop, and scavenge, completely undeterred by the procession of dump trucks and compactors trundling through.
There is a method to the seeming madness of this vast dumping ground. It’s subdivided into many “cells,” each contained within a 6-foot-thick liner system that’s meant to be impermeable. As 1,600 fresh tons of trash arrive by the truckload daily, six days a week, the landfill operators fill one cell at a time, building it up to a predetermined elevation before moving on to the next cell.
The landfill is not lifeless or static. Day and night, it belches greenhouse gases (3,000 standard cubic feet per minute), breeds bacteria, and oozes garbage juice (technical term “leachate”—anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 gallons per day). Horizontal pipes embedded within the trash mound collect the leachate and pump it over to a nearby reverse osmosis machine to distill the contaminants from the water. After reverse osmosis, the concentrated sludge of contaminants gets sprayed back over the trash pile, while the water goes to the Holly Springs Wastewater Reclamation Facility. Vertical pipes arranged throughout the trash mound extract methane and carbon dioxide, minimizing odors and reducing the risk of spontaneous fires. The gases captured in the pipes get routed through an industrial blower and flare station, to be either combusted or converted into electrical energy.
All the while, flocks of migratory birds whirl overhead, noshing on trash. Depending on the season you can spot rock pigeons, eagles, Canada geese, starlings, and turkey vultures at the landfill. But gulls (ring-billed, American herring, lesser black-backed, Iceland, and other types) are the most common visitors, arriving in groups of 15,000 or more, according to the birders who log them on eBird.org. After they’ve feasted, they tend to fly away in search of water. A 2017 Duke University study found that nationwide, 1.4 million landfill-scavenging seagulls collectively pollute nearby bodies of water with 240 extra tons of nitrogen and 39 extra tons of phosphorus annually through their poop, fueling algal blooms and oxygen depletion. The South Wake Landfill is 5 miles from Shearon Harris Reservoir and 10 miles from Jordan Lake.
On a recent Monday morning, I embarked on a landfill tour with Sara Davarbakhsh, an environmental education program coordinator for Wake County, as my guide. Aboard a small bus along with three other landfill-curious passengers, we explored the working face and spotted three bald eagles amid the seagulls. We also toured the adjacent South Wake Multi-Material Recycling Facility—the place to bring your appliances, batteries, cardboard, cooking oil, electronics, scrap metal, and tires to be recycled. It even accepts oyster shells—which it sends to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries to be redistributed along the coast.
Sixty percent of the waste that ends up in the landfill could have been recycled or composted instead, Davarbakhsh said. You just have to know where to take it.
“We made it so easy for people to make garbage,” she lamented. “We gave them this giant, 95-gallon roll cart and said, ‘Hey, fill it up and we’ll empty it every week!’”
There are 2,639 municipal solid waste landfills in the U.S., according to the EPA. Of those, 542 are active; the rest are closed. Those numbers don’t include specialized landfills for hazardous waste, construction debris, or coal combustion residuals.
Unlike Raleigh, most American cities don’t bury their trash in their own backyards. Durham, for instance, sends its waste 100 miles away to the Sampson County regional landfill, whose 1,300-acre footprint makes South Wake look like an anthill.
“Do we just keep building landfills?” Davarbakhsh wondered aloud. “It feels like we’re putting a Band-Aid on the problem.”
In other parts of the world, landfills have fallen out of vogue. Japan incinerates much of its waste these days, capturing the by-products and converting them into energy. Sweden reportedly sends less than 1% of its trash to the landfill, incinerating 52% and recycling the
other 47%.
The idea of human waste as a renewable energy source is tantalizing, but waste-to-energy (WtE) plants are controversial. Old, unsophisticated incinerators can be extremely polluting and pose real health risks. However, modern WtE plants are equipped with scrubbing devices that neutralize harmful pollutants, making the whole process much cleaner and safer. Proponents of WtE also point out that it emits less methane (one of the most corrosive greenhouse gases) than landfills and, as an energy source, is cleaner than fossil fuels.
Last year, Wake County launched the Beyond the South Wake Landfill Study to begin planning for what to do when the landfill reaches capacity sometime in the next 20 years—at which point Wake’s population will be around 1.6 million. The county is weighing either opening a new landfill, hauling its waste to a regional landfill like Durham does now, or opening a public WtE plant. The latter option would be the most environmentally friendly but also the most expensive, both for the county and for individual households.
During an initial round of public engagement on the study, Wake residents said their top priorities for the new waste disposal method were minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, human health risks from pollutants, and ecological impacts. The county will make a decision in late 2026 or 2027.
Back at the South Wake Landfill, Davarbakhsh said she hopes more people sign up for her free tour.
“It really opens your mind,” she said. “Seeing is believing. There’s nothing like seeing that giant mountain of trash—that you know you helped make—to make you want to do better.”
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