Why Do Landfills Attract Seagulls?

If you were asked to sit in a lawn chair, close your eyes and simply listen to the beautiful call of the
seagulls around you, you would swear you were sitting by the ocean, or at the very least, Lake Michigan. Upon opening your eyes, you realize your surroundings are different. Much different.

In reality, there are at least twenty-eight different known species of gulls that are commonly referred to as seagulls. Some find them to be soothing and remind them of being at the beach. Others think of gulls as scavengers that are found in noisy flocks that congregate wherever food is available and consider them to be a nuisance.

Insects and Microorganisms in Landfills

The smell of trash left in a garbage can for a few days is an incredibly attractive smell....to a fly.
Why? They feed on decomposing trash and lay eggs so that they may feed on it, as well, during their developmental stages.

Landfills, then, are veritable havens for insects and microorganisms to feed and thrive. But do they help or hurt the ecosystem of a landfill? "The waste decomposition role of small soil insects is of high importance in the breakdown of solid organic materials. They consume large quantities of materials to compensate for poor food quality and produce relatively large amounts of wastes."

Discarding Textiles in the Landfill

Textiles, defined as a type of cloth or woven fabric, have been around for several generations. "Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates."

The earliest evidence of weaving comes from impressions of textiles and basketry and nets on little pieces of hard clay, dating from 27,000 years ago and found in Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic.

Recycling Colored Paper

Colored paper, along with any other type of paper, is recyclable.  The different types of paper,
however, require different recycling processes as they are used to make new paper products.

"Paper recycling is a large scale, multi-step process with the objective to recover the paper fibers, and often other paper components such as mineral fillers, and use them as a raw material to produce new paper.