Also landfill becomes like a nuclear waste site, a burden on the future. You can't let it puncture, or be dug up (by humans or animals), or landslip, or flood. You have to cosset the damn thing in perpetuity, or until someone invents plastic-eating fungi (which dump it into the carbon cycle instead).
If we just abandon all landfills for 1000 years with no maintenance, how much of that plastic do you estimate will end up released into the sea during that time? Will it be enough to cause a bigger ecological problem than what's already happened with plastic in the sea today?
Importantly, where did you get your data from? It can't be just your imagination because that's only a tool to reinforce what you already believe.
Modern US landfills are lined and capped water tight, and have been for decades. Permitting is a thoroughly reviewed process, by dozens of federal, state, and local government offices, and hundreds of officials and engineers. Monitoring wells ensure compliance.
Even if it's microplastic in that landfill water, it's not getting to the ocean. Worst case is it's captured with the decomposing gases and condensate, and reprocessed at a refinery or incinerated.
The plastic is much better deposited in US landfills than shipped overseas, where it may be directly spilled into the ocean, or dumped into open fields for the poor to manually sift for the most valuable material, and then there's no telling where the rest of it will end up once it rains.
Plus landfill plastic is sequestered carbon.
Even places that certify plastic recycling into a new end user product are often making worthless items that are given away so that they can claim zero waste. The material ends up as construction fill for hydraulic detention infrastructure, playground surfaces and sports fields, or even those "green" children's toys. Or cheap fleeces. Lots and lots of cheap fleeces, blankets, and snuggies.
The exact places we don't want that plastic to end up.
Right, except that plastics do not biodegrade for hundreds of years or more. Will landfills continue to be as well managed as you claim they are now in perpetuity? Unlikely.
