Rumpke Sanitary Landfill Tour
When: Wednesday, November 14 10 AM
Where: Rumpke Sanitary Landfill (see directions below)
Who: Homeschoolers age 4 and over
Cost: none
Organizer: Laura Riesenberg

Students tour the Rumpke Sanitary Landfill in Colerain Township from the safety and comfort of a bus. The tour begins with a brief history of the company and a demonstration of how trucks are weighed. The bus then travels around the landfill while the guide shows exactly what happens after the garbage leaves their homes. Methane gas removal, leachate collection, surface water controls and other points of interest are explained. The tour concludes with an explanation of the final landfill cover and cap and then the future uses of the landfill property.

Here is some important information: Tours last approximately 45 minutes in length. Tours are free of charge. . The weather must be dry for a landfill tour. Rumpke reserves the right to cancel tours when precipitation causes slippery road conditions or other safety concerns. As a safety precaution, all tour participants must be at least four (4) years old. Groups must have at least 10 tour participants. There is a maximum of 24 participants.

Directions: In Cincinnati, take I-275 to the Colerain Avenue exit, #33. Go North off the exit onto Colerain Avenue. Turn right onto Struble Road. Turn left into Rumpke’s entrance. Stay to your right and go to the parking lot on the right. Your Rumpke tour guide will meet your bus in the parking lot.

This, by far, had to be one of the most informative tours we have ever gone on and it was FREE! The tour filled quickly and I had a fairly significant waiting list of families that wanted to attend. You just need a minimum of 10 people (max of 24) for the tour and it was very easy to set up, all I did was call and pick a date (they only do tours on Wed). The only thing I wish is that we had left the tour with a handout of all the amazing statistics that we were told as part of the tour!

Things that I never knew before the tour:
*a garbage truck can only pick up trash from about 400 homes before it is full. I really don't know what I thought, because I had never really given it much though, but I assumed one truck was doing all of an area of the city, when in fact, some large subdivision require two trucks just to get the garbage from those homes.
*our landfill will be out of space for new garbage before Luke's 18th birthday! What they will do with new trash after that, they have no idea.
*methane gas recycling takes place at Rumpke
*there are enough birds at the landfill to make the movie "The Birds" look lame!
*Rumpke Landfill was originally a pig farm and they started collecting "garbage" to feed the pigs.
*Large trucks crush trash to 1/16 to 1/32 it original size once it is dumped on the landfill. Even with this, they are running out of room rapidly.
*The landfill only accepts trash from about a 50 mile radius of that location.