Mexico City closes giant landfill

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Mexico City says it has closed its rubbish dump, one of the largest landfills in the world, to help reduce the capital's greenhouse gas emissions.

During its peak use, hundreds of trucks were dumping more than 12,000 tons of waste in the open-air Bordo Poniente landfill each day, the BBC reported Monday.

That figure had already been cut in half this year by new recycling and composting plants, officials said.

Since the landfill was established on a dry lake bed in the 1980s more than 70 million tons of waste have been dumped there, and rubbish is more than 50 deep in some areas.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said the city would seek bids to establish a plant to turn the methane gas given off by the accumulated waste into energy.

The city government said it is also talking with the hundreds of people who scrape a living by scavenging reusable material from the landfill in hopes of finding them jobs in the new waste processing efforts.