Wits Radio Academy THE SCIENCE INSIDE

THE SCIENCE INSIDE - Landfill

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Tragedy struck Hulene, a town on the outskirts of Mozambique when twenty-one people living on the town’s only landfill, were killed by a 50m high rubbish heap which collapsed on their homes. This week’s show was inspired by this topic and we had a chat with a consulting engineer and landfill designer, Jan Palm. He unpacked the disastrous effects of garbage on our environment and how the mishandling of rubbish at official landfills could cause leakage into groundwater. On Unscience, we had a look at the University of Catania’s study of how luck, rather than talent, hard work or intelligence affects our success! Lastly, we interviewed ‘gold farmer’, geologist Tshiamo Legoale about small-scale mining and how her research in phytomining uses wheat to extract gold residue from gold dumps.
28 Feb 2018 English South Africa Science

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