There are a few options of what to do with an old landfill: cover it over and leave it alone; turn it into a field for solar panels; convince people to play soccer on top of it. One town in England is going a step further and returning a decommissioned landfill to nature.
The 16-acre spot in Stourpaine (how do British place names always sound so British?) was taken out of active use in 1993. Now, the town is planting trees and shrubs over the area in the hopes of attracting woodland animals and birds. The new forest will also be harvested (responsibly, of course) for firewood, which, one assumes, will be burnt in the hearth of a local pub, to which we will all go round on a winter's day. Anyway, this is a nice project, and more people should copy it.
