Trash Island

[Imperior]

I'm not sure how some people get so much dirt, slag, and rock. I'm short on them. So when I see my city giving me *free* dumping material in the form of waste, I always feel it's wasteful not to use it. But then you just have to forevermore watch that horrible ground texture under your buildings for the rest of the game.

So, I was just wondering if anyone had any hints about how to get more rock and dirt for cheap using late game tech?

Else, I was wondering if the devs ever considered an option to have landfill get covered with grass eventually. I mean, over the decades and centuries of the game one would guess it'd be fair to assume the surface layer of waste would become covered in dirt again?

It's mostly aesthetic anyway, since it doesn't give you any pollution nor has any negative effect. I'd also like to point out a lot of coastal cities had whole neighborhoods built on top of landfill made largely with waste.

[Kaery]

My solution is to put one layer of dirt over the waste. Waste invisible, and you can even build a farm on it.

As for getting dirt, slag and rock:
Dirt you can get from compost. Either you dump it straight, it turns into dirt then, or you mix it with gravel at a 1:1 ratio to get double.

Slag you can get from your smelters. Only when they melt down ore, though. So watch out if you feed them mostly scrap. Another way is to mix sulfur with limestone. Both have mines, you can produce both on your island and you can even trade for the sulfur.
Treating toxic slurry gives you slag as well.

Rock, there's a mine for that on the world map.

And for both dirt and rock there's still the fact that you can dig it up. You can dig up entire hills and mountains on your island and dump them into the water. That's how I usually get most of my landfill. Digging up all those elevated platforms and getting them down to level 2, then add a layer of dirt so it's all green again.

[Imperior]

Oh, I've yet to find the rock mine, so that's the part of the puzzle I was missing.

I saw the recipe to mix compost but you get so little from the city, and rock for gravel was in short supply too, but I might end up using it for that though. I've excavated a good chunk of the map for minerals and flattening and I can tell that excavating won't be enough for my save.

Thanks for the advice Kaery!
I do hope they eventually add a way to replace the top soil under existing buidlings though, I'm not eager to have to tear up half my city just to make it look nicer. lol

[mac18782]

the easy way is, to flat ur isle, so u have rock and dirt to fill up the coasts :)
and at startup enough ressources to hold ur production at movement.
dont use waste to fillup, u get a worst growth through it. It is better to burn that ♥♥♥♥ even if u can build a chain with burner, exhaust washer etc. so u get slag, dirt, compost, fuel gas, water etc.
If u build logicaly, u let move water with priority back to waterworks and the rest for filling up the coastline btw. using for producitonlines ;)

[mrsleep]

I use mostly compost created from recycling waste water and grinding up excess crops.
Burn the waste and grind the resulting sulfer with limestone to make slag.
Dump the slag to +01, then cover with a layer of compost.
At 20k pops it's an endless supply of fill!

[hektor]

Imperior a écrit :

I do hope they eventually add a way to replace the top soil under existing buidlings though, I'm not eager to have to tear up half my city just to make it look nicer. lol

They could add gardening to the tech tree.

[Hawke]

I use trash to extend my shoreline in places I'd otherwise not be able to build a cargo ship port, or any port for that matter.

[Imperior]

That's a fantastic idea... Gardening could unlock an option to increase water consumption in exchange for increasing unity and making all the unpaved areas look nicer.

[hektor]

Hawke a écrit :

I use trash to extend my shoreline in places I'd otherwise not be able to build a cargo ship port, or any port for that matter.

I used to do that but became unsure whether is was counting as pollution.

[Hawke]

hektor a écrit :

I used to do that but became unsure whether is was counting as pollution.

So is the incineration plant worth it, then?

[Kaery]

Dumping waste gives pollution since the last big update. However, only recently disturbed waste gives pollution. So if you dump and then cover it over and never touch it again, after a few years the pollution stops. The waste 'settles', or so they described it. Note that it doesn't reduce in volume when it does that. Digging it back up and dumping it somewhere else will give pollution again, though. So you can definitely use it as landfill, just have to be prepared to take a hit in pollution.

The burner turns waste into air pollution. At a rate of 2:1. 36 waste per minute give you 18 air pollution per minute.
The incineration plant turns waste, some fuel gas (or hydrogen) and water into exhaust and high steam. Taking everything else out, it turns waste into exhaust at a rate of 2:1. However! If you put that exhaust through a smokestack, it turns into air pollution also at a rate of 2:1. So the incineration plant turns waste into air pollution at a rate of 4:1.
And if you put that exhaust through a scrubber, for a bit of added water you get sulfur, CO2 and low steam. If you vent the CO2, you are at 42 air pollution per minute, but the scrubber takes 180 exhaust per minute. That's the production per minute of 2.5 incineration plants.

In conclusion:
360 waste put through 10 burners makes 180 air pollution per minute.
360 waste put through 2.5 incineration plants with smoke stacks makes 90 air pollution per minute.
360 waste put through 2.5 incineration plants with scrubber and vented CO2 makes 42 air pollution per minute.
If you use the CO2 it's only 24 air pollution per minute.
I don't know how much landfill pollution you get per minute if you dump those 360 waste, but keeps on making that much for a few years.
So, as a pollution prevention measure, the incineration plant is indeed extremely effective. Even if you don't even use the steam it makes.

[Lloyd_Marshall]

you the take the CO2 and put it in the ground with some seawater

[Duke Leto]

Cover the trash up with a thin layer of dirt and build a subdivision on top of it. 😉

[joeltt1]

In addition to the "dig down one layer number, then cover it with dirt" method of making Trashland useful, I think you can also import dirt via trade. Its not like an Oil Rig, but one of the normal city item trades.

[ZnCsdad]

i think it depends on if you have towers working to just move 'mountains'
in the later game i have 2-3 towers moving 'dirt' to make more space

[Lucifer Sam]

It's not a burden at all to simply have one excavator committed to digging dirt alone, or when you're doing ok with other resources have excavators dig both dirt and other resources. So say I'm digging iron somewhere and I see a spot that has a lot of dirt or rock mixed in with the iron, I'll have them dig there to get both iron and dirt. Never had a problem with not having enough dirt.

I dunno maybe I'm missing something here because my answer seems very simplistic so I apologize in advance if my post is useless lol.