Sadly in many of the developing countries experiencing sufficient wealth to produce significant increases in the waste they produce, the ever growing ??oesmokey??? mountains these states are creating, are becoming a growing problem.
In areas where landfills are not well regulated waste may be set alight to reduce volume. This of course produces air pollution and the smoke from domestic waste and other wastes which contain a lot of plastics also contains the carcinogenic residues of incomplete combustion. Landfill fires have been investigated and studied in more detail in some jurisdictions than others. However, in areas where control is imposed over landfill operations the problem of uncontrolled burning is one of the first aspects which must be addressed.
In some of the more advanced developing nations the waste was initially burned but in later years the practice was stopped and the exposed waste service was covered on a daily basis with temporary fill material. These sites can have the appearance of high standards, which indeed the do possess now, however, the bases are not lined and on competion the capping placed may be thin and a poor seal. So, these sites will eventually start to create leachate, and may later prove heavily contaminating to the local water supplies, both by emisions to surface water (rivers an streams) and underground water flows.
Even in the most developed nations local communities need help in funding their landfills, so that they can be developed with adequate linings to protect the environment, and then finally capped, and the gas emissions and the contaminated water (leachate) emissions pumped off and treated responsibly. In many part of the US the slow rate of closures during the late 1970's and early to mid 1980's showed the need for the state to provide assistance to municipalities for the proper planning and closure of these sites. It is important to keep good records during landfilling to enable the impacts to be assessed and gas and leachate emissions rates to be assessed with reasonable accuracy.
In one US example project the waste tonnage information was supplied by WDNR in the form of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, such that the data could be readily processed later for impact assessment and planning of the biogas yield and from that allowing sensible investment to be made in an Energy from waste plant. Profits coming from the Energy from waste (electricity generation plant) would pay for the operation of te leachate treatment plant, avoiding the treatment of the leachate becoming a burden on later generations. The data was sorted to include only the landfills that met the criteria for EfW schemes very easily, as noted above, and the data was filtered to include only those sites which has in the past received adequate decomposable waste materials.
Waste compaction is critical to extending the landfill life, and is achieved using earthworks type plant modified with special metal wheels. These wheels are specially designed to cut and break up the waste in the plastic bags in the landfill, and crush as much of the waste as possible, and by so doing the density rises and more rubbish is placed per cubic unit of volume.
In many developing nations waste pickers are allowed to enter freely into the dumps, sometimes living there. This is one of the very first tasks of the regulating bodies when developing nations start to improve their landfilling practices.
A careful balance has to be achieved here though between obviously removing individuals from a high risk of harm, and removing the only source of employment from an individual who may be supporting a family from the earnings from such picking activities.
There are however, very high risks while picking in landfills, especially where modern waste compaction is taking place using heavy compaction machinery. In such landfills there is a high rate of mortality and injury due to plant running over the pickers, so it is very hard to support the idea of uncontrolled picking amongst the waste being deposited.
Landfill impacts, smokey mountains and landfill pickers are just a taster for the great quality, educational and information available free, here if you visit the Landfill Site web site.
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