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Contents
0 Introduction
1 Methods of disposal
1.1 Integrated waste management
1.2 Plasma gasification
1.3 Landfill
1.4 Incineration
2 Recycling
3 Sustainability
3.1 Biological reprocessing
3.2 Energy recovery
4 Avoidance and reduction methods
5 Waste handling and transport
6 Technologies
7 Waste management concepts
8 Education and awareness
9 References
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0 Introduction
Solid Waste management
Solid Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal,
and monitoring of waste materials.[1] The term usually relates to materials produced by
human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health,
the environment or aesthetics. Waste management is also carried out to
recover resources from it. Waste management can
involvesolid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances, with different methods and fields
of expertise for each.
Waste management practices differ for developed and developing nations,
for urban and rural areas, and for residential and industrial producers. Management for
non-hazardous wasteresidential and institutional waste in metropolitan areas is usually
the responsibility of local government authorities, while management for non-hazardous
commercial and industrial waste is usually the responsibility of the generator.
1:Methods of disposal

Landfill

Landfill operation in Hawaii.

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landfill, also known as a dump, rubbish dump or both, Rubbish Landfill Dump (and
historically as a midden), is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the
oldest form of waste treatment. Historically, landfills have been the most common
methods of organizedwaste disposal and remain so in many places around the world.
Landfills may include internal waste disposal sites (where a producer of waste carries out
their own waste disposal at the place of production) as well as sites used by many
producers. Many landfills are also used for other waste management purposes, such as
the temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material
(sorting, treatment, or recycling).
A landfill also may refer to ground that has been filled in with soil and rocks instead of
waste materials, so that it can be used for a specific purpose, such as for building houses.
Unless they are stabilized, these areas may experience severe shaking or liquefaction of
the ground in a large earthquake.

Disposing of waste in a landfill involves burying the waste, and this remains a common
practice in most countries. Landfills were often established in abandoned or
unused quarries, mining voids orborrow pits. A properly designed and well-managed
landfill can be a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of disposing of waste
materials. Older, poorly designed or poorly managed landfills can create a number of
adverse environmental impacts such as wind-blown litter, attraction of vermin, and
generation of liquid leachate. Another common byproduct of landfills is gas (mostly
composed of methane and carbon dioxide), which is produced as organic waste breaks
down anaerobically. This gas can create odour problems, kill surface vegetation, and is
agreenhouse gas.
Design characteristics of a modern landfill include methods to contain leachate such as
clay or plastic lining material. Deposited waste is normally compacted to increase its
density and stability, and covered to prevent attracting vermin (such as mice or rats).
Many landfills also have landfill gas extraction systems installed to extract the landfill
gas. Gas is pumped out of the landfill using perforated pipes and flared off or burnt in
a gas engine to generate electricity.
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Types of landfill

Operations
Typically, in non hazardous waste landfills, in order to meet predefined specifications,
techniques are applied by which the wastes are:
Confined to as small an area as possible.
Compacted to reduce their volume.
Covered (usually daily) with layers of soil.
During landfill operations the waste collection vehicles are weighed at a weighbridge on
arrival and their load is inspected for wastes that do not accord with the landfill’s waste
acceptance criteria. Afterward, the waste collection vehicles use the existing road
network on their way to the tipping face or working front where they unload their load.
After loads are deposited, compactors or dozers are used to spread and compact the
waste on the working face. Before leaving the landfill boundaries, the waste collection
vehicles pass through the wheel cleaning facility. If necessary, they return to the
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weighbridge in order to be weighed without their load. Through the weighing process, the
daily incoming waste tonnage can be calculated and listed in databases. In addition to
trucks, some landfills may be equipped to handle railroad containers. The use of 'rail-
haul' permits landfills to be located at more remote sites, without the problems associated
with many truck trips.
Typically, in the working face, the compacted waste is covered with soil daily.
Alternative waste-cover materials are several sprayed-on foam products and temporary
blankets. Blankets can be lifted into place with tracked excavators and then removed the
following day prior to waste placement. Chipped wood and chemically 'fixed' bio-solids
may also be used as an alternate daily cover. The space that is occupied daily by the
compacted waste and the cover material is called a daily cell. Waste compaction is
critical to extending the life of the landfill. Factors such as waste compressibility, waste
layer thickness and the number of passes of the compactor over the waste affect the waste
densities.

A section of a landfill located in Barclay, Ontario. This landfill is one of several

landfills used by Dryden, Ontario.

Impacts
A large number of adverse impacts may occur from landfill operations. These impacts
can vary: fatal accidents (e.g., scavengers buried under waste
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piles); infrastructure damage (e.g., damage to access roads by heavy

vehicles); pollution of the local environment (such as contamination
of groundwater and/or aquifers by leakage and residual soil contaminationduring landfill
usage, as well as after landfill closure); offgassing of methane generated by decaying
organic wastes (methane is a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon
dioxide, and can itself be a danger to inhabitants of an area); harbouring of
diseasevectors such as rats and flies, particularly from improperly operated landfills,
which are common in Third-world countries; injuries to wildlife; and simple nuisance
problems (e.g., dust, odour, vermin, or noise pollution).
Environmental noise and dust are generated from vehicles accessing a landfill as well as
from working face operations. These impacts are best to intercept at the planning stage
where access routes and landfill geometrics can be used to mitigate such issues. Vector
control is also important, but can be managed reasonably well with the daily cover
protocols.
Most modern landfills in industrialized countries are operated with controls to attempt to
manage problems such as these. Analyses of common landfill operational problems are
available.[1]
Some local authorities have found it difficult to locate new landfills. Communities may
charge a fee or levy in order to discourage waste and/or recover the costs of site
operations. Many landfills are publicly funded, but some are commercial businesses,
operated for profit.
Trash dump communities
In many developing countries around the world, communities exist in and around
landfills.[2] Residents of these communities, such as La Chureca in Nicaragua, often live
in conditions of extreme poverty and use the landfills as a source of food and
income. Scavengers work in the garbage in search of recyclables and other valuables.

Leachate
Leachate is any liquid that, in passing through matter, extracts solutes, suspended solids
or any other component of the material through which it has passed.
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Leachate is a widely used term in the Environmental sciences where it has the specific
meaning of a liquid that has dissolved or entrained environmentally harmful substances
which may then enter the environment. It is most commonly used in the context of land-
filling of putrescible or industrial waste.
In the narrow environmental context leachate is therefore any liquid material that drains
from land or stockpiled material and contains significantly elevated concentrations of
undesirable material derived from the material that it has passed

Landfill leachate
Leachate from a landfill varies widely in composition depending on the age of the landfill
and the type of waste that it contains.[1] [2] It can usually contain both dissolved and
suspended material. The generation of leachate is caused principally
by precipitation percolating through waste deposited in a landfill. Once in contact with
decomposing solid waste, the percolating water becomes contaminated and if it then
flows out of the waste material it is termed leachate.[3] Additional leachate volume is
produced during this decomposition of carbonaceous material producing a wide range of
other materials including methane, carbon dioxide and a complex mixture of organic
acids, aldehydes, alcoholsand simple sugars.
The risks of leachate generation can be mitigated by properly designed and engineered
landfill sites, such as sites that are constructed on geologically impermeable materials or
sites that use impermeable liners made of geomembranes or engineered clay. The use of
linings is now mandatory within both the United States and the European Union except
where the waste is deemed inert. In addition, most toxic and difficult materials are now
specifically excluded from landfilling. However despite much stricter statutory controls
leachates from modern sites are found to contain a range of contaminants that may either
be associated with some level of illegal activity or may reflect the ubiquitous use of a
range of difficult materials in household and domestic products which enter the waste
stream legally.
Composition of landfill leachate
When water percolates through the waste, it promotes and assists process of
decomposition by bacteria and fungi. These processes in turn release by-products of
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decomposition and rapidly use up any available oxygen creating an anoxic environment.
In actively decomposing waste the temperature rises and the pH falls rapidly and many
metal ions which are relatively insoluble at neutral pH can become dissolved in the
developing leachate. The decomposition processes themselves release further water
which adds to the volume of leachate. Leachate also reacts with materials that are not
themselves prone to decomposition such as fire ash, cement based building materials and
gypsum based materials changing the chemical composition. In sites with large volumes
of building waste, especially those containing gypsum plaster, the reaction of leachate
with the gypsum can generate large volumes of hydrogen sulfide which may be released
in the leachate and may also form a large component of the landfill gas.
In a landfill that receives a mixture of municipal, commercial, and mixed industrial
waste, but excludes significant amounts of concentrated specific chemical waste, landfill
leachate may be characterized as a water-based solution of four groups of contaminants ;
dissolved organic matter (alcohols, acids, aldehydes, short chain sugars etc.), inorganic
macro components (common cations and anions including sulfate, chloride, Iron,
aluminium, zinc and ammonia), heavy metals (Pb, Ni, Cu, Hg) , and xenobiotic organic
compounds such as halogenatedorganics, (PCBs, dioxins, etc.). [4].
The physical appearance of leachate when it emerges from a typical landfill site is a
strongly odoured black, yellow or orange coloured cloudy liquid. The smell is acidic and
offensive and may be very pervasive because of hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur rich
organic species such asmercaptans.
Leachate management
n older landfills and those with no membrane between the waste and the underlying
geology, leachate is free to egress the waste directly into the groundwater. In such cases
high concentrations of leachate are often found in nearby springs and flushes. As leachate
first emerges it can be black in colour, anoxic and may be effervescent with dissolved and
entrained gases. As it becomes oxygenated it tends to turn brown or yellow because of
the presence of Iron salts in solution and in suspension. It also quickly develops a
bacterial flora often comprising substantial growths of Sphaerotilus.
Landfill gas
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Gases are produced in landfills due to the anaerobic digestion by microbes on any organic
matter. This gas can be collected and flared off or used to generate electricity in a gas
fired power plant. Landfill gas monitoring can be carried out to alert for the presence of a
build-up of gasses to a harmful level.

TYPICAL CONSTITUENTS AND COMPOUNDS FOUND IN LANDFILL GAS

TABLE : Typical Constituents Found in Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Gas
Component Percent (dry volume
basis)*
Methane 40-60%
CarbonDioxide 40-60%
Nitrogen 2-5%
Oxygen 0.1-1.0%
Ammonia 0.1-1.0%
Sulfides,disulfides,mercaptans,etc. 0-0.2%
Hydrogen 0-0.2%
CarbonMonoxide 0-0.2%
TraceConstituents 0.01-0.6%

* Exact percentage distribution will vary with the age of the landfill.

Regional practice

United Kingdom
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Landfilling practices in the UK have had to change in recent years to meet the challenges
of the European Landfill Directive. The UK now imposes landfill tax upon biodegradable
waste which is put into landfills. In addition to this the Landfill Allowance Trading
Scheme has been established for local authorities to trade landfill quotas in England. A
different system operates in Wales where authorities are not able to 'trade' between
themselves, but have allowances known as the Landfill Allowance Scheme.
United States
In the U.S., landfills are regulated by the state's environmental agency that establishes
minimum guidelines; however, none of these standards may fall below those set by
the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); such as was the case[citation
needed]
with the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, which is claimed by many to not only
be the world's largest landfill, but the world's largest human structure. The landfill has
since been closed and is being transformed into a park.

Reclaiming materials
Landfills can be regarded as a viable and abundant source of source materials and energy.
In the developing world, this is widely understood and one may thus often find waste
pickers scavenging for still usable materials. In a commercial context, landfills sites have
also been discovered by companies and many have begun harvesting materials and
energy .[3] Well known examples are gas recovery facilities.[4]Other commercial facilities
include fossil fuel power plants and waste incinerators which have build-in material
recovery. This material recovery is possible through the use of filters (electro filter, active
carbon and potassium filter, quench, HCL-washer, SO2-washer, bottom ash-grating, etc.).
An example of these is the AEB Waste Fired Power Plant.[5][6] The AEB waste incinerator
is hereby able to recover a large part of the burned waste in source materials. According
to Marcel van Berlo (who helped build the plant), the processed waste contained higher
percentages of source materials than any mine in the world. He also added that when the
plant was compared to a Chilean copper mine, the waste fired plant could recover more
copper.[7] However, because of the high concentration of gases and the unpredictability of
the landfill contents, which often include sharp objects, landfill excavation is generally
considered dangerous. Furthermore, the quality of materials residing within landfills
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tends to degrade and such materials are thought to be not worth the risks required to
recover them.

Alternatives
The alternatives to landfills are waste reduction and recycling strategies. Secondary to not
creating waste, there are various alternatives to landfills. In the late 20th century,
alternative methods of waste disposal to landfill and incineration have begun to gain
acceptance. Anaerobic digestion, composting, mechanical biological
treatment, pyrolysis and plasma arc gasification have all began to establish themselves in
the market.
In recent years, some countries, such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands,
and Switzerland, have banned the disposal of untreated waste in landfills. In these
countries, only the ashes from incineration or the stabilized output of mechanical
biological treatmentplants may still be deposited.

References:
http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/landfill.html
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http://science.jrank.org/pages/3811/Landfill.html

http://ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/pdf/0138.pdf

http://sites.google.com/site/wastemanagementalternatives/types-of-landfills

http://wikipedia.org/landfill