Landfill
sites are often painted as the villains of sustainability. Not only are they an
eyesore, but they also produce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions,
water pollution and toxic fumes. Because of this, it’s hard to imagine how
landfills can ever be sustainable. However, there are a number of developments
that mean that landfills might not have to be quite as harmful as we first
thought. But first, let’s take a look at why landfill is seen as so bad.
The problem with landfill
Landfills
house tonnes of non-biodegradable and poorly organised recyclables, which are
heedlessly thrown onto sites every single day. As these materials sit and
fester, methane is generated and makes its way into the atmosphere. This
clearly has a negative impact on our planet, however, the problems don’t stop
there. Here in the UK, we’re currently running out of space for landfill and as
a result, we’re exporting a lot of waste to countries like China, which frankly
feels like an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ solution.
This,
combined with the fact that the government is no longer investing as much money
into creating new landfill sites because they’re not seen as a sustainable
future solution, means that our planet is becoming an increasingly dangerous
place to live. If you imagine a landfill site as a festering bin bag in your
kitchen, then the more bin bags there are, the more inhospitable the room will
become. If we don’t begin to work towards creating more environmentally
friendly solutions to landfill, our planet will soon become an Earth-size
version of that smelly, suffocating and unpleasant kitchen.
Sustainable landfill solutions
A
sustainable solution to harmful landfills is the use of Energy-from-Waste (EfW)
techniques. This is where waste is used as fuel to generate heat and
electricity and is a promising method that is being increasingly used,
particularly for export waste. However, these sites are few and far between and
cost a lot to construct.
Aside from
EfW, waste companies are working to create less harmful landfill sites that
achieve ‘equilibrium’. This essentially means that the emissions from the
landfill to air, surface water or groundwater no longer pose a threat to human
or environmental health. One way of doing this is by adding air and moisture to
the site in order to speed up waste degradation, reduce methane gas emissions
and eliminate unpleasant odours. These are known as bioreactor landfills,
however, they have a long way to go in terms of becoming widespread- the
majority of sites are in the USA.
As a first
step towards widespread sustainable landfills, waste companies across the UK
and beyond are simply trying to better control the substances that are put into
sites, as well as partnering with environmental bodies which ensure sites abide
by environmental regulations and avoid negative environmental impact.
For example, here at WM Thompson, we use cutting
edge technology to sort and process any inert waste that we collect to ensure
that only suitable material goes onto our site. The rest of the waste can be
properly recycled, reducing our carbon footprint and nurturing the environment
around us. To find out more about our
sustainable and reliable landfill solutions,
why not
contact
us today?
