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April 2011
Top 3 Strategies for Successful Leachate Treatment and Sustainable Landfill
"All landfill, and leachate treatment plant, designers should pay attention to sustainability"
By: Steve
Most who are well-advised, and who follow that advice, will succeed at leachate treatment and
sustainable landfill. Others go about it the wrong way, get bogged down and fail. One secret to successful
completion is to get a "map" or plan, a track to run on that will lead you to success. Not doing this correctly, or
getting this done poorly, may bring on terrible results. You may wind up with a landfill which is a future risk to
the environment like all landfills not operated to principles of sustainability, and/or possibly a landfill which
pollutes the environment around it even while it is being filled with waste.
What follow are three recommended steps which you can follow to ensure your success.
1st, the landfill will need to be lined with a low-permeability lining system
You must first ensure that all leachate can be collected, treated and recirculated to as far as possible flush out
the contaminants in the waste because doing so aids in preventing the landfill from holding organic contamination
for many generations of "entombment" in the landfill. Failure to accomplish this may result in these contaminants
still being present in the waste when at some future point in geological time that the lining ruptures and spills
polluting leachate inot the environment, quite possibly contaminating water supplied from wells in the vicinity for
many many years. Please avoid the error of overlooking or slighting this important step!
The second is, the leachate plant must be much larger than for a sanitary or EU Landfill Directive type landfil and
very efficient at removing the contaminants
Nearly as essential as the fact that the landfill will need to be lined with a low-permeability lining system
whenever dealing with leachate treatment and sustainable landfill is the leachate plant must be much larger than
for a sanitary or EU landfill directive type landfil and very efficient at removing the contaminants. Accept it
from me, this isn't something that you should by-pass. It is important to understand the cost and energy
requirements for leachate treatment which this entails, which can be something that everyone who would like to
succeed with when considering leachate treatment and sustainable landfill but finds a big obstacle to goung ahead
with sustainable landfills, but truly wants.
Thirdly, the provision of a large energy intensive leachate treatment plant as an essential pre-requisiet to
achieving sustainable landfill, can only be avoided if the landfill is filled and left open for long enough to
decompose aerobically. The Japanese method of landfilling comes the closest to this and anyone study sustainable
landfill should study the Japanese aerobic landfills.
Finally, when working with leachate treatment and sustainable landfill as a laudable principle
to be adhered to as far as possible you ought to be sure and at least ensure that your leachate treatment plant
uses a biological process actually "treats" the organic content in the landfill and does not simply act as a very
high purity filter (as in the Reverse Osmosis Process (RO)). Even worse from a sustainability outlook is the
increasingly common practise for RO contaminants (the filtrate) to simply be pumped back into the landfill which
goes against all concepts of sustainability . This will help you with achieving as much as possible within the
regulatory regime which in European nations, perversely acts as a dis-incentive to those, forward thinkers in
landfill design, wishing to implement sustainable landfill practises, and, a very important part of the energy
protecting the environment from landfills in Europe is questionable due to the "entombment" of waste currently
occuring under the current EU waste regulations. If you don't, you might in any event eventually render the
filtration/RO process inoperable if the recirculating of certain contaminants in the leachate in the way they
surely will if RO is combined with recirculation back into landfills for a long period -- and I believe we will
agree that it wouldn't be a good thing!
As stated earlier, in the event you aspire to succeed at leachate treatment and sustainable landfill, you want to
make sure you never make mistakes that can cause someone to finally end up with a landfill which is a future risk
to the environment like all landfills not operated to principles of sustainability tend to be, or maybe even a
landfill which pollutes the environment around it even while it is being filled with waste. That which you really
would like is a fully sustainable landfill which will be flushed of so much of its contaminant content, within one
generation, that each generation truly "dispose" of its own waste with no legacy passed on to future generations,
which goal you'll attain by carefully pursuing the 3 steps outlined above.
Source: http://leachate.eu
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