Regulating Landfills for a Happy Retirement

Out of sight, out of mind is the way developed countries deal with the mountains of waste produced daily. But what happens after the trash can is emptied at the curb? In Part II of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly dig into the many layers of landfill management and what happens when the site is filled to capacity.

Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include

• What invisible environmental threats lurk beneath our feet

• Why leachate is a dirty word

• The stark contrast between waste management capabilities in developed and developing countries

• Just how many protective layers make up a landfill

• How to power garbage trucks from captured methane emissions

• What to do with a retired landfill

Recommended Resources

• The anatomy of a landfill

• Groundwater contamination and management

• What to do with a retired landfill

• Or turn it into a solar farm

• Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

What's under your golf course?

Episode Transcript

KIMBERLY

Welcome to part two of our landfill episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir and my co -host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. In part one, we talked about the incentive waste management companies have for efficiency that gives them a motivation for sustainable practices, minimizing carbon emissions, land and water conservation, maximizing site capacity to deal with all the garbage that we produce. Now we turn our attention to the environmental innovations in landfill management and the need for better waste management worldwide. So, Jordan, what would you say is most pressing environmental concern with landfill management?

JORDEN

It's a hard question because the scale, it matters. I think the thing I often most worry about is definitely methane, but I think that's more of a global concern. At the ground level people there, it's contamination and groundwater contamination.

KIMBERLY

Yeah, for sure. I would say so, too, because and that's I mean, we sort of think of that as a local concern because that's where we're living at the time. But groundwater contamination actually has a residual effect regardless. And so that's the last thing we really want to do is have bad water.

JORDEN

No, exactly. I mean, we just came off a great run of water episodes highlighting the reasons why we don't want to be ruining that. And actually, one of my first personal experiences realizing how bad landfills could be was in Edmonton. The city dump that we used there was basically had been a lot smaller, but it built up over time. Giant Hill. And it was right beside the North Saskatchewan River. And it wasn't until I was there on a day with heavy, heavy rains and we're out dumping things. And in the midst of trying to get back in the truck as quick as possible. I was watching all of this runoff just stream down the hill and into the river. And I didn't know anything about sustainability issues, but I knew that that wasn't something that anybody wanted.

KIMBERLY

Yeah, that's not really what you want to see. And so waste management is really important to make sure that that any sort of groundwater contaminant, any groundwater is protected from any runoff is not going into. water supplies. And so when it comes to this, leachate is something that is a big concern in waste management. And so there's a need to either haul or pump this discharge leachate to other sites for processing. Obviously, doing everything on site is going to be more efficient and more cost effective. It's not always possible, though. And so it's also actually the more ecological method is to just to process it and deal with it right there. And, you know, one of the biggest concerns, obviously, is interfering with sanitation disinfection in sewage treatment plants. When it comes to what do we do with when? When runoff from or any sort of anything coming out of the waste stream, they have to worry about if they do this off site, then the sanitation that's in place for the sewage septic treatment, the sewage treatment plants, they have difficulty then controlling for more heavy metals, higher ammonia content. Other things that because of the way, and I've actually taken my students to all sorts of places and taken them to the water treatment plant. And that was also quite fascinating in that you see they go through various humongous tanks for treatment. UV treatment is one of the things. And so between heavy metals and ammonia content and... What can be UV'd out? There are big concerns that this leachate, if they actually put it into the septic, the regular sewage treatment stream, it's not going to be able to process it effectively and it's going to end up contaminating the sewage treated water.

JORDEN

Yeah, no, it gets into how complex this is because it's not just like processing. some more municipal sewage, which is what these are set up for. I wanted to give people an idea of what leachate is and how to think about it. Essentially, it's the water and other liquids that have streamed down through the landfill site and collected at the bottom. Now, a good analogy for people to think about this in their own life is the liquid that's collected at the bottom of your garbage bag and left a little bit long. Maybe it wasn't... cleaned out first and now imagine that but with all of the you know i said i bring construction waste right to to the site that's what i was doing you know 16 years ago and that includes stuff like uh you know chemical foam cut off insulation metals so it's that that's what this water is containing particles of so that's when we say leachate it's the both grossest and some of the most toxic stuff you can get, especially if the landfill doesn't have proper diversion streams. Well,

KIMBERLY

and not only that, but then if it rains before the cover actually goes over the actual serious layer of plastic cover, then there's rainwater mixed in with that as well. So you've got all of the decomposing stuff from food waste. So you think about if you've got a compost bin, what the bottom of the compost bin looks like. And the bottom is like, so you had all of this together. And yeah, it's a pretty disgusting slurry.

JORDEN

Yes. No, not something anybody wants to touch or honestly that I want in my municipal sewage waste stream.

KIMBERLY

Exactly right. And this is one of the reasons why it's most important to try to keep this out in the first place and have it managed on site. And in fact, because of this, amongst other reasons, but this is one of the most compelling reasons why landfills are very highly regulated. And they have lots of layers that go into prepping these sites. So a working landfill typically has seven layers on top of the native soils that are prepared for putting the landfill in place. They've got clay. They have got two plastic layers. They've got a leachate collection pipe system layer. They've got another leachate geonet layer. They've got the actual waste that goes in. And at the end of the day, at the end of every day. They actually put a six to 12 inch layer material on top of whatever the refuse that went in for the day to stop the scattering and deter scavengers. And then so they keep doing this. And then they put machines over top and they had the land rovers that go and try to crush it all down and so forth. And then so we've got these seven layers. When the landfill is finished and done and nothing else can go into it and it's retired, it gets. Typically six more layers on top of that. So more clay, more plastic, another drainage layer of sand and gravel or gravel, soil cover, topsoil, and then native vegetation because you don't want this to just be like a desolate area that doesn't have anything, especially where it rains. Even if it's not raining, it could be wind. It could be sand. Whatever it is that we're talking about, whatever the elements are going to do to it, you need that native vegetation layer on top to secure the roots to keep this stuff in place.

JORDEN

And to get to your point of when you see those kind of really weirdly green hills in the middle of flat landscapes. You know why they're there. And that's that top native vegetation. And it also gets to, you know, understanding for the listeners of why dumps aren't a thing anymore. Just a literal hole in the ground when you compare that to the seven plus two, four, six, almost 14 layers of a fully finished landfill site. And also to the point from the last episode of how regulated and expensive this is to build and do right.

KIMBERLY

And so in addition to the groundwater contamination, as you mentioned, methane emission is a huge issue.

JORDEN

Yeah, methane emissions are massive from landfills. And just for listeners who probably know, but methane is 80 times more harmful than CO2 for the 20 years after it's emitted. So a major driver of short to medium term climate change. And in fact, 25 % of our current global warming is attributed to human emitted methane emissions. One of the nice things is that the majority of the methane emissions globally are emitted from humans in places like landfills. And so it's generally considered a low hanging fruit or should be because it's within our control. So just to give people an idea of the scope, landfills account for 11 percent of global methane emissions. Both Canada and the U .S. are above the kind of global contribution there. 17 percent of Canadian methane emissions come from landfills. Now, this was really surprising to me because we have a very extensive oil and gas sector, which is the major driver of it. So I was actually surprised to see how high that is. And then also, you guys are beating us at only 14 % of U .S. methane emissions come from landfills. Now, the Canadian in me could not let you have it. So I can't find a study from the Harvard School of Engineering that used satellite monitoring data from 2019 to show that landfill methane emissions were 51 % higher than the EPA estimates. So that would put you in the 28 % of methane emissions. That made you feel better.

KIMBERLY

I can't

KIMBERLY

made you feel better. It did. There are a lot more of us than there are you, too. So there's that.

JORDEN

It did. And so this gets to, in the last episode, we talked about biogas. And, you know, traditionally, you can't just let this methane build up in pockets under. So, you know, you mentioned the leche draining system. I guess the opposite of almost that would be the methane system to bring it back up, methane pipes that release this. And the traditional method of dealing with it was flaring. Essentially opening it up, setting on fire and burning off a plume of methane to release those pockets of gas. In recent years, there's been a drive to capture that methane. Again, it's a resource. We literally drill for and produce natural gas to get this. So I think there's some really interesting projects. You mentioned one for trucks. I know of others that are actually powering on -site, like small power facilities. So seeing this already implemented as a way to both deal with the problem of methane buildup, but harness a resource.

KIMBERLY

And this is why, I mean, just going back to other things we've talked about on the show, this is why beef production and large animals production is not just about the CO2 emissions, but it's about the methane gases that they give off because that's way more deadly than the CO2 to begin with. And that's also something that we could certainly just by reducing meat one meal, not a whole week, not a whole lifetime, but just one meal a week makes a huge difference. And this is something, though, where when it comes to this, we should absolutely be able to deal with this.

JORDEN

You know, it's a great point about the methane emissions from from cattle. And that's why, like I said, it's commonly viewed as a low hanging fruit problem. Major, major impacts from methane. But the major drivers of it are agriculture, oil and gas production, and landfills. Right there, we can hit the majority of human methane emissions. And all with, as you pointed out, the solutions we know. Eat less meat. The methane that's pumped out, don't burn it. Capture it. Use it for something. And then in the oil and gas industry, a lot of their methane emissions actually come from leaks, sadly. A lot of times when we're talking about sustainability issues, I find I'm torn between it's like, well, it's 10 years or it's going to be this and we need to see like, you know, build up. In this case, it's no, just do better. It's one of those.

KIMBERLY

It's the same with. waste segregation, right? You know, what the requirements are vary from place to place. But if we could have standardized across the world, how awesome it would be if we could have hazardous materials all combined in one place and e -waste, electronic waste pulled out and done with either disposed of properly or ideally harvested for parts first, right? Mined for whatever the resources are. And eventually there's going to be a time, I hope, where the cost really across the board outweighs the having to go and seek natural resources from their virgin source for those same things that we could just get that have already been harvested and processed and so forth. And the yard waste and the food waste and the other things that we think of as recyclables, all of those things, taking them out. That would also really help to reduce some of these challenges with groundwater, having to deal with the leachate and the methane emissions and so forth. And then the monitoring too, which is so important because without the monitoring of groundwater, surface water, gas emissions, all of those things, we need to have designated operational phases with planned expansion areas. And this becomes very costly as we spent the whole first episode talking about. And also the political challenges that go with trying to deal with this.

JORDEN

No, exactly. I think that it's much better to think of it as how can we use this one space for the longest and the maximal amount and not even almost in some ways thinking about the next one. Right. It is a challenge. The other big thing, even as you were listing off like the different way segregation and monitoring and the different ways we have to approach this. My big takeaway from last week's episode that I'm just kind of continuing with is that, like, is this an industrial complex? This is, you know, it's its own sector that needs to be thought of and developed up that way. And I like that the last episode kind of pointed to some of the financial benefits from this, because sustainability is often so focused as just a cost. And I think that this is one area where we can actually point to, no, no, we're costing ourselves by not doing it right. And that's a really powerful message when you can make that the sustainability argument like, you know, keep doing the harmful way if you want it to cost more and you want worse outcomes. I think that resonates a lot more than some of the other like change this behavior arguments that we usually have to do.

KIMBERLY

We do have a very self -interested reason as as people, because in the end, ultimately, especially because. most, especially municipal areas, this is taxes pay for these things. And so the more we can keep out of the stream, the less the landfills are going to cost, the more the companies are going to make, and that's actually going to cost less for them to operate with a higher profit margin. And then in the end, we end up better off for this. I think one of the things though, as we talked about last episode too, that there are different challenges for developing countries than there are for global North countries, because they don't have that same sort of They don't have the deep pockets. They don't have the tax base to be able to put these things in place. And they're already challenged with infrastructure and so forth to begin with. They lack the funds. And so while it's important for wealth and government institutions to be put in place to promote public health, these are things that global North countries put into place so long ago. They have this advantage, have long had an advantage to deal with waste, especially in urban areas. And this is a good thing considering global north consumption patterns and the limited land area, especially for low -lying countries in Europe. When we look at the like 164 other countries in the world that aren't part of the global north, they have a lot of uphill battles still that they're confronting. And a lot of these are countries where the urban areas are overpopulated and becoming more overpopulated. And the fact that most of the interest comes from private firms, But in running these, but in global South countries, they don't have the infrastructure. So they lack that interest that they have that's built in in global North countries where everything's already in place. Because in global North countries, it is typically private companies with just some municipality operators, from what I understand, that there's a trend towards privatizing even those. And so in the global South, though, these are most likely to be government run.

JORDEN

No, no, exactly. And I think that the lack of infrastructure is a big driver of it. You know, as we've spent the last two episodes describing the kind of highly regulated and complex design of these are the best practices. You can see why you like, you know, I said in the last episode, I think the difference because they are regulated in most places around the world to a degree. And it's the difference in that, like how bad it is. Sorry, how. good the regulation is that you know will allow like how bad the landfill is sorry but the thing i think that's interesting about this is there almost seems to be when i think about you know we have shipped our waste to countries for years i remember the very first time i i ever kind of heard about this was literally in grade school and they showed us a video of the new york garbage barge and for those who don't know just a barge of garbage that new york loaded up and then shipped off in the world to find a buyer for and kept paying to ship around the world and keep moving because no one to take it. Or more recently, China moving to block, you know, essentially what we called recycling, but was garbage and not in sort of in any way that made it able to be recycled. And there seems to be almost. a wealth curve that gets hit for global self countries. And when you make it to that medium kind of economic tier, the problems from waste and the state capacity kind of cross, right? So like you're the benefit of doing it when you're a lower income country is you're being paid to take this waste. You can process it in your ways. And so I wonder, A, it's not sustainable from an environmental point of view, but when we look at developing countries and where they are on those income scales, this is just not a long -term solution for anybody because every country will hit a point where the benefits don't away the costs that they're receiving. Sorry, that was a little scattered.

KIMBERLY

No, that's, I mean, definitely as far as illegal dumping, where it happens, where it's most likely to happen, where the corruption is most rife, those are places where... They either, you know, they just don't have a very good economy to begin with. And they're on a coastline. And it may not even be that it's the government themselves who are doing this. I've seen instances where it's just like somebody is standing along the coast and somebody says, hey, we'll give you money if you let us dump this here. And they dump it there. And OK. And then after, you know, before you know it, it's an actual like dump site where other barges are just coming and offloading. They're basically exporting their waste to developing countries. And I've been in cities in Global South countries where the more affluent areas of the cities actually have to pay for private waste collection if they want the waste to be removed because there's just an utter lack of collection. And so even if there are waste bins, if there happen to actually be waste bins on the streets to begin with in cities, most of them are so overflowing because they just don't have the means for regular collection. And places that are right on the coast, this is terrible because I've actually seen where then either the tides come up and wash them down or the rain just washes them down or whatever. And so there, as far as all of these problems that global South countries face, this is making it an uphill battle for them. So then we see where, as you mentioned, as countries do have more production and are especially the emerging economies producing goods for export. They are also incurring waste that otherwise would have been managed by global North countries before that it was outsourced and offshored to these places. So that gives them that sort of extra onus of more garbage to deal with. And so China was uniquely positioned that they were able to just say, nope. And the reason is not because suddenly China decided, oh, like, oh, we're going to, you know, manage this waste better or whatever. It was because they started having so much more domestic waste. that they could deal with, that they needed to focus more on their domestic waste, and they couldn't continue taking in more external waste. They do take some. Some of it are things that are super high -quality recycled materials they will still take, like paper, for example, is one, because they still don't have very good quality paper and paper products. And so from recycling, they don't get the grade of paper that they need to properly recycle that into what they need to meet their fill. And since the industries are already in place to rely on that, it's important to continue to have that stream, right? So we've talked about the management streams, whether it's supply streams, whether it's, you know, supplying raw materials or supplying, in this case, recycled materials. The stream is in place, so they want to keep doing that. So they put certain restrictions on saying, no, we'll still take this, but we won't take that. What ended up happening with a lot of that? It just ended up going to neighboring satellite countries in Thailand. And less so Vietnam because they still have communist government there. But Thailand and Malaysia took the big hit, the brunt of where that waste ended up going to, whether it was legal or not.

JORDEN

Well, no, and let's be clear, we didn't suddenly take it back. We didn't learn a grand lesson from this other than that we needed to find new buyers. That was exactly right.

KIMBERLY

exactly right. And so so for developing countries, they still have to move in the same direction. of dealing with the environmental safety considerations that we in Global North have largely already put into place, but an uphill battle at that. So then what happens when you actually, you know, ideally you want to, as we talked about, do whatever you can to fill as much landfill space as possible. And you don't want to end up being one of those situations that I've seen in cities, in Global South countries, where they just literally have like a city block just cord like walled up and people just dump stuff over the wall and that's where that is there in in i'm thinking of specifically right now maputo and mozambique but in the capital city there's just a very large city block and it's got stone wall and people just that's where that is literally their garbage bill and so we you know you can't do a whole lot with that but if you have a properly managed landfill Once it's retired, you can actually do something with it. And sorry. And so there's so now you have all this land. What do you do? Like, OK, so we talked about all this land we've got in the United States, Canada and various other places. You got all this land. What can you do with this now instead of just losing it? So there have been some very innovative ways to repurpose retired landfills. So Jordan, what would you say? What did you like?

JORDEN

Well, so what I really liked actually was. wildlife habitats and building nature centers so i i'm a big fan of more green space and cities one of the my favorite things about the city i live in is we actually have a provincial park in our city so i loved the idea because it's also i think in a lot of ways opposite of what we normally do which is taking away wildlife habitat and nature centers So the idea of building these back into to something that at the end of the day, I still I'm blending a little bit with parks. I know that's another option, but I'm thinking of these as much more on the outskirts of towns once. So, you know, taking a very intentional view of what would have been there 100 years ago. And can we bring back some of the natural vegetation and not in the the monoculture natural vegetation you'll see on these places in a lot? I think that's kind of sad. But what about you? What was your favorite option?

KIMBERLY

Well, I like the solar farms idea because while I'm all for the recreation areas that I think, like you said, I'm all for more green space that makes me happy. And the wildlife habitats and nature centers, when they do them right and do them well, that's great. But that also means more people leaving the city because a lot of these are on the outskirts. So they're going out of their way to go to these places. And so that's not bad. You know, and for recreation purposes, golf courses, people are going to golf. I mean, I think this is like the worst thing you could do for maximizing sustainability. Like you go maximize and now you're going to undermine it with golf courses. Like golf courses make me crazy. But if you've got to do it, at least repurpose this land instead of clearing other lands to do this. And other things that, you know, anything that encourages activities, ski slopes, or as long as you're not making that, you know, fake snow. So, you know, see these other issues that come along with this. Concert venues and stuff would be good. Cross -country courses for like every kind of bicycle, which is really cool. Those things. But I still think the solar farms, because they're already ideal for this purpose. They're big expanses. They're barren. They're sun exposed spaces because they had to clear them. So it's not like they when they planted the natural, the native. grasses and stuff, they didn't necessarily put trees in, right? So we're talking about big sun exposed spaces, open spaces that invariably have infrastructure because they needed the roads in place to be able to get the trucks there. They needed the power lines in place to be able to run it and do all of this and still continue to maintain it. The landfills emit biogases for up to 50 years after they've been retired. They can also do this dual collection. So I think solar farms, I mean, we could use more solar without question. No, exactly.

JORDEN

exactly. And I think it's an interesting idea, especially in some more, I'd say, semi -rural areas where there's some land competition issues in local communities with agricultural land. And I know communities feeling pressure from that. I think this is a great way to say, let's get the value, let's get the renewable energy. And you're not really fighting anybody for landfill land. Also, the biogas collection for up to 50 years and using it, especially if these sites have gone ahead with with putting in collection and usage. Right. And so you're going to want that investment to be viable for the full lifetime of it. So I think that's a really good combination as well.

KIMBERLY

Where there is farming pressure, there are certainly types of farming that could be done on this, too, especially livestock farming, because they're, you know, feasting on the natural native vegetation anyway that's planted on these sites. Yeah,

JORDEN

so sorry, I want to be clear, too. When I said feeling pressure from agriculture, I don't want to imply or say that there is pressure between solar and agriculture, but I do want to respect people's feelings of pressure between the two.

KIMBERLY

Well, and I think that, you know, like, so two of my least favorite ones for sure, golf courses, definitely. But if people will want golf courses, so again, you know, go this route. But building retail and commercial properties, like we don't really, I see all of these abandoned malls and areas, especially downtown areas that have just completely gone just ghost towns. I'd rather see those used first, but I know outlet malls especially tend to be in the outskirts of urban areas. And because these are typically very well connected to main thoroughfares because they had to be off of interstates and so forth, like then, OK, I guess if you need to do it, maybe that's an OK one. But anything that encourages consumerism for me is like.

JORDEN

I know I'm with you. I think that if it's going to be again like these were, you know, wild private companies, you know what I mean? The the actual. And while they're responsible for 30 years, I always remind people at the end of the day, all risk falls back to like citizens, like at the end of the day, right? Companies can go bankrupt all your city or your state above your city or, you know, however that is organized is the actual bearer of all liability. So if we're going to make it commercial, I think that it should be again, I like that solar idea. And also it's because you don't have a lot of people on that site. You're not you're not doing a lot with it. Or we should be trying to build more nature. Again, we need a lot more natural spaces and green spaces than we do for another strip mall.

KIMBERLY

Agreed. Yeah. And so how are you feeling about the future of landfill waste?

JORDEN

So I'm really excited. Coming out of this episode, I'm going to do a lot more, a much deeper dive into waste to heat. And actually, I want to quantify more on the emissions from that side. Like we both kind of said, something you'd always known about, kind of thought was interesting. Now, as I've said on the show many times, the carbon emissions are really one of my biggest issues. It's what I drive for. So for that much of a reduction, 50%, you know, from that end. from the mind, heat and power industry, I think it's worth giving more of a deep dive. And so, but on the other side, just to wrap up why I'm smiling at the end of this episode, it doesn't happen a lot. But like, again, most of the issues that we talked about today seem like low hanging fruit. Now, again, I want to be clear, low hanging fruit in the global north, an uphill battle, but a manageable, I think like a path forward in the global south. Like they doesn't have to lock in some of the same problems that we did for the last hundred years.

KIMBERLY

Yeah, I think in the global north, we just need to focus a lot more on diverting usable resources from landfills in the first place. And also, as you mentioned, we're going to talk about circular economy coming up soon and pushing for more circular economy production. I think these are things that are much more doable. And they're not big asks from individuals either, even though we might say, oh, no, I have to separate out my recycle. The challenge, we talked about that in a previous episode, that the amount of recyclables that go into waste stream is just, it's unacceptable and unnecessary. Just paying an iota of attention can make a big difference in this case. Whereas for global South countries, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. But because at least dumps are mostly banned throughout the world, that's one thing that helps. Certainly there are conventions on dumping waste into developing countries and laws against, I mean, actual international lawsuits that have been filed against like the United States and the New York barges. And to make sure like their Basel Convention and others in place, if I'm remembering the right convention, I'm not an international law expert by any means, but there are conventions that are in place too. make sure that these things don't happen. Of course, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. We seem to lack the will and the means to enforce international law when it comes to this, but at least people are aware of it and it's on people's radar. And this is something that is challenging, but unfortunately, in some cases, it's more challenging because as people's Standard of living increases, it means they're more consumeristic and they want to emulate global north countries and what people have and so forth. But because people's standard of living is increasing, that also means that they have better standard of living for putting more political pressure on trying to get laws enacted and want to have a better environment to live in. And so that is also going to help the cause to have better waste management systems.

JORDEN

Yeah, no, I'm thinking back to the stat you said in the first episode last week that, you know, the UN is projecting a 45 % increase in municipal waste over, I forget what time period. 25 years.

KIMBERLY

25 years. Thank you.

JORDEN

Thank you. And so I think that it's not really that we know we're going to produce more waste. And that's really driven by that, you know, rising consumption, right, and rising economic prosperity. So the question for us is how we're going to deal with that waste in the next 25 years. And the bottom line is we need to deal with that waste, because if we have the same level of groundwater contamination and methane emissions and all of those things,

KIMBERLY

the bottom line is we need to deal with that waste, because if we have the same level of groundwater contamination and methane emissions and all of those things, biogas releases and so forth, things that could be used. that aren't being used or being contained for environmental reasons, for environmental protections, then we're going to be in bad shape. So we collectively need to do something about this. 100%. So if you enjoyed our episode of Sustainable Planet, or even if you didn't, let us know at splanetpod at gmail .com. We're also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You'll find our links and show notes at our website. along with additional resources from today's episode at splanetpod .com. We would really like you to rate and review our episode and read my Substack post and have a great day and keep on listening.