Assessing the potential of active treatment to reduce the environmental impact of landfill waste using multi-surface modelling: waste of time?

While waste is increasingly managed and treated more sustainably, landfills remain a necessary endpoint for untreatable waste. Landfills pose an environmental threat through the emission of greenhouse gases and contaminated water (leachate). Today, these emissions are contained via the placement of impermeable barriers. Yet this solution retains the contaminant emission potential of the waste, shifting risks and associated costs to future generations. This PhD investigated an alternative solution: actively treating landfilled waste by supplying air and/or recirculating the leachate within the landfill to accelerate waste degradation and the breakdown, flushing, or retention of contaminants, thereby reducing emissions to an environmentally safe level. My research showed the potential of active treatment to reduce contaminant emissions and thereby reduce the long-term environmental burden of landfills. Nevertheless, application of active treatment at full-scale landfills remains challenging as the large scale and the highly variable nature of the waste limits how much waste can be treated effectively.