For many in the western world, landfills carry negative connotations: pungent blots on the landscape, associated with greenhouse gas emissions and risks to groundwater from leachate. The efforts that developed countries are making to reduce our reliance on landfill can give rise to a kneejerk reaction when we think about waste management in developing nations. Shouldn’t we be advocating that they move straight into recycling, composting, biogas and energy from waste, without passing through the landfill phase we’re struggling to end?
The reality, however, is that in many parts of the world waste management has not even reached the first tier of the waste hierarchy. An engineered landfill is far removed from an open dump, of the sort that currently serves the waste disposal needs of many developing areas. The first priority in waste management must be to eliminate the environmental and public health hazards that these dumps present. A recycling plant or composting system can be set up, but the rest of the waste must still go somewhere else. Without proper landfills, residual waste will continue to be dumped throughout the cities of the developing world, creating health problems for years to come.
The lay of the landfill
The issues with open dumps are as enormous as the piles of trash they hold. More often than not, there is little separation of waste, with hazardous and household waste ending up in the same pile. The surrounding ecosystem starts to degrade as contaminants seep into the soil (especially from heavy metals), which also limits any after-use of the site. Leachate from the waste can contaminate groundwater, while surface water is contaminated directly. Meanwhile, emissions of methane and CO2 from these sites contribute to global warming; on the local scale, the accidental or deliberate burning of waste (especially plastic) emits toxins that affect the health of those nearby.
The most basic landfilling involves simply covering waste with soil, which will reduce the risk of waste being scattered by wind and vermin, cut down on foul odours, and even help reduce methane emissions.
A further step up is sanitary landfilling, where sites are set up in cells trenched into the ground, with lining to prevent leachate contamination. In such landfills, coverage of the waste is properly administered and landfill gas emissions and leachate content are closely monitored with sensors. Such well-regulated sites are a world away from the open dumping, and indeed burning, found in the developing world.
With these solutions readily available, why is open dumping still happening? Of course, a lack of financial resources is often the key obstacle to the creation of proper landfills. However, money is not the only issue.
India has set aside funds especially for waste management but still faces problems in trying to construct and manage proper landfills. Central government has little power to enforce waste regulation in the country’s 36 states and union territories. There are no guidelines for landfill siting or maintenance of landfill gas emissions, and no binding requirement to test for toxins. In most cases, beyond some general guidelines, the real work up is left up to the municipalities: but they, too, lack the necessary powers.
In Uttar Pradesh, a city near Delhi, money for a waste management solution has been made available following rapid population growth; however, officials argue that the land needed for a proper landfill is not available. Yet, on the city’s outskirts a race track was developed spanning the length of five football pitches, and which is only used for a tournament three days of the year. Whether this is down to poor prioritisation, poor planning, or a combination of the two, open dumping remains a major issue.
Running (a waste plant) before you can walk
Officials in developing nations – and international donors that support projects – can become enraptured by the possibilities of modern technology. However, projects are doomed to failure if they don’t consider:
- What the most prominent, basic waste issues are;
- What the most feasible, cost-effective course of action might be; and
- The specific local conditions.
According to Waste Consultant Asit Nema, speaking in a recent debate on landfill in the developing world, in India too much investment has gone into waste treatment (such as biogas and composting), much of which has proved dysfunctional. This has left no alternative disposal route for the waste to take. There is a trend for projects in developing nations to begin with high hopes, but last only a few years due to poor planning and upkeep.
Fly tip: birds scavenging on open dumps is common sight in India. Photo: Carl Gierstorfer / Deutsche Welle (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), via Flickr.
Of course, landfills can also be poorly run. Here, most problems stem from the government’s relationship with the private sector contractors who actually maintain the landfills. Nema’s experience is that officials’ tendency to focus on alternative treatment technologies can get in the way: he cites cases where, although proper landfills have been established, there are financial penalties if more than an agreed amount of an area’s waste is sent to the facility – despite there being no sanitary alternative. Therefore, landfill operators are likely to refuse to accept waste, leading to piles of rubbish surrounding the site or the creation of unofficial open dumping sites.
Further, a contractor given a five-year grant will realise that when the funding stops it is very unlikely that the project will be able to sustain itself economically, leading to landfill projects closing and waste once again going to open dumps. However, a landfill is simpler to operate and more technically robust than many more advanced solutions, and so is less susceptible to simply breaking down and being beyond local means to reactivate.
One small step for waste infrastructure…
The issues preventing developing nations from achieving proper waste management are not all technical issues that can be fixed with expertise. Education of citizens and public officials regarding the risks of open dumping is a precondition for any waste management system. As part of the debate mentioned above, Derek Greedy, retired Waste Management and Planning Professional, commented “if they can view waste management as helping prevent disease, they will look at investing in that service.”
Greedy is currently working on a project with One World Link in Bo, the second largest city in Sierra Leone with around 200,000 residents and very limited resources. He proposes taking baby steps to slowly build up the disposal infrastructure in the city, and to provide safer conditions for waste as soon and as easily as possible. This can be done by closing off unofficial dumping sites, designating one official landfill site for the city, and beginning the coverage of waste with soil, even if by means of manual labour.
In fact, this was the general route taken by Latin America, which now has successfully operating sanitary landfills throughout its nations, and has subsequently begun to plan for treatment technologies like waste-to-energy. In Bo, waste collection has been assigned to youth groups that are able to charge collection fees, and little by little, Greedy plans for proper landfills and composting of organic waste, which will help regenerate agricultural land ravaged by war. For now, even these little steps of collection and coverage of waste are helping to clean up the streets and contain the harmful side effects of open dumps.
Waste management solutions for the developing world must respect the specific character of both the place and the waste in question. Nevertheless, the guiding rule of small steps is critical to any sustainable progress. Developing nations cannot simply hurdle over the steps which the West has laboriously taken and adopt the type of infrastructure we are now using.
Waste is indeed a global resource, but only where it is not primarily a problem. It must first be made safe before we can consider extracting possible benefits.
We are grateful to be Waste Wise for the opportunity to produce this article, a version of which first appeared here. Be Waste Wise is an online platform for sharing expertise on waste management globally.
Nicole:
Your article is so correct. Starting with the Gore and Clinton era, the blame has always been on the developing countries. They looked for the solution, as promised, from the U.S. However, the U.S. can’t even fix their own problems. In the meantime some U.S. firms tried to make Central America the dumping grounds for U.S. garbage. The State Departments solution was to contain all garbage in one giant landfill, real smart of them.
So, how can Mr.Gore receive a Nobel Prize?
There is a good solution, and one pointed out to the U.S.government. Every municipality in those countries and their industries can collect wastes, process them, close all landfills, and create new markets of compost, energy, fertilizer, and feed supplements.
Let’s put the real solution into effect now, the exact plans are there.
Just keep politics out of it.
Another thing, I don’t think anyone really knows how bad the waste situation really is
Maybe, articles like yours will allow experts in the field to come forward
and assist. We don’t need high technology, that usually doesn’t work anyway, to be placed in a developing country.
Ted Jonson
Energyflex