what are the advantages and disadvantages of the sanitary landfill method ?
Answers
Landfills provide an “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” rationality to the problem of waste management. After its leaves your home, most people ignore what happens to it. Once it is buried in a landfill, we are inclined to forget about it. This is a problem, because all landfills have inherent problems related to contaminants escaping and affecting our environment.
So the primary advantage is: Our consciences are eased!! Other advantages are that the trash isn’t piling up around us and creating worse health problems as it rots and attract pests which can carry disease. A well engineered landfill can greatly reduce the potential nasty effects on our environment….it’s better than just throwing the trash in a pile somewhere (which is done in many places).
Disadvantages include the fact that rotting food waste allows methane and carbon dioxide to seep out of the ground and up into the air. Both these gases contribute greatly to global warming. Chemicals can also leach out of confinement into ground water and streams. Landfills must be monitored for LONG after they are closed and capped. The ongoing costs can be several hundred thousand dollars per year (or more, depending on the size) …forever! This adds to the “Present value” cost of a new landfill (we calculate the present day value of that ongoing expense stream)
A better solution to landfills is to:
sort the trash as it comes in;
Remove any valuable recyclable materials
Sort the remaing material into 3–4 categories
biodgradable (“soft and wet” stuff) that can be digested anaerobically … capturing the methane gas that is created to use as an energy source
“hard and dry” stuff that can be gasified …capturing the hydrgoen that is created to use as an energy source
Pyrolysis material (tires!) which can be processed into liquid fuel
“Leftovers” that can be incinerated, the heat from which can be used for multiple purposes
The above can be done affordably. It is more environmentally friendly. It harnesses a renewable source of energy. It diminishes the volume and mass of material to be buried, so it saves space and money! Energy is created locally, jobs are created, transportation costs are reduced and GHGs are reduced.
This is a 100% scalable option and can be done for a small landfill or transfer station of 10 or 20 tons per day up to operations of 1000 tons per day or more. It costs about the same to do this per kW of energy as it does to build a natural gas plant …. and WAY less than building nuclear reactor facilities.
Advantage:
Waste are not spread everywhere
Gov. Directly involved
Disadvantage
The place is with foul smell
Disease spreading etc....