Term: Landfill
**Landfill Operations:**
– Waste confined to a small area.
– Waste compacted to reduce volume.
– Daily cover with soil or other materials.
– Waste collection vehicles weighed on arrival.
– Compaction and spreading by compactors or bulldozers.
**Sanitary Landfill Life Cycle:**
– Engineered facilities for waste confinement.
– Bioreactors where microbes break down waste.
– Aerobic and anaerobic degradation stages.
– Includes phases: initial adjustment, transition, acid formation, methane fermentation, and final maturation.
**Environmental Impact:**
– Infrastructure disruption and pollution.
– Pollution of local environment, groundwater, aquifers, and soil.
– Formation of leachate and decomposition gases.
– Attraction of vectors like rats and flies.
**Leachate Management:**
– Formation from water percolating through garbage.
– Use of impermeable liners and collection systems.
– Monitoring for leaks and prevention of groundwater pollution.
– Sealing off sites to prevent new leachate formation.
**Decomposition Gases and Vectors:**
– Production of CO2 and CH4 from organic waste.
– Seepage of gases into air and soil.
– Attraction of rats and flies.
– Mitigation through daily cover and proper management.
A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, trash dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, refuse was simply left in piles or thrown into pits; in archeology this is known as a midden.
Some landfill sites are used for waste management purposes, such as temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or for various stages of processing waste material, such as sorting, treatment, or recycling. Unless they are stabilized, landfills may undergo severe shaking or soil liquefaction of the ground during an earthquake. Once full, the area over a landfill site may be reclaimed for other uses.