Composition of Waste at an Early EU-Landfill of Torma in Estonia

Document Type : Research Note

Authors

1 Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Linnaeus University, Sweden

2 Department of Water Management, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia

3 Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania

Abstract

Landfills represent a continuous environmental threat due to the emission of different greenhouse gases, which are mainly responsible for the climate changes, and the contaminated leachate that affects the surface and ground water recipients. The circular economy approach appeared as a useful solution to reduce the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources and the environmental risk effects by considering all of the lost resources like wastes including the landfills as potential secondary resources. It is well known that characterizing the composition of landfill waste is an essential step in specifying the recycling methods. In the current research the waste composition at one of the first EU regulations-compliant sanitary landfills (the Torma landfill in Estonia) was studied. The results showed that the fine fraction (<20 mm) represented 53% of the total excavated waste materials while the waste to energy fraction (plastics, woods etc.) was the highest within the coarse fraction (>20 mm). The present work emphasized that mining landfills can be a good solution either for extracting primary raw materials like metals, as a source for recovering energy, or for acquiring landfill space.

Keywords

References

European Commission, (2010). Critical raw materials for the EU.Report of the AD-hoc Working Group on defining critical raw materials.
Muller D., Wang T., Duval B., Graedel T.E. (2006). Exploring the engine of anthropogenic iron cycles. PNAS 103:16111-16116.
Jani Y., Kaczala F., Marchand C., Hogland M., Kriipsalu M., Hogland W., Kihl A. (2016). Characterization of excavated fine fraction and waste composition from a Swedish landfill.Waste Management and Research 34:1292–1299.
Zhou C., Fang W., Xu W., Cao A., Wang R. (2014). Characteristics and the recovery potential of plastic wastes obtained from landfill mining. J. Cleaner Production 80:80-86.
Xiaoli C., Shimaoka T., Xianyan C., Qiang G., Youcai Z. (2007). Characteristics and mobility of heavy metals in an MSW landfill: implications in risk assessment and reclamation. Journal of Hazardous Materials 144:485-491.
Qi G., Yue D., Liu J., Li R., Shi X., He L., Guo J., Miao H., Nie Y. (2013). Impact assessment of intermediate soil cover on landfill stabilization by characterizing landfill municipal solid waste. J. of Environmental Management 128:259-265.
Hogland W. (2002). Remediation of an old landfill site: soil analysis, leachate quality and gas production. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. Int., 49-54.
Kaartinen T., Sormunen K., Rintala J. (2013). Case study on sampling, processing and characterization of landfilled municipal solid waste in the view of landfill mining. Journal of Cleaner Production 55:56-66.
Jani Y., Marchand C., Hogland W. (2014). The potential of plants to cleanup metals from an old landfill site. In the conference Linnaeus ECO-TECH ´14, Kalmar, Sweden, November 24-26.
Al-Jarallah R., Aleisa E. (2014). A baseline study characterizing the municipal solid waste in the state of Kuwait. Waste Management 34:952-960.
Jain P., Kim H., Townsend T.G. (2005). Heavy metal content in soil reclaimed from a municipal solid waste landfill. Waste Management 25:25-35.
Hull R.M., Krogmann U., Asce M., Storm F.(2005). Composition and characteristics of excavated materials from New Jersey landfill.J. ofEnv. Eng. 3:478-490.
Quaghebeur M., Laenen B., Geysen D., Nielsen P., Pontikes Y., Van Gerven T., Spooren J. (2013). Characterization of landfilled materials: screening of the enhanced landfill mining potential. J. of Cleaner Production 55:72-83.
Siddiqui A.A., Richards D.J., Powrie W. (2012). Investigations into the landfill behavior of pretreated wastes. Waste Management 32:1420-1426.
Iranian (Iranica) Journal of Energy & Environment
Volume 8, Issue 2
Spring 2017
Pages 113-117

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics