AREA A/B ENGINEERING REPORT - Waste Management

7. BEYOND WASTE CONTAINMENT – LANDFILLS AS A RESOURCE
Geosyntec Consultants
Landfills offer significant environmental and community benefits beyond just safe containment
of solid waste. Four significant examples are:
Landfill Gas-to-Energy (LFGTE) which provides green energy and
optimize reduction of greenhouse gas emissions;
Carbon Sequestration (net removal of carbon from the atmosphere) similar
to sequestering of carbon occurring in natural terrestrial
ecosystems;
Enhanced Waste Treatment which degrades the waste faster, increasing
the rate of methane production and more rapidly improving
leachate quality; and
Sustainable landfills designed to provide flexibility in Beneficial
End Use options after landfill closure.
The managed, modern landfill can be designed with beneficial use as a primary driver,
thereby creating a dynamic resource that can potentially produce clean, renewable energy,
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide flexibility in land use for the local community.
The managed modern landfill as an engineered containment structure that provides
environmentally protective containment and treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) has been
described in previous sections of this document. As the final chapter of this document, Section 7
serves to briefly describe the manner in which landfills provide benefits beyond containment,
including serving as a renewable energy resource and sequestering carbon produced from
natural and manmade sources (which in turn helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). As will be
illustrated in Section 7, the future of landfill technology offers several very promising and
enhanced characteristics.
7.1 Landfill Gas-to-Energy and Other Proactive Green Energy Opportunities
Landfill gas is rich in methane, an important energy source, which typically
comprises 50-60 percent of the gas by volume. As a result, efforts to control
GHG emissions by capturing LFG serve to capture the methane as a significant
energy source. Not only do such projects provide “green energy” from a
renewable resource by offsetting traditional fossil fuel energy production plants,
MD10186.doc 89 29 March 2009