Waste Archives

County wants input for plan to develop Cedar Hills Regional Landfill

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Advocates of sustainable energy and waste management have been critical of the King County Solid Waste Division’s apparent push to expand the landfill. In September 2021, the Institute for Energy and Resource Management issued a public statement calling the King County Solid Waste Division’s environmental impact statement a “boondoogle,” and accusing the county of “going through the motions but having the conclusion decided well before hand.”

President of the Institute for Energy and Resource Management, Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann, has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of the King County Solid Waste Division and what he believes has been a lack of investment in recycling infrastructure and systems improvements. He cited stagnate rates of recycling in the region over the years.

Schmidt-Pathmann also has expressed his disbelief in the county’s studies, which claim the possibility of high rates of methane recapture from the landfill. Schmidt-Pathmann believes that the county has overinflated the rates of methane that can be captured as a way of making a landfill look like a more viable and sustainable waste management method than he believes it truly is.

He expressed his skepticism regarding the county’s reported rates of methane capture in a letter to the director of the King County Solid Waste Division in November of 2021.
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January 24, 2022 Climate Change / Environment / Integrated Waste Management Systems / International / Landfill / News & Updates / Science & Society / Sustainability / Waste / Waste-to-Energy

New Study: European Waste Management Sector Shows Significant CO2 Reduction Potential for 10 Waste Streams

One sensitivity explored the comparison of adopting a 20 vs a 100-year time horizon. This clearly highlighted the large impact of methane emissions from landfills, in accordance with the recent IPCC report’s emphasis on the urgency to reduce GHG-emissions.

Another sensitivity investigated the CO2eq savings by energy recovery. The average electricity and heat mix of the European grid (and its evolution with a higher penetration of renewables in the future) is considered as default assumption for energy substitution. A sensitivity analysis with a marginal approach has also been developed which means that processes which recover energy from waste avoid the most carbon intensive conventional power generation technologies – fossil fuel sources. This sensitivity highlights even more the great contributions of energy recovery from waste in a decarbonisation perspective.

The waste management industry has cross-industrial interlinkages by making valuable waste-derived content available to the whole economy as secondary resources for material and energy uses.

April 15, 2021 Air Pollution / Climate Change / Environment / Landfill / Methane / News & Updates / Waste

The Hidden Damage of Landfills

Environmental Impact of Landfills:

The most pressing environmental concern regarding landfills is their release of methane gas. As the organic mass in landfills decompose methane gas is released. Methane is 84 times more effective at absorbing the sun’s heat than carbon dioxide, making it one of the most potent greenhouse gases and a huge contributor to climate change.

Along with methane, landfills also produce carbon dioxide and water vapor, and trace amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and non methane organic compounds. These gases can also contribute to climate change and create smog if left uncontrolled.

The creation of landfills typically means destroying natural habitats for wildlife. The average landfill size is 600 acres. With over 3,000 active landfills in the United States, as much as 1,800,000 acres of habitat have been lost.

While landfills are required to have plastic or clay lining by federal regulation, these liners tend to have leaks. This can result in leachate, a liquid produced by landfill sites, contaminating nearby water sources, further damaging ecosystems.

Leachate can contain high levels of ammonia. When ammonia makes its way into ecosystems it is nitrified to produce nitrate. This nitrate can then cause eutrophication, or a lack of oxygen due to increased growth of plant life, in nearby water sources. Eutrophication creates “dead zones” where animals cannot survive due to lack of oxygen. Along with ammonia, leachate contains toxins such as mercury due to the presence of hazardous materials in landfills.

January 7, 2021 Air Pollution / Children's Health / Climate Change / Environment / Failed Policies / International / Landfill / News & Updates / Open Burning / Pollution / Public Health / Waste

Health crisis: up to a billion tonnes of waste potentially burned in the open every year

Uncontrolled waste fires burn at much lower and inconsistent temperatures, which means combustion is incomplete. This releases substances from the waste and creates new ones as molecules are decomposed and reformed in the flames. Dioxins and related compounds are often formed when PVC is burned in open fires. At least 30 of these types of compound are considered harmful to human health. They can persist in the environment for years and in the human body for perhaps a decade or more. There is evidence they can damage the brain and disrupt hormones.

April 30, 2020 Air Pollution / Correcting False Information / Economy / Environment / Environmental justice / Failed Policies / Landfill / Landfill Leachate / Landfill Lobby / Landfill Regulations / News & Updates / Recycling / Special Interests / Sustainability / Time for Action is Now / True costs of landfilling / Waste

Landfill Liability and the Future of Recycling: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure (Commentary)

By hiding the real costs of landfills to the public, the true value of recycling is hidden, as well as the critical gains from avoiding environmental disasters associated with releases from waste containment. Bad decisions will follow from incorrect price signals to public decision makers when the cost of prevention cannot be compared to the future costs of managing environmental calamities.

A major cause of under-pricing landfills is the failure of landfill companies or the municipalities to account for the long-term liability of existing landfills, in contravention to the most basic rules for recognizing future costs that will be incurred by failing to act prophylactically today.

Clearly, inclusion of these liabilities on the books as required by standard accounting practice will lead to long-term costs for cities and landfill companies and will have an adverse effect on value and stock price. Current accounting of landfills must be modified to cover generational costs. This will finally give the public realistic measures of current costs vs. future risks, including future costs and future impacts on climate change.
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Determining the real-world financial risks of the current system is absolutely necessary for the public and officials to make the choices that will govern the laws on post-closure management and liability for the next generations. It is impossible to evaluate future municipal financial health without these inclusions.