Municipal Solid Waste Management by Sanitary Landfill

Attending sustainability in waste management require an option that employs environmental friendliness. The generation of municipal solid waste is increasing year by year and there are many options for handling and disposing these wastes. Major environmental concerns of municipal landfills revolve around quantity and quality of leachate, gas generation, and decomposition processes occurring therein. Minimizing the time period for maximum biodegradation to reduce leachate and gas emissions after landfill closure, ease the requirement of leachate treatment, and reclamation of landfill site. In this context, several enhancement techniques are being implemented to increase the biological activity in the landfills. As early as 1970, researchers started exploring the potential of applying leachate recirculation in landfills to enhance the stabilization of waste and generation of landfill gas. This paper reviews the benefits of bioreactor landfill operation techniques with the conventional landfill techniques from past and ongoing field trials and culminates with the need for the research on the promising technology in India.