Landfill Directive

For landfill, costs vary highly across Europe. The main reason are differences in landfill quality (a point that will be quickly become less important now that the EU Landfill directive is becoming operational) and particularly landfill tax systems. Differences between some 2 per tornie in some EU countries (for inert waste) and up to 280 per tonne in, e.g., some places in Germany, may occur (though the latter value must be regarded as exceptionally high). Technically, even in countries with unfavourable circumstances like the... 

The Landfill Directive 99/31 mandates the reduction of biodegradable solid waste to be landfilled. 

The landfill directive is one of the most important environmental directives the European Parliament has dealt with in recent years. It marks the beginning of a major shift in waste management practice... 

Landfill Directive (99/31/EC) Introduced new technical and operational requirements for landfills across Europe and targets for the reduction in landfill of biodegradable wastes.The Decision (2003/ 33/EC), which comes into force in July 2004, is crucial for the implementation of the 1999 Landfill Directive. It outlines criteria for the waste that can be accepted at each of the defined types of site and for underground storage, sets out strict EU-wide leaching limit values and defines testing methods. The criteria are to be applied by Member States by July 2005. 

Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive Freedom of Access to Information Directive Landfill Directive... 

As with other fields of contaminated soil testing, the lack of standard reference materials results in the lack of ready means of having the performance of leaching tests accredited as part of a laboratory test accreditation procedure. This is potentially problematic as more and more legislation, including particularly European Directives such as the Landfill Directive, specify that testing must be carried out by competent and suitably accredited laboratories. 

Alternatively, the waste streams of the sulfate process could be treated for recovery of the H2SO4 and for removal of the toxic heavy metals. The other sulfates are preferably calcined to form stable solid oxides for landfilling. Direct evaporation processes were proposed for precipitating out most of the dissolved salt. The acid recovered (a yield of up to 80%) is contaminated with small amounts of the metal salt. The process is complicated by crystallization in the evaporator and by corrosion, the investment is high, and the separated salts are very acidic. In an alternative process the waste stream is spray dried at about 1000°C and the sulfuric acid is recovered... 

A discussion presented on the use of scrap tires for artificial fish reefs construction, and opposition has been carried out on this application [10]. A few years latter, it was said that some value is recovered from around 70% of the tires, with the rest going to the landfill. But in Europe, the Landfill Directive bans the disposal of shredded tires in landfills after July 2006 [11]. 

For highway crash barriers, the same Landfill Directive stands [11]. 

A very simple method of reusing old tires in landfills could have been a possibility. But in Europe, the Landfill Directive has banned the disposal of shredded tires in landfills since July 2006. It should be added that whole tires have been banned from landfills since 2003 [11]. Elsewhere, a high court directive [65] did not permit burning of scrap tires as a substitute fuel in cement kilns for pollution reasons. 

The recently adopted landfill directive (a) demands high standards of landfill management, and also seeks to ban certain difficult wastes from landfill, and (b) seeks a progressive reduction in the land-filling of biodegradable wastes which account for a high percentage of wastes sent to sites. 

In the light of the above principles, and before considering the sustainable landfill, and other relevant landfill principles and practice, it is worth considering current requirements of landfill within the USA (as under RCRA, sub-title D) and Europe (as in the proposed Landfill Directive). 

The major requirements of the proposed European Landfill Directive are very similar. They require that ... 

The key points (above) are not exhaustive but show the similarities between the two sets of controls, where, for example, composite liners, leachate collection and treatment, gas collection, and groundwater monitoring are common. The proposals for the European Landfill Directive have not been ratified, and at the time of writing, the future of the Directive remains uncertain. However, irrespective of the fate of the Directive, many of the requirements are already being implemented in many European countries. 

With regard to the fundamental principles of landfill management, die key difference between the two systems is that under RCRA the "dry-tomb" tqiproach is implicit, while under the proposed European Landfill Directive, "control" of infiltration is required, rather than "prevention", as under RCRA. However, the advisability of the dry-tomb approach is now being questioned within the USA (e.g. Maurer, 1993 Lee and Jones-Lee, 1993) and is discussed further in Chapter 7. 

This assessed risk approach to landfill design and construction has much to commend it and represents a more versatile and effective means of landfill development than the type of approach that is based on fixed guidelines such as those enshrined within sub-title D of RCRA, and within the European Landfill Directive (CEC, 1991). In order to minimise the risks associated with, amongst other things, liner failure, landraising has been considered as an alternative to landfill. 

Another category of dry, anaerobic biodegradation tests are landfill simulation tests. These tests have primarily been developed in the USA, where biologically active landfills represent a viable waste management option for the future. In Europe however, there is much less interest for biodegradation characteristics in landfills, especially after the adoption in 1999 of the EU landfill directive, which is phasing out the disposal of biodegradable materials in landfills. 

Burnley, S. 2001. The impact of the European landfill directive on waste management in the United Kingdom. Resour. Conserv. Recy. 32 349-358. 

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