The morning began like any other: twenty minutes of trying to make my hair look suave, followed by some fruit in yogurt. However, it quickly became entirely different from anyone of the seven thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven days that came before it. Yesterday I visited a landfill for the first time. That's right, two days ago I was a landfill virgin. Fortunately, that part of my life is in the past and I now have a better understanding of where modern waste meets its maker (I mean that in the colloquial sense, of course). To say that I am a changed man because of it would probably be a bit of an overstatement. That being said, I did find it quite interesting.
The landfill I visited is called Eco Sardinia. Currently, this landfill does not handle Municipal Solid Waste due to a lack of permit because of new regulations. Therefore, the waste is manages is special waste. This includes both fly and bottom ash from waste incinerators, construction and demolition waste, as well as industrial waste.
We witnessed an active cell being filled with ash from a nearby waste to energy plant. This is shown in the picture here:
In the empty space next to the active cell, we observed a leachate collection pipe being placed. If you look closely, the picture below shows the process:
Leachate collection is important because it helps keep harmful substances out of the groundwater near the landfill. At this landfill, the leachate was collected in tanks before being sent to a waste water treatment plant.
This plant also collects the biogas produced by the MSW in some of the old landfills on the site. The biogas is processed and used for cogeneration of electricity and heat. All of the electricity is sold to the grid, while the heat is used to heat the onsite facilities. Below is a picture of one of the engines used in this process:
The landfill also installed solar panels to produce more electricity. This is because the energy that the landfills are currently producing does not make full use of the available energy output for the site. Thus, the solar panels make up for the difference.
All in all, I am happy that I was able to witness a landfill first hand. It has given me a better understanding of all that landfills entail. It erased the stigma in my head of a smelly plot of land, and replaced it with a modern sustainable resource. You know what they say, "one man's trash is another man's electricity." Or something along those lines.
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