Problems and solution of toxic waste landfill in city

On the basis of the announcement of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China, there were 849 waste disposal facilities，which had 676 sanitary landfill sites processing about 102.9 million tons,processing over 145.89 million tons in 660 formed city by the end of September 2010 (City Construction Office Letter of China, [2010] No.158,). Accordance with the statistics above, landfilling, composting and incineration are still the basic treatment of waste. On the other hand, although there were restrictive policy to manage and control toxic waste, such as management of waste classification and standards of specification of landfill site facilities (“Standard for pollution control on landfill”, for hazardous wastes, 2001-12-28 GB 18598--2001, & for municipal solid waste, 2008-04-02 No.5), most of local governments did not implement policies efficiently and establish a functional system for classifying waste, especially in industrial waste emission. As a result, the precious natural resources cannot be reused. More importantly, the toxic and hazardous waste would cause irreparable pollution by emission as well as landfill without classifying.Here is a case shows how terrible effect happens when the toxic and hazardous waste emission to environment without processing in Italy. Created in China national network February 14, according to the description of a informer,the Italian government assaulted the criminal organizations base of Camorra and sought out many plastic buckets of toxic waste with other illegal industrial waste, Folha de Sao Paulo reported on February 11 (Liu Junling, “The Italian "triangle of death” cased by toxic landfill, 2014.02.14) . What is more, northern territory of the Naples region has been called the “the devil death triangle” because the Camorra gangs buried toxic industrial waste without treatment and caused incredible rise tendency of cancer cases. On the statistics basis of a environmental organization, over 10 million tons of toxic waste have been buried illegal in northern of the Naples region. These emissions won billions of dollars in profits, while the harmful substance contained in soil as well as groundwater would cause serious threat to local residents’ health.

The effects of burying toxic waste in the ground are far more than those shown above. First of all, landfilling treatment can pollute water resources. In other words, supplies of drinking water are contaminated by refuse from the factory, and it is almost impossible to measure how much sewage and industrial waste end up in our oceans. It is obvious to conclude that how landfill effect our water resources and land resources. Taking Qinghuangdao development area, where used to have a plenty of high quality land, as an example. The land lost to non-agricultural construction, such as industrial facilities, is basically vegetable plots and paddy fields in recent years. The environment and farmland irrigation system had serious problems since local pond was filled up with industrial waste in 2006. Fears of pollution from fiberglass, the local government had to ban rice cultivation in contaminated soil. Furthermore, every time it rains, soaked fiberglass rushes to the village with flood, and many poultries are poisoned by polluted water. These are all directly restrict economical development and influence people living there. Moreover, for the sake of safety and health, people cannot rebuild buildings or facilities on those landfill area any more.

Secondly, landfill can cause air pollution. Most people think that landfill creates less dust particles than incinerator, but it is not. One study shows that the microorganism concentration in edge of the area is much higher than the central of landfill area, because of frequent human activities (Yue, Xia, Du, Guang, Li, Xu, 2006 S1). In addition, those toxic and hazardous waste created by polyurethane or polyisoprene can never be decomposed by nature. As a result, the air pollution of certain landfill area will go on for a very long time.

As can be seen, there are so much problems and risks caused by landfill toxic waste, it must have an efficient method for disposal of toxic waste. In my opinion, the Chinese government can draw on the experience of seoul city landfill area and focus on the sustained development with the green ecological idea.

The seoul city landfill is not a world-class size landfill area. However, the newest technique and concept makes it a successful world model of landfill. Its experience shows that the most important thing is to segregate collection. Once the government encourage citizens to separate garbage, the new polices are announced and strict legislation are passed to ensure the system for sorting waste. Those non-biodegradable litter can be separate and process in result. The second step is to establish a meticulous and scientific transportation management system, because one weak link in the chain can negate many of the advantages that innovation offers. The transportation should be carefully selected in order to reduce pollution in transit. The third step is to disinfect rubbish and every transport in fine details. Destroying odor, removing humidity and sterilizing can be very useful to prevent leakage of pollution in the process. Last but not the least, when garbage has to bury to the ground, percolate must be taken into  great consideration in every procedure during landfill process. Landfill leachate means the sewage filtered out from the garbage during its stacking and landfill through fermentation, the washing of rainwater or the soaking of surface water and groundwater. In other words, landfill leachate is the source of pollution in waste bury process. In order to better address and improve these problems, the seoul city landfill area lays 0.75meters thick layer to prevent secondary pollution effectively. By these processes, a scientific and practical method is established for any landfill project.

On the other hand, the implementation will be affected by different social environment, national economic budget and cultural in China. In my point of view, China government should continue to promote waste classification by setting up more detail standards and laws to regularize waste separation. By planning garbage sorting can easily identify those toxic waste and insulate them from the beginning of process, which can be a efficient way to reduce toxic materials go in landfill. In addition, the garbage sorting process is not as complicated as people used to think. According to a garbage disposal staff, the hazardous material can be completely control and incinerate because of advanced technique. In fact, technology of incineration has already achieve the international standard and creates less dust than landfill. From this perspective, the public’s misunderstanding and worry of the incineration are totally useless. Although some experts still think that there is no 100% harmless way to control waste under present level of domestic technology, incineration is one of the best ways to decrease toxic waste pollution to environment by  evaluate cost and value in how we treat toxic waste. In  other words, if we want to solve the domestic toxic waste landfill in China, the best way is using garbage as resources and burning them to produce electricity at present.  After all, no one can stand with any hazardous processing factory show up in the front of their home and pollute their surroundings.

References:

i.  Zhang zhiqiang, Tian xizhao, Shan qiang, Wang xiaogang,  “Then influence of groundwater quality by a certain landfill in Tangshan city ” , South to North water transfers and water science&technology, 2011-09 No.6

ii. Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment, “The  enlightenment and thinking about waste disposal in Seoul City”, City management and technology 2009 No.3

iii. 关于2010年9月全国城镇生活垃圾处理设施在建项目进展情况的通报，中华人民共和国住房和城乡建设部城市建设司，City Construction Office Letter of China，[2010]158号，000013338，200-00449

http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjcsjs/201101/t20110106_201873.html

iv.  “Standard for pollution control on the security landfill site for hazardous wastes” published by general Administration of Quality Super-vision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China(AQSIQ) and China Association of Environmental Protection Industry9CAEPI), 2001-12-28 GB 18598--2001

“Standard for pollution control on the landfill site of municipal solid waste” published by General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China(AQSIQ) and China Association of Environmental Protection Industry(CAEPI), 2008-04-02 No.5

v.  Liu Jun Lin，Italian Mafia have built an illegal landfill which has formed a “triangle of death”，China.org.cn

http://news.china.com.cn/world/2014-02/14/content_31473734_2.htm