Efficiency analysis of landfill concepts for low and middle-income countries

Gunnar Hädrich Efficiency analysis of landfill concepts for low and middle-income countries A visualised decision support programme Manuskripte zur Abfallwirtschaft Band 11 ISBN 978-3-941216-85-3 A functioning waste management is the precondition for economic prosperity, a functioning infrastruc-ture, public hygiene put into practice and climate protection. This is a worldwide politically accepted fact nowadays but the implementation of an efficient waste management is still largely dependent on the financial resources of a society, the willingness of the political decision makers to implement changes and the level of education in the population. The situation of the waste management in newly industrialised and developing countries illustrates this very well. The collection and transport of waste is realized to an acceptable degree in cases where the political will does exist. Different techniques have been established that are appropriate for the respec-tive situations with regard to their complexity and their economic requirements. However, this does not hold true for the treatment and, above all else, for the deposition of waste. There are various techniques available for depositing waste. However, every individual country has to decide for itself which combinations would be economically acceptable in the respective situations and which ecological benefit they would bring about. The application of EU laws, not to speak of German ones, will fail in most cases due to the economic background. The present work is concerned exactly with this problem. The different technological solutions for reducing emissions in the deposition of waste are examined and assessed with regard to their expen-diture in technology. But above all, the prospective potential for reducing emissions that each of the technological compositions may have is presented. Thus, knowing the necessary efforts, it can be estimated what degree of environment protection can be achieved with the invested money and the respective solution. By providing a decision support tool, the implementation will become easier for the involved engineer. This is an important step to the systematic introduction of landfill standards, implemented also in coun-tries in which these have not existed so far. For the first time, the offered tool makes it possible to show that also simple technological solutions can already produce a notable reduction of emissions and can be extended later on when the economic situation has improved. This work is important for making political decisions in newly industrialised and developing countries and for establishing standards that are payable under present economic constraints. A slightly lower than the maximum degree of environment protection is better than none at all as the latter one would often be unaffordable.