TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE LANDFILLING IN THE FRAMEWORK OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Sustainable landfilling plays a fundamental role either in providing an economic option for municipal solid waste management or in closing the materials loop of the Circular Economy (CE). A landfill is considered sustainable when the emission potential generated from landfills poses no environmental risk and the quality of emissions achieves the Final Storage Quality (FSQ) within 30 years. The goal of this thesis was to pre-treat waste before landfilling for shortening the time achieving the FSQ and assess the sustainability of a landfill. Thus, a three-year research programme with painstaking efforts was carried out based on two main lab-scale works: washing pre-treatment and column leaching test. Waste washing study evaluated the effectiveness of waste washing prior to landfilling on reducing the emission potential and long-term impacts of three different kinds of residues from municipal solid waste treatment on the environment. Results gained from washing tests demonstrated that washing pre-treatment could stabilise the landfilling waste by removing readily leachable contaminants and reduce long-term emissions as well as shorten the time reaching FSQ limits significantly. Column leaching tests investigated the influence of irrigation quantity and frequency on time achieving the FSQ and emission potential. Results obtained revealed that values from column leaching tests could provide more representative information in assessing the sustainability of a landfill and could simulate the real emissions occurring under landfill conditions. Irrigation frequencies related to column leaching tests had a significant impact on the reduction of waste emission potential, and it could be taken into account to improve the in-situ treatments.