For years, the nation has been putting its waste into the ground, and its only relatively recently that recovering material from waste is beginning to make an impact on the amount sent to landfill.
Although waste sent to landfill is reducing dramatically, households alone still send over 12 million tonnes to landfill each year meaning there is still a big job to do to ensure the environment and neighbouring communities are safeguarded from possible gases, odour and leachate produced from decomposing waste.
Industry concerns and ever-changing waste regulations and customer requirements mean that there is a genuine need for environmental monitoring specialists to develop and change with the industry to ensure environmental obligations are met.
Landfill gas control
One of the main challenges with ageing landfill sites is the gases produced. As material decomposes, methane is produced, which is a relatively potent greenhouse gas. Currently, to reduce the one million tonnes of harmful greenhouse gas methane produced by these sites every year, landfill operators use flare stacks to burn it and convert it to carbon dioxide. This is essential maintenance of landfill sites which, if left un-checked, could result in the escape of the gases into the atmosphere or even possible explosion.
Currently if the concentration of methane in the air coming out of landfill drops below 20% many conventional flare stacks fail to operate. For some time, several landfill operators have added in support fuel in the form of mains gas to address this problem and bring gas concentrations back above 20%. However, this is not environmentally friendly, is expensive and increases CO2 emissions.
This is where technology is coming into play. Now the industry has produced a solution that will enable the flare stacks to operate even when the concentrations drop below 20%, without supplementing it with other support fuel. It will drastically improve efficiency and environmental control whilst eliminating costs of installation and use associated with support fuel.
Such technological advances are becoming more and more important as we strive to become more efficient and effective. Ever more efficient processes are in demand to save time, to save money and to minimise errors. In particular, better products and better technology has meant that monitoring of landfill sites to ensure environmental regulations are adhered to has improved dramatically.
Electronic data collection
Field data collection is an important part of monitoring landfill sites. Its crucial to checking levels of leachate, gases and odour to meet environmental regulations and, if there are any discrepancies, take action to minimise any environmental implications.
The industry is seeing a major step forward at the moment with the use of mobile technology such as PDAs to record this data. Capturing data speeds up the job of data management and production of reports and reduces the possibility of inaccuracies which could have repercussions down the line. Using an electronic system allows for self-validation and checks data against previous readings, meaning the chance of incorrect data being submitted is reduced dramatically. This is an important step for the industry and is something that is being welcomed by environmental regulators.
With numerous landfill sites set to be decommissioned over the coming years, management and monitoring of them will continue to be a challenge for the industry. Fortunately the development of new technology is improving efficiency, effectiveness, and cost whilst helping to minimise environmental impact.
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