The use of a waste-derived daily cover to enhance geo-environmental performance of sanitary landfills

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In spite of many advanced waste processing and recovery techniques that have been proposed in the last decades, the disposal of remaining solid wastes to sanitary landfills is inevitable in any waste management system. Therefore, knowledge concerning better utilization of the landfill technology is unquestionably valuable. Traditionally, the design principles of landfills have borrowed heavily on past experience and empirical equations. While this approach was accepted in the past for its simplicity, its unreliable performance failed to keep up with today's emerging standards. Landfill daily covers are required by regulatory agencies around the world and they may occupy up to 30% of total landfill space. Most of the existing work on the use of daily cover in landfills focused on the design, modeling and optimization of cell geometry and landfill topography to minimize the amount of daily cover required. The present proposal goes a step further and seeks to broaden and redefine the role of daily cover in sanitary landfills. Given the gigantic volume required, it is believed that the use of daily cover does not need to be limited to its conventional functions, but may be extended further to incorporate new functionalities. The proposed work therefore seeks to demonstrate that, with careful selection of materials and thorough understanding of their engineering behaviors, waste-derived daily covers may enhance the operational, mechanical and environmental performance of landfills. A series of experiments will be carried out to verify the above hypothesis. The proposed work will contribute to our knowledge of daily cover with respect to the geo-environmental performance of landfills. The utilization of waste materials promotes sustainable waste management practices as it converts waste to beneficial construction materials. The results of the proposed work will challenge the status quo of current landfill regulations and will lead to the development of improved technical procedures and guidelines.