When Final Disposal Sites Come Back to Life (December 2008)

When Final Disposal Sites Come Back to Life (December 2008)
The technology for revitalizing landfills is an environmental technology that can be used to restore landfills that have reached the end of their useful lives or are approaching the limit of their capacity. As a result, technologies for revitalizing and extending the life of existing facilities rapidly gained attention. This was especially true around 2008, when the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society and revisions to the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law became widespread, and the government was faced with the major challenge of simultaneously curbing waste emissions and promoting recycling.
The core of recycling is the process of precisely evaluating the stability of water quality and soil stability of gas production and leachate inside the landfill site, and improving the soil and soil cover. Venting wells and gas suction systems are installed to control methane gas produced by anaerobic decomposition. In addition, landfill mining, which extracts metallic glass incinerator ash from landfill sites as a resource, was introduced in the late 2000s, and a movement to reevaluate landfill sites as a storehouse of resources has emerged.
The background to this trend is the pressure on municipal finances. The construction of a new landfill requires an environmental assessment and the agreement of local residents, and the construction costs are high. Therefore, the rehabilitation of existing disposal sites was supported as a realistic and cost-effective method. Although the national government has adopted a policy of promoting joint management and wide-area development, regional conditions vary widely, and many municipalities find it difficult to establish new disposal facilities. This led to the widespread use of regeneration technology.
According to public documents available on the website, the Ministry of the Environment established guidelines for reclamation of reclaimed land around 2008, and has been promoting standardization of reclamation procedures, including gas management, leachate management, and land subsidence countermeasures. In addition, there has been an increase in the use of land after reclamation for multipurpose purposes, such as solar power generation facilities, parks, and disaster prevention stockpiles. The final disposal site reclamation technology is a symbol of environmental infrastructure redesign that transforms land buried in the community into new value.