Hi Raptor,

Good on yer!!

Once was part of a project team that looked at this seriously due to problem of land-fill space. The problem we had to solve was how to take over existing land-fills, make them safe following decades of uncontrolled tipping, while at the same time coping with increasing volumes of refuse with the minimum amount of land being set aside for new land-fill sites.

The answer we came up with involved:
- Concerted recycling programmes at waste collection stations, which produced a revenue stream.
- What cannot be recycled was composted, the method and plant required, is used in the Netherlands and produces inert compost. The waste collection stations/composting plants were specified for a fifty percent over-capacity, to accommodate future increased volume and to allow land-fill reclamation.
- The compost produced is one-sixth the volume of the uncomposted refuse, therefore any given land-fill will theoretically last six times longer.
- For existing land-fill sites, we got in touch with a Canadian company that "mines" land-fills. Using the over-capacity of the watse collection stations and composting plant allows the refuse from existing land-fills to be recycled and composted, and existing land-fills can be cleared, made safe and re-used.

Normally land above a land-fill site cannot be used, but in filling a land-fill with inert compost, the land does have some useful applications and there is no resulting threat to the environment.

One thing we did find out was that waste incinerators are the worst possible solution and should be avoided like the plague.