Abstract

To benefit the environment and society, EU legislation has introduced a ‘zero waste’ strategy, in which waste material should be converted to resources. Such legislation is supported by the solid waste hierarchy concept, which is a set of priorities in waste management. Under this concept, municipal solid waste plants (MSWPs) should be equipped with sorting and recycling facilities, composting/incineration units and landfill prisms for residual bulk disposal. However, each of the aforementioned facilities generates by-products that must be treated. This project focuses on the leachates from landfill prisms, including modern prism (MP) that meet EU requirements and previous prism (PP) that provide for the storage of permitted biodegradable waste as well as technological wastewaters from sorting unit (SU) and composting unit (CU), which are usually overlooked. The physico-chemical parameters of the liquid by-products collected over 38 months were supported by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) amplifications of functional genes transcripts and a metagenomic approach that describes the archaeal and bacterial community in the MP. The obtained data show that SU and especially CU generate wastewater that is rich in nutrients, organic matter and heavy metals. Through their on-site pre-treatment and recirculation via landfill prisms, the landfill waste decomposition process may be accelerated because of the introduction of organic matter and greenhouse gas emissions may be increased. These results have been confirmed by the progressive abundance of both archaeal community and the methyl coenzyme M reductase (mcrA) gene. The resulting multivariate data set, supported by a principal component analysis, provides useful information for the design, operation and risk assessment of modern MSWPs

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Authors (4)