Landfill and Solid Waste Management

EM Technology® has been used around the world in the treatment of solid waste landfills. The motto of "acting locally" can be taken quite literally if we were all to incorporate the use of Effective Microorganisms™ at home by treating all of our food and green wastes "locally". Solid wastes are inevitable in today's society. How we manage the wastes is really the problem, not having them. Throwing items that have some usable value is not management, but waste. Incineration of wastes leads to other problems with air pollution and also relies heavily on fuels to produce high heat for the process to work properly. Materials that go into landfills include, but are not limited to, green wastes, food wastes, metals, plastics, construction debris, etc.

Landfills are maintained under strict regulations that require daily covers, dust control, odor control, and leachate management for air and groundwater protection. Landfill managers are concerned with these factors and compaction rates as well. Landfill gases are required to be captured as they could be explosive and are often flared because they are loaded with impurities that prevent them from being efficient energy sources. Increasing compaction rates and cleaning the gases with Effective Microorganisms™ so they can be used could save taxpayers millions of dollars per month on a national level.

Odor and Dust Control:

Using EM-1® in the daily cover and in the water trucks that are used to control dust, odor, and increase compaction rates, are simple ways to better-manage a landfill. An added benefit is that EM-1® Waste Treatment will eliminate odor on contact, making for better neighbor relations and better working conditions for employees. Hydrogen sulfide has been implicated in breathing problems in a study in Ohio. Eliminating H2S, as EM-1® has been proven to do in wastewater treatment, can also connect EM-1® Waste Treatment with worker safety.

Leachate and Landfill Gases:

H₂S is a contaminant to the landfill gas. Removing it will clean the gas and make it burn more efficiently. Some landfills, depending on the amount of organic materials that are added to them, will produce varying amounts of methane gas and leachate. Many landfill operations that aggressively separate organic matter going into the landfill will not produce a significant amount of methane, yet they are still required to install gas collection systems. As has been demonstrated with EM-1® applications in several countries, there is the possibility of eliminating the production of methane gas in the first place, eliminating the need for the expensive gas collection system. The eventual goal is to see that large amounts of EM-1® are added to the leachate and the incoming wastes to detoxify the leachate, eliminating the worries of groundwater contamination. On this level more research needs to be done, however, based on research in other areas of waste treatment, there is a high probability of achieving these goals.

Application Rates:

In a 5,000-gallon water truck, 100 gallons of Effective Microorganisms™ EM-1® are added to control odor and increase compaction rates (as was done at the Tangerine landfill in the photo above). The beneficial microbes in the EM-1® will stop pathogenic microbial growth (as has been laboratory tested) and set the growing conditions for other beneficial microbes in the landfill which will increase the decomposition of the organic matter in the landfill. At this ratio, the methanogen groups of microbes will not be able to grow and methane gas will not be produced.

Daily cover made of organic material can be mixed with EM-1® at a rate of 1.5 gallons per ton of material.

With operations this large, Activated EM-1® is used with the above ratios.

Effective Microorganisms™ can be applied through bioreactors as well. The application ratio will be 1 part Activated EM-1® to 1,000 gallons of water.