Landfill decommissioning

Landfilling of waste can pose risks to the environment and health due to pollutants in the waste and environmental transformation processes in the landfill body. However, landfills also contain recyclable materials that can be re-used in times of growing resource requirements. In the report “Depositation of landfills”, the Federal Environment Agency provides an overview of the actual state of decommissioning of landfills and analyses the possibilities for landfill mining in Austria. To this end, the previous experience in landfill dismantling in German-speaking countries is presented and the technical aspects are documented. Based on the quantities of waste and waste types in Austria, the existing resource potential is estimated, an economic assessment is carried out and the climate relevance of recyclable materials is analysed.