On February 26, 2019 COCOON hosted a workshop on “Landfill management: from landfill to useful resource” at the World Resources Forum in Antwerp (Belgium).

About 20 people participated in the workshop.  First some presentations were given to tease the participants on the topic, followed by discussion with a panel answering the questions from the audience. 

You can find the presentations here:

After the presentations an animated discussion on different aspects of landfill management took place. Questions with regard to leachate treatment, landfill monitoring, asbestos in landfills, old landfills and brownfields, and the leading actors in landfill management were answered and discussed. 

Some conclusions from the workshop: 

  • Landfill paradigm needs to change from a risk-based, static view to a comprehensive, long-term, multi-phased Dynamic Landfill Management (DLM) vision.
  • DLM gives regions the opportunity to make choices on what to do with the landfills in their region (permanent or interim use) and prioritise landfills in order to monitor, map, treat, ... them. 
  • For management of landfills we can learn from brownfields, both are (potentially) contaminated sites that need to be redeveloped. In some regions this is already the case.