Efficiency of Leachate Treatment Costs in Latin America

In Latin America landfilling is by far the most commonly used technological solution for the final disposal of municipal waste management (MSW). Huge efforts have been made in several countries in order to shift from open dump practices to engineered landfills, and yet the implementation of waste treatment and material and energy recovery from waste are incipient. In consequence, environmental impacts associated to leachate production, treatment, and fate, including long-term concerns, should be a top priority in national public environmental policies regarding MSW. Leachate treatment becomes then a key issue in the solid waste management strategies in the Latin American context. Failing to fulfil the environmental leachate treatment demands would mean that the shift from open dumps to sanitary landfills has only translated the problem from a diffuse pollution issue to an end-of-tube one. This work looks at the efficiency of leachate treatment costs in Latin America aiming at providing a conceptual framework to understand the concept of cost efficiency applied to leachate treatment and at showing some study cases in which some leachate treatment experiences in Latin America are assessed from a cost efficiency approach. The efficiency of leachate treatment costs depends on, firstly, the achievement of the proposed treatment objectives and, secondly, on the minimum total cost of achieving those. Thus, efficient leachate treatment costs will be those associated to the technologies which allow fulfilling the treatment objectives at minimum investment capital and operational expenses. It is then proposed that regulators state bodies should recognize efficient costs in the MSW tariff structure

• Autores: Gandini Ayerbe, Mario Andrés
• Tipo de recurso: Part of book
• Fecha de publicación: 2023
• Institución: Universidad Autónoma de Occidente
• Repositorio: RED: Repositorio Educativo Digital UAO
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:red.uao.edu.co:10614/15571
• Acceso en línea: https://hdl.handle.net/10614/15571; https://red.uao.edu.co/
• Rights: openAccess
• License: Derechos reservados - Springer, 2023