Beyond Waste home > Why Beyond Waste? > Myth 3. Landfills solve the waste problem

Myth 3: Landfills solve the waste problem

As long as there is waste, landfills will continue to provide an important service. Modern landfill regulations were developed in the 1990’s to ensure protection against possible ground-water contamination from toxic leaks and to collect and extract dangerous gases. While new state of the art landfills offer vastly improved environmental protection over earlier landfill designs and waste management practices, reliance on landfills does not provide an adequate solution to our future resource and waste management problems because:

• Permanent disposal of potentially useful materials means our economy must rely on extracting increasing amounts of diminishing natural resources.
• Hazardous substances are present in many wastes being disposed.
• Subsidies and hidden impacts distort the complete costs of landfilling, perpetuating the belief that it is economically advantageous to dispose of, rather than reclaim, material.

Waste is inefficient. Our "landfill crisis" is not a lack of landfills, but ignoring the true cost of waste and missing opportunities to be more resource-conscious and foster new business markets.

...reliance on landfills does not provide an adequate solution to our future resource and waste management problems...

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