A world of waste
Touring some of the largest landfills and dumps on the planet
Managing solid waste
It’s no small secret—people worldwide are now generating gargantuan amounts of garbage. According to a 2011 World Bank report, the United States alone produces nearly 625,000 metric tons of solid waste every single day. China produces more than 520,000; Brazil and Japan each have nearly 150,000.
Warning! Click the symbol to read more about some of the largest landfills on the planet.
Since 2011, those numbers have only increased. The World Economic Forum has estimated that by 2025, the amount of annual urban waste produced worldwide will be more than three times what it was in 2015. That’s a lot of trash; unfortunately, it must go somewhere.
Poor waste management can have serious ramifications, including environmental pollution and increased risk of illness. But while the need for dump sites may be universal, the forms they take are just the opposite. A variety of factors come together to shape the ultimate outcome, including:
Space
Where exactly does the dump site reside? Is it centrally located for those communities it serves, or out at the city margins? Or does the solid waste create its own space, as is the case for Tokyo’s artificial islands?
Utility
What purpose(s) does the site serve? Can it be more than a waste repository, providing clean energy for nearby residents like Nevada’s Apex Regional Landfill?
Impact
What effects does the site have on those living around it? Will it be a pungent-but-necessary neighbor, like Florida’s Mount Trashmore? Does it raise genuine safety concerns, like the Deonar Dumping Ground in Mumbai? Can it be a significant source of employment, as was the case with Brazil’s Jardim Gramacho?
Lifecycle
What happens when a site reaches its capacity, or is closed for some other reason? Does it remain untouched in all its glory, or does it transform into something new, like the public park that is being created atop the Fresh Kills Landfill in New York City?
Answers to these questions (and more) vary from country to country, city to city. What follows is a brief look at the diversity of dump sites that have been developed across the globe.
Fresh Kills
New York, USA
Garbage scows deliver trash to Fresh Kills landfill in 1973.
Fresh Kills Landfill, in Staten Island, New York, served as New York City's primary dumping ground for over half a century. The site opened in 1948—just ten years after the first landfill in the United Kingdom—and operated continually until March 2001. At its peak in the 1980s, Fresh Kills was the world’s largest landfill and possibly the most prominent artificial structure on the planet. The landfill received about 13,000 tons of solid waste every day, and if the facility had not been closed, it would have eventually grown to become the highest point on the Atlantic coastline.
The site is being transformed into a 2,200-acre public park, to be completed around 2037. Already, hundreds of wild animal species have repopulated the formerly uninhabitable estuary. But in an ironic twist, New York City’s garbage is now transported out of state by gas-guzzling trucks.
Sudokwon
Incheon, South Korea
A competitor at the 2014 Asian Games crosses a green at the 36-hole Dream Park atop the Sudokwon landfill.
While Fresh Kills is an early experiment in landfills, Sudokwon is in its cutting age. In operation since 1993, Sudokwon is South Korea's largest landfill and processes an impressive 18,000 tons of waste per day from the Seoul metropolitan region.
At Sudokwon, the Korean government has undertaken an ambitious environmental plan for constructing "Eco and Energy Towns" by integrating waste power production, solar and wind harvesting, and planting trees for biofuel.
Sudokwon 1, the first and smaller mound, was closed in 2000. The site was then developed into the Dream Park, including basketball and tennis courts, soccer fields, and a wildflower nursery. The golf competition for the 2014 Asian Games took place on the 36-hole course built on the mound's crest.
Mount Trashmore
Florida, USA
A panoramic view of Mount Trashmore.
Needless to say, landfills are not just places to dump waste, nor are they just for parks. Instead, landfills have a range of impacts and functions, from the entirely unpleasant to the economically useful.
When viewed from above, Florida’s Monarch Hill Landfill, better known as Mount Trashmore, appears to rise like an ancient ziggurat or a network of terraced rice paddies. But this perspective fails to capture the site’s most distinguishing characteristic: its incomprehensibly foul odor. Mount Trashmore can be smelled up to four miles away, and residents of nearby Coconut Creek have long demanded its closure.
Granted, the site’s particularly pungent odor is partially due to its subtropical location—south Florida’s humid climate hampers Mount Trashmore’s foul smells from dissipating—but it’s also because the landfill contains more decaying waste (namely, food and other organic matter) than comparable sites. Waste Management, the company that manages the site, has invested millions of dollars in odor control but has nevertheless racked up some $1.6 million in odor-related fines.
Jardim Gramacho
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Catadores ("trash pickers") at the Jardim Gramacho in 2007.
With toxic garbage fluids called leachate leaking into Guanabara Bay, the Jardim Gramacho's closure and replacement by the Seropedica bioenergy waste treatment facility in 2012 seems like a good thing. But shuttering the landfill also left 1,700 trash pickers, called "catadores," without work. Brought to international attention in the Oscar-nominated documentary Waste Land (2010), these catadores received a one-time $7,500 compensatory payout from the Brazilian government for loss of livelihood.
After 34 years in operation and peaking at 7,000 tons of waste deposited per day, Jardim Gramacho was shut down as Brazil prepared to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
Manshiyat Naser "Garbage City"
Cairo, Egypt
A garbage truck drives through the streets of Manshiyat Naser.
It may come as a surprise that, historically, landfills have repeatedly been seen as providing economic opportunity. For example, in the corner of the Manshiyat Naser ward of Cairo, some 60,000 people, primarily Coptic Christians, live and work in a neighborhood popularly called Garbage City. Having had no formal garbage collection service for 70 years, Cairo deferred to this community called Zabbaleens, "garbage people," to retrieve and recycle the city's refuse. Traditionally, Zabbaleen men collect a household's trash for a fee and transport it back to their homes in Garbage City, where wives and children sort it for materials to recycle or resell.
Chronicled in the documentary Garbage Dreams (2009), the Zabbaleen livelihood has struggled following a 2003 government decision to hire private garbage collection companies and, more recently, a 2009 effort to contain the threat of swine flu by culling the pigs that many Zabbaleen rely upon.
Artificial Islands
Tokyo, Japan
Yumenoshima Stadium is built on an artificial island and hosted the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
While odor and economics are two key landfill issues, landfills occupy another space.
Translating "The Sea Forest" and "The Isle of Dreams," Tokyo's artificial islands of Umi-no-Mori and Yumenoshima are constructed of solid waste. Yumenoshima was conceived in the 1930s as a new airport site before garbage became a viable construction material. But development stalled during World War II due to a lack of financial resources. After the war, Tokyo abandoned the project under Allied mandate, and the island declined into a trash dump.
As the challenge of dealing with garbage mounted in the decades thereafter, Tokyo followed the precedent of Yumenoshima by landfilling its waste at sea. With 12.3 million tons of trash deposited between 1973 and 1987, a new land gradually emerged from the waters of Tokyo Bay to become the island Umi-no-Mori.
These artificial islands hosted several venues for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Olusosun
Lagos, Nigeria
Landfill workers in Lagos.
While Tokyo's artificial islands are an (arguably) elegant waste disposal solution, other regions deal differently with the challenge of landfills taking up too much space.
Arriving by truck and container ship, 10,000 tons of trash pile up daily at the Olusosun landfill in Lagos, Nigeria. In operation since 1992, the landfill site, once on the city's outskirts, has since been enveloped by the sprawling, explosively growing metropolis. Becoming a "neighborhood" of its own, the BBC reported in 2010 that the site is worked by over a thousand Lagosians, who sift through the detritus to find materials worthy of resale.
This landfill community sports several shops and restaurants despite hazardous materials and combustible methane gases.
Koshe Landfill
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Encroachment of landfills on teeming urban neighborhoods can have tragic consequences.
Encroachment of landfills in teeming urban neighborhoods can have tragic consequences.
Meaning "dirty" or "dust" in Amharic, Koshe in Addis Ababa was an unofficial site for burning animal carcasses before it became a dump in 1964. Once surrounded by open farmland, Koshe receives 4,000 tons of waste daily and has been engulfed by urban development driven by Ethiopia's 6 percent economic growth rate. Trash pickers have built slums at the dump's edges or even atop hills of trash.
With ever-increasing human encroachment on the dump, tragedy struck in March 2017. An unstable slope gave way, creating a garbage landslide that roared into the dump's scavengers. Despite desperate rescue efforts, the death toll quickly rose from 15 to 113.
Dump landslides are, in fact, a frequent occurrence in developing nations. Urban encroachment, lack of structural precautions, and dependence of scavengers on dumps for subsistence often combine to create a volatile and hazardous environment.
West New Territories
Nim Wan, Hong Kong
The South East New Territories landfill in Hong Kong.
Despite the hazards that landfills pose, scientific advances in waste management offer solutions to dealing with the mountains of refuse.
In operation since 1993, West New Territories (WENT) is Hong Kong's largest landfill and processes 7,300 tons of waste per day. Similar to its associated landfills South East and North East, the WENT landfill uses a unique design consisting of liners and capping materials to isolate waste deposited within the fill.
As garbage decomposes, landfills generate methane and carbon dioxide, among other gases. While these gases can lead to conflagrations if improperly managed, these flammable emissions can also be harnessed to generate power. With the site now at capacity, the Government of Hong Kong is promoting waste reduction and developing new waste-to-energy facilities. At WENT, landfill managers built a waste energy plant that began operation in 2020 and will continue to generate energy for years to come.
Apex Regional Landfill
Nevada, USA
Las Vegas landfill projected to operate until at least 2275
Similarly, the Apex Landfill, which serves the Las Vegas metropolitan area, is one of the nation’s most technologically advanced dumping grounds. Operated by Republic Services, a company that un-ironically prides itself on the site's cleanliness, Apex challenges the stereotypical mental image of steaming mountains of trash: from the air, the facility looks like little more than a defunct construction site. Fittingly enough, many of the roads in the facility were built from recycled asphalt.
The 2,200-acre facility includes a state-of-the-art gas and liquid filtration system that separates toxic leachate—basically garbage juice—from methane gas, which can be used to generate electricity. Thanks to an onsite power plant, the inherently “dirty” site provides “clean” energy to some 9,000 nearby homes.
Deonar Dumping Ground
Mumbai, India
Fires are a common occurrence in improperly managed landfills due to the emission of methane and other flammable gases.
By contrast, Mumbai's Deonar dump shows what can happen to mountains of garbage without proper management.
In operation since 1927, the Deonar dumping ground receives 5,500 tons of waste per daytotaling more than 12 million tons overall. Notorious for spontaneous conflagrations fueled by methane gases and volatile plastics, the Deonar dump has become a severe public health threat to surrounding neighborhoods. —to the extent that the Bombay High Court ordered that dumping at Deonar was to cease after June 2017. Without an alternative solution, though, The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has since requested several extensions, the most recent for June 2023, to build a waste-to-energy plant at the site.
NASA captured satellite images of a Deonar dump fire smoke plume billowing across Mumbai in 2016. Infrared images even capture hot spots within the dump itself.
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
New Mexico, USA
A view of WIPP in 2004.
While artificial islands, scavengers, toxic leachates, and trash fires in traditional dumps and landfills may capture the imagination, certain types of waste pose particularly daunting challenges.
Though not traditional landfills, high-level nuclear waste disposal sites must meet particularly stringent safety and environmental standards. The U.S. government planned the northwest of Las Vegas to be the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository. Instead, the operation was shut down in 2010 due primarily to vocal opposition by citizen groups.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, itself the successor to a Kansas project that was canceled due to political opposition, emerged as an alternative to Yucca Mountain. Its network of deep tunnels is in a salt formation that many experts believe provides a stable environment for long-term storage. But a 2014 explosion that exposed workers to radioactive material raised new questions about whether WIPP is a truly safe solution.
Malagrotta
Rome, Italy
Rome struggles to manage the amount of garbage produced in the city.
The blending of garbage and business can also lead to some messy politics.
While the mass buildup of landfill waste doesn't happen without the participation of many people, the history behind the 80-meter-tall piles at the Malagrotta landfill outside Rome is very much tied to one businessman: Manlio Cerroni. Having built a global fortune in garbage disposal, Cerroni has been handling Rome's waste for decades.
In operation since 1977, the Malagrotta landfill was considered the largest in Europe. It reached capacity in the 2000s but continued operation until 2013 when popular protests and a decision by the European Court of Justice ruled that waste was improperly pretreated and violated European environmental laws.
Manlio Cerroni dismissed the criminal charges leveled against him as a conspiracy, famously declaring to investigators, "You should build me a monument for everything I've done for this city."
Puente Hills Landfill
California, USA
Go behind the scenes of the Puente Hills landfill.
Though waste disposal is inherently contentious, innovations in South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States demonstrate that huge landfills do not necessarily have to be wasteful.
The Puente Hills Landfill, located 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, boasts the unenviable title of the largest landfill in America, with over 123 million tons of solid waste. This superlative is especially impressive, given that Puente Hills has been closed since 2013. (The largest operational landfill in America is the in Morrisville, PA, which contained a relatively paltry 63 million tons in 2014.)
Rising some 500 feet above the surrounding landscape, Puente Hills received about 7,500 tons of waste every day prior to its closure. But it still produces enough methane gas to power a 50-megawatt power plant. The Puente Hills gas-to-energy facility has operated nearly continuously since the early 1980s, providing electricity to some 70,000 nearby homes. In fact, garbologists estimate that the landfill’s methane reserves could continue to generate electricity for another 15 years.
Landfills in the United States
The United States is one of the world’s largest producers of garbage, so it is not surprising that the country possesses a vast, well-developed waste disposal infrastructure.
As of March 2023, there are over 1,200 landfills operating across all 50 states, scaled here by current waste tonnage. They range in size from small, rural dumps to the towering mountains of solid waste featured in this story.
The methane and carbon dioxide produced by decomposing garbage are potent greenhouse gases, and all of America's landfills are subject to stringent EPA emissions regulations. Fortunately, more than half of the landfills in the U.S.—including all of the largest sites—have systems in place for capturing noxious landfill gases (LFG). In fact, many landfills use this gas to generate heat or electricity.
One person's trash may not be another person's treasure, but there's a good chance it's their power supply.
