Is an ultra long-life final disposal site sustainable?

Abstract

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO decided to inscribe Mount Fuji on the U.N. agency’s prestigious World Heritage list in June 2013. This happy news is expected to bring more tourists. A solid action not to compromise sustainability of Mt. Fuji is imperative because garbage discarded by tourists becomes problematic. By the way, for a tourist place associated with garbage, I recommend the Futatsuzuka final disposal site for municipal solid waste (Fig. 1) in the Tama region with land area of 59.1 ha, and landfill capacity for waste of 2.5 million m. This landfill site receives garbage from 4 million residents at Tama region, west of Tokyo. It is the quietest and the most beautiful landfill site which I have ever visited domestically and internationally. It does not emit any specific garbage odor. Residual volume of the landfill site is 1.3 million m. Given the fact that the amount of landfill disposal of noncombustible garbage in a few years will reach 3,000 m/year, the lifetime of the landfill site is estimated to be more than 400 years, which is, I believe, long lasting for a landfill. Even in the case of noncombustible garbage after separation, conveyed to the site once or twice a day by a truck, no scavenger crow visits the site. On the contrary, in residential areas, in the university where I am working, and in public parks in cities, hundreds of annoying crows scavenge in the garbage. What a big difference! I have been engaged in preserving the environment after construction of this landfill site and in maintaining it for 20 years. I will relate the background history below to make us believe that the Futatsuzuka landfill site is the cleanest and long lasting. Tokyo with 23 wards and the Tama region enjoy different methods for treating municipal solid wastes. In 23 wards with 8 million residents, municipal solid wastes are incinerated, turned into bottom and fly ashes. These ashes have been reclaimed at the sea area landfill site, which is located in seaside of Tokyo Bay and owned by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Since 1990, the ashes have been turned into molten slag as a recycle roadbed material, to prolong the lifetime of the landfill site. This is a sound practice of a material-cycle society. However, the elution of heavy metals such as lead from the roadbed material has been problematic. Given this reason, exploitation of roadbed materials has not been successful. Eventually, molten slag is disposed of at the sea area landfill site. The Tama region, on the other hand, consisting of 25 cities and 1 town where 4 million people are living, collects and transports combustible wastes. They are incinerated, and the incineration ashes are disposed of at the Futatsuzuka landfill in an mountainous area in the Tama region. In contrast, noncombustible wastes are collected, transported, crushed, and separated in a sequential order. Some parts are recycled; however, the rest is disposed of at the Futatsuzuka landfill. This system was implemented in 1997 and, if this continues as expected, then the landfill would reach its volume capacity in 2013. The Tama region consequently was forced to select a new landfill site for construction to avoid such a situation. However, the construction was already determined to be impossible according to the environment assessment. The main reason for the infeasibility stemmed from deep-rooted objection from the local people. Hinode municipality, west of the Tama region, has a landfill site with the capacity full of garbage, called the Yatozawa landfill site, operation of which was finished in 1996. In this site, the containment designed to bottle up contamination was ruptured, and the M. Hosomi (&) Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: hosomi@cc.tuat.ac.jp