A New Methodical Approach for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Related to MSW Landfills in Russia

A gradual transition to recycling forms a central priority of the modern waste management model. However, a number of factors make it impossible to abandon landfilling, the most widespread way of waste disposal. Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are compound engineering facilities and high-quality assessment of their environmental impact has to be carried out. A new methodical approach for environmental impact assessment (EIA) related to MSW landfills for realization in Russia is based on expected negative influence throughout a landfill lifecycle, namely, from the moment of its construction till its decommissioning and creation of a natural/manmade area. For this purpose, legal aspects of waste handling, environmental impact assessment procedure, international standards of lifecycle assessment, landfill lifecycle, landfilling technologies and processes happening inside a landfill body were studied. It is recommended to apply the life-cycle assessment (LCA) and the environmental risk assessment (ERA), a combination of which enables to assess ecological consequences of MSW landfilling accurately and objectively and to decide on permissibility of such activity.