On failure of municipal waste landfill

Abstract

One of the serious problems in mega cities in developing countries is the management of municipal waste. Due to priority of economic development or insufficient attention to waste problems, many mega cities simply dump waste in the field without provision for environmental and mechanical risks. An example of problems of this type occurred in Bandung City of Indonesia in February, 2005, in which a large waste landfill collapsed after rain fall and killed more than one hundred people. Similar accident occurred earlier in the Philippines as well. This text therefore makes a brief report on this event and shows the need for more care for landfill operation and management. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.