First worldwide regulation on sustainable landfilling: Guidelines of the Lombardy region (Italy)

Abstract

The environmental sustainability principle, since the Rio de Janeiro Conference (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997), has produced a marked change in environmental protection strategies. In waste management practices this trend is reflected in the passage from a linear to a circular approach, where strong attention is paid to the recovery of resources from waste, with a dramatic reduction of untreated waste landfilling. Deposition of waste on soil still plays a crucial role in acting as a final sink for closing materials loop in Circular Economy. Paradoxically the regulations of landfilling at international level appear obsolete, not taking into account the environmental sustainability concept, still promoting unsustainable approaches, with environmental protection measures mainly based on physical barriers, without any con-sistent control of long term emissions of contaminants which last longer than the barriers themselves. “Guidelines for Sustainable Design and Management of Land-fills” issued by the Lombardy Region in 2014 represents the first official regulation which introduced systematically the principle of environmental sustainability. They highlight the modern role of landfilling as a final sink and promote measures and procedures for controlling the mobility of the potential contaminants in the waste, until reaching, within a generation time, a Final Storage Quality in equilibrium with the environment. The aim of this paper is to illustrate and discuss the main aspects introduced by the Guidelines, offering an interesting base for a future spread of the practical application of the sustainability concept to landfilling.