René Rosendal, Chair of the ISWA Landfill Working Group, explores how closing unregulated landfill sites is crucial for the future of the planet.
Open, unregulated dumpsites are one of the greatest, but often overlooked, environmental and public health crises of our time.
International estimates suggest these uncontrolled sites receive around 40% of the world’s waste and serve between three and four billion people. This is not merely a local community problem; it is a global challenge affecting the climate, biodiversity, and the most vulnerable populations.
Unlike controlled, modern sanitary landfills, unregulated dumpsites lack bottom liners, daily cover, leachate collection, and controlled gas management. This has severe consequences, including:
- Immediate risks to health and life: Millions of informal waste pickers live and work directly on dumpsites under extremely dangerous conditions. Frequent landslides, toxic fumes, and the spread of deadly epidemics claim hundreds of lives every year.
- Exceptional climate impact: Unregulated dumpsites are the world’s third-largest source of human-caused methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 25 times as potent as CO₂. Without substantial action, these unmonitored dumpsites could account for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- Catastrophic local pollution: Chemicals and heavy metals seep directly into groundwater and nearby rivers and lakes, destroying ecosystems and poisoning drinking water for millions of people.
Through its dedicated Task Force on Closing Dumpsites, ISWA has set an ambitious goal: to close the world’s 50 largest and most dangerous dumpsites as soon as possible and work towards phasing out all dumpsites by 2030, replacing them with sustainable alternatives.
ISWA’s work is based on a holistic approach that is not only about engineering, but very much about people. ISWA has published a groundbreaking guide, A Roadmap for Closing Waste Dumpsites, which provides governments and municipalities around the world with the technical, financial, and social tools needed to carry out safe closures.
It’s crucial that closure does not leave the poorest people without a livelihood, which is why ISWA works to integrate informal waste pickers into the formal, safe recycling system.
Through targeted programmes, such as a scholarship programme in Nicaragua, ISWA has also helped children leave dumpsites behind and enter the education system.
The campaign has already demonstrated its value. One of ISWA’s first major flagship projects involved helping close Estrutural in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, which was one of Latin America’s largest unregulated dumpsites.
The site was closed and replaced by a modern, controlled facility, significantly improving the health of the city’s residents and substantially reducing the region’s CO₂ footprint. Similar initiatives and roadmaps are now being rolled out in countries such as Lebanon and across Latin America.
Closing open dumpsites is not simply about burying the problem; it is about transforming societies towards a circular economy. When unregulated dumpsites are replaced with controlled facilities, modern sorting plants, and biogas solutions, waste is transformed from a deadly threat into a valuable resource that can generate green energy and recyclable materials.
It’s also not merely a local technical matter – it is a prerequisite for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and protecting our shared planet.
At first glance, the task sounds simple: stop sending waste there, cover it with soil, and find a new site. In reality, it is one of the most complex and entrenched infrastructure challenges facing developing countries.
Although countries often have laws prohibiting open dumpsites, these laws are rarely enforced. This is because a dumpsite is not just an environmental problem, but a deeply interconnected socioeconomic and political ecosystem.
The main reasons they are so difficult to close can be divided into four key areas:
- The greatest barrier is humanitarian. Around the world, millions of waste pickers live and work directly on dumpsites and depend on them for their livelihoods.
- Loss of income: A dumpsite functions as an informal marketplace. If authorities fence off the area overnight, thousands of extremely poor families lose their only source of food and income.
- Resistance from local communities: Closure attempts without a clear social plan often lead to major protests, riots, or people simply breaking back into the site. Closure therefore requires integrating these people into a new, formal recycling system, which takes years to establish.
- A dumpsite cannot be closed until there is somewhere else for the waste to go.
- Where should the waste go? Many cities in developing countries generate hundreds of tonnes of waste every day. If a modern, controlled sanitary landfill or sorting facility has not been built to handle this waste, it will simply accumulate in the streets or end up at new, smaller illegal dumpsites.
- “Out of sight, out of mind”: Residents and local authorities often focus simply on getting waste off the streets outside their homes. Where it ends up, and the environmental damage it causes there, become secondary concerns amid the pressures of daily life.
- It is extremely expensive both to close an old dumpsite and to establish a new, modern waste management system.
- Aftercare costs millions: A dumpsite cannot simply be abandoned. It must be stabilised to prevent landslides, covered with advanced liners to stop rainwater from creating toxic leachate, and fitted with systems to collect explosive methane gas.
- Lack of long-term budgeting: Poor municipalities and local governments rarely have the capital or access to international loans needed to finance projects on this scale.
- Projects of this scale span many years, which conflicts with political election cycles.
- Lack of political will: Waste management rarely wins elections. Politicians often prefer to spend budgets on visible projects such as schools, roads, or hospitals rather than bury millions of kroner in a state-of-the-art waste facility.
- Informal mafia structures: At many of the world’s largest dumpsites, waste and valuable recyclable materials such as plastics and metals are controlled by unofficial “garbage mafias” or corrupt actors. These groups have a strong financial interest in maintaining unregulated chaos and actively obstruct government oversight.
The key to success is not only technical, but also political and social. It requires a coordinated effort to secure international financing, build political consensus across the political spectrum, and, most importantly, educate and employ informal waste pickers in the new green waste management system.
Over the next two years, ISWA’s Working Group on Landfill will focus on publishing two new, more practical guidelines offering advice on how to operate open dumpsites:
- Part 1 – Practical and technical guidance on improving dumpsite management and addressing closure.
- Part 2 – Financing dumpsite closure and related implementation considerations.
These documents aim to help low-income and lower-middle-income countries transition from open dumping and uncontrolled landfilling to sanitary landfill operations.
Upgrading waste disposal sites to sanitary landfills is key to improving people’s living standards. These documents can help bring proper waste management practices to the communities that stand to benefit most.
ISWA know that we cannot solve all the problems, but even small improvements are a step in the right direction.
