Polymers as Solid Waste in Municipal Landfills

Abstract

Synthetic polymers reach municipal landfills as components of products such as waste household paints, packaging films, storage containers, carpet fibers, and absorbent sanitary products. Some polymers in consumer products that reach landfills are designed to photodegrade or biodegrade. This article examines the significance of degradable polymers in management of solid waste in municipal landfills. Most landfills are not designed to photodegrade or biodegrade solid waste. Landfill disposal of stable polymers such as polyacrylics and polyethylenes is not associated with significant polymer degradation or mobility. Stability to photodegradation and biodegradation is an advantage when municipal landfills are used for disposal of polymer products as solid waste. Use of landfill disposal can be a responsible means to manage polymer waste and can be part of an overall waste management plan which includes source reduction, recycling, reuse, composting, and waste-to-energy incineration.

Polyethylene and biodegradable mulches for agricultural applications: a review

“…The process is called depolymerization. When the end products are CO 2 , H 2 O, or CH 4 , the degradation is called mineralization (Frazer 1994;Hamilton et al 1995).…”

Microbiological Degradation of Polymeric Materials

“…Simulated anaerobic conditions used to measure polymer degradability include anaerobic soils, landfills [142][143][144][145][146], sewage sludge [147], and laboratory methanogenic or sulfate-reducing environments. These simulations have been widely used in metal corrosion studies involving the sulfatereducing bacteria (SRB) [74,75,78,79,81,82].…”

Studies on biodegradation of LDPE film in the presence of potential bacterial consortia enriched soil

“…Commercially available branched low-density (0.92 g/cm 3 ) polyethylene film was used in this study. It contained different additives in the form of a Masterbatch (trade name), a mixture that contains corn starch, linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), styrene butadiene copolymer (SBS), and manganese stearate.…”

“…Polyethylene wastes are normally discarded as landfill or thrown in water bodies as garbage material to decompose / degrade. To deal with this conundrum, biodegradation on the disposal site appears to be the best way as an alternative when approaches, recycling, land filling and incineration has various environmental constraints as described by several authors [2][3][4].…”