Urbanization and the Geoenvironment - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 246

TABLE 7.8
Sustainability Indica tors for Amsterdam

Type of Indicator Indicator

General indicators CO 2 emissions per inhabitant (tonnes)

NO x emissions per inhabitant (μg/m 3 )

Climate and energy Energy use (households) (GJ) per inhabitant

Sustainable energy production (GJ) per inhabitant (inverse)

Sustainable mobility
and air quality

Bicycle share in (%) of total of bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, and cars
Share clean trucks and lorries (%) with Euro 4 or cleaner engine

Climate and energy Attractiveness of Amsterdam for new companies (according to ECM ranking)

Energy use per added value (MJ/€)

Sustainable
innovative
economy

Amount of residual household waste (kg) per inhabitant
Liveability indicator (x/10) given by inhabitants when asked how satisied they were
with their neighborhood on a scale of 1 to 10

Source: Adapted from Jonkhoff, E. and van Eijnatten, W., Measuring Sustainability: The Amsterdam Sustainability

Index Sustainable Cities, Building Cities for the Future , Green Media, Long, pp. 27-28, 2012.

7.5 Mitigation and Remediation of Impacts
7.5.1 Mitigation of Impact of Wastes

Proper daily covering of wastes deposited in active landills can mitigate odor, dust,
ires, and pests. A common technique is to use a granular-type soil ill material cover
that is compacted on the daily load of waste brought to the landill. Techniques for
placement of wastes in landills, using compartments, for example, have been devel-
oped and are well illustrated in many handbooks dealing with disposal of wastes in
landills. The details of the interactions between wastes and the land environment are
discussed in Chapter 9.
For landill surface closure, a waterproof cover system as shown previously in Figure
1.11 in Chapter 1, will prevent water iniltration and reduce the requirement for treat-
ment of the leachates. This is the technique of landill construction and closure that
is called a dry garbage bag system. The intent of this system is to keep the material
entombed in the land with liners surrounding the entire waste that is designed to be
impermeable to water. Since water is the carrier for contaminants—i.e., contaminants
cannot be transported into the surrounding ground without water—there is a school
of thought that argues that denial of water will not only obviate dissolution processes,
but will also deny production of leachates. Along this line of reasoning, a dry gar-
bage bag system will presumably keep the contained wastes in a dry state “forever.”
However, reality forces one to accept the fact that engineered liners and barriers have
a life span for secure containment that sometimes will have laws, the result of which
will admit water to the system and ultimately generate leachates that will ind their
way into the surrounding ground. In recognition of that fact, and in support of the
thesis that if one could generate a bioreactor system with water entering the wastepile,
leachate recycling into the wastepile would accelerate dissolution of the waste mate-
rial in the landill. The outcome of this kind of strategy is to obtain faster dissolution
of the wastes in the landill, and a quicker return of the landill to more fruitful and
beneicial land use.