Geoenvironment Management and Sustainability - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 24

Typical cover system

Waste landfill

Vegetative cover
Drainage layer (sand)
Artificial membrane
Natural membrane cover
Transition zone

Typical engineered barrier-liner
system for secure waste landfill

Typical engineered barrier-liner system for
municipal waste landfill

Waste
Geotextile

Waste

Sand

Drainage layer

Leachate collection

HDPE membrane

HDPE membrane

Engineered clay barrier

Leak detection

Synthetic membrane

Natural soil

Natural soil—foundation base

FIGURE 1.11
Waste landill system showing typical top cover and bottom barrier-liner systems. Two liner systems are
shown: the maximum security barrier system (left) and the bottom barrier system generally used for landills
containing MSWs. (From Yong, R.N. and Mulligan, C.N., 2004, Natural Attenuation of Contaminants in Soils , CRC
Press, Boca Raton, FL, 310 pp.)

1.5 Sustainability
In a Gaean world, the earth is a living being where all the living organisms and nonliv-
ing entities function and interact independently but contribute to collectively deine and
regulate the material conditions necessary for life. When stresses and resultant negative
impacts associated with the activities of mankind in the production of goods and services
arise, the Gaean hypothesis becomes somewhat untenable. This is because living matter
in the geoenvironment will be constrained from regulating the material conditions neces-
sary for life. Loss of species diversity is one of the major factors. The paramount terrestrial
ecosystem imperatives are (a) protection and conservation of the various land environ-
ment resources and (b) ensuring that the capability to provide life support is not degraded
or diminished. From the viewpoint of the geoenvironment and ecosphere, the pressures
from development stresses and WEHAB ( water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture, biodi-
versity ) combined with the processes necessary to satisfy sustainable development objec-
tives are summed up by the schematic shown in Figure 1.12.