Sustainable environment management practices in landfill sites and the potential significant impacts / Nur Sajidah Mohd Sirat

Sustainable solid waste management is a major issue in Malaysia due to poor environmental management of landfills due to lack of enforcement and poor sustainable management and practices that created untenable situation. Based on the findings, seven parameters of leachate in EIA Landfill were non-compliance to the standards; pH (3.75±0.45), suspended solids (102.80±10.43), cadmium (0.08±0.01), lead (1.11±0.11), manganese (0.25±0.08), chromium hexavalent (0.07±0.02) and phenols (0.01±0.04). Non-EIA Landfill showed highest number of incompliances with parameters such as pH (11.18±0.84), suspended solids (187.4±10.97), COD (682.2±65.01), cadmium (0.72±0.067), lead (1.58±0.42), manganese (0.88±0.27), arsenic (0.08±0.07), zinc (2.91±0.07), iron (5.37±1.00), chromium hexavalent (0.26±0.07), cyanide (0.32±0.07), phenols (0.07±0.05) and formaldehyde (1.04±0.013) were found contravened to the standards. In river analysis, EIA River, there were four parameters that not comply to the standard were BOD5 (22.20±1.30), suspended solids (79.8±9.68), iron (Fe) (1.58±0.23) and chromium hexavalent (0.11±0.01) while Non-EIA river showed seven parameters were not comply to the standards which were pH (9.20±1.90), COD (213.00±3.67), cadmium (0.030±0.01), arsenic (0.166±0.02), zinc (2.540±0.17), chromium hexavalent (0.68±0.01) and cyanide (0.68±0.01). In toxicity testing, it showed the mean 96-h LC50 of EIA landfill and Non-EIA landfill was found to be 13.01% and 8.19% respectively while the mean for EIA river and Non-EIA river in acute toxicity testing were estimated to be 333.50% and 368.43% respectively. The respondents at Semeling site showed the symptom like headache and shortness of breath due to a landfill exposure (odour) while in Tanjung Dua Belas landfill, there was no major issue raised by the respondents. Based on descriptive and statistical analysis, it showed that Tanjung Dua Belas Landfill has been performing above average in terms of practising sustainable environment management while Semeling Landfill has been underperforming at the time of the study. It can be concluded that management of both landfill fails to practice in optimum phase of sustainable landfill management practices and prove to be problematic to the environment and human health. Thus, a proactive or leading indicator such as the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and environmental management system (EMS 14001) should be introduced to the landfill sites to reduce the impact to environment and human health and to optimize the landfills management which is a realistic approach to improve the management of the landfills towards sustainable development.