Landfill Manager's Notebook: Reevaluating Your Facility’s Purpose

At some point in time, your organization was created. For a long time, it didn’t exist …and then one day it did. Why? For what purpose was your organization formed?

In the rapidly changing solid waste industry, this is a valid question. It’s a vital question.

If you operate a landfill, hopefully your mission statement would include the receipt and disposal of waste. But does it also include chipping, grinding, windrowing, turning, and composting? Does it include diversion of metal, cardboard, tires, electronics, and other recyclables? Does your mission statement include the extraction, collection, processing, conversion, and sale of energy derived from landfill gas?  Does it include a public retail component where you sell compost, mulch, colorized wood chips, or do you operate a 2^nd hand store that sells re-usable items pulled from the waste stream? 

As far as landfill lists go, we’re just getting warmed up, but you get the idea.

Your landfill was likely created for a specific core purpose, but if it’s like most other landfills, over time that purpose has morphed into a carnival of activities, many of which have little to do the fundamentals of landfilling, and much more to do with those peripheral activities. 

Your budget has also shifted to cover the myriad costs required to run these additional operations.

What’s more, your landfill tipping fees are likely paying for many collateral programs on the back end, while those same programs are robbing you of revenue at the front gate.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. This is the classic example of a viral infection that destroys itself by killing the host.

Okay, hold on. Before your fire off an email, assuming I’m relating organics processing and recycling to a deadly virus, let me clarify that I am not saying that—not exactly. What I am saying is that if you don’t recognize and account for all those other things your facility does, you’ll be operating in a reactive mode, rather than a pro-active one and in the end the system will fail.

If you are doing things other than landfilling waste, fine. Just acknowledge it, integrate it into your plan, figure out how to fund it, and run your operation as though you really mean it—if you do really mean it. Otherwise, your operations plan will be mirroring what the late Yogi Berra referred to when he said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

Well, do you know where you’re going? Do you really?

I’ll contend that an awful lot of landfills don’t. They’ve gotten on the bus, with virtually no idea where it’s going, but man are they ever excited about the trip.

This same story could be told about transfer stations, MRFs, organics processing facilities, and collections operations.

This may sound too philosophical, especially if you’re one of those practical, logical thinkers who just loves standard equations and uses a label maker for your file folders. None-the-less, I’d encourage you to get in touch with your inner landfill self, because losing sight of your foundational goals can cost you—big time.

Here’s a simple quiz to see if you’re keeping the main thing—the main thing.

If you’re in the landfill business, the success and sustainability of your organization is based on one thing: airspace. Airspace, and that alone, pays for your entire operation. Yes, you might generate some revenue from the sale of compost, but if you de-coupled the true cost of creating that compost and compared it to the revenue it generates, you’ll likely find it’s a pretty slim margin. You may even be subsidizing it through your landfill tipping fees.

1.      Question 1 – how much remaining airspace do you have, and where is it?

    a.       Airspace remaining in your current lined area?

    b.       Airspace remaining in future (permitted) fill areas?

    c.       Airspace remaining if you rebuilt all perimeter outside slopes?

    d.       Airspace if you re-permitted to include a vertical expansion?

    e.       How much total airspace is remaining at your landfill?

2.       How much airspace do you consume:

    a.       How much do you consume annually?

    b.       How much do you consume based on the various waste types you receive?

    c.       Do you have differential rates based on various types of waste and how much airspace those wastes consume?

               i.      What is your rate for regular trash, C&D, mattresses, wet trash, contaminated soil, stumps, poles, boats, mixed loads that include yard waste,                         and other hard to handle trash?

3.       How much additional airspace could you generate by:

    a.       Revisiting your slope stability analyses and steepening all outside slopes?

    b.       Adjusting your fill sequence plans to allow more time for settlement before you reach final grade(s)?

    c.       Strategically stockpiling soil, organics, or other material on portions of the landfill to surcharge and increase settlement?

4.       Are you optimizing your landfill’s density by:

    a.       Working flat with the landfill compactor?

    b.       Regularly replacing compactor teeth to maximize waste compaction?

    c.       Managing the moisture content of waste as it’s being compacted?

    d.       Applying an optimum number of compactor hours based on inbound tonnage?

    e.       Maximizing the use of ADC to minimize the use of cover soil?

    f.        Stripping and re-using soil at every opportunity?

    g.       Emphasizing the importance of these things by training your operators?

5.       Do you know the value of your airspace?

    a.       How much does it cost to produce a cubic yard of airspace?

    b.       How much do you charge per cubic yard of airspace?

    c.       How much airspace do you take off the shelf every day to sell to customers?

    d.       How much profit do you make per yard of airspace?

If you can’t answer these questions, chances are your focus isn’t lining up with your core mission statement of your landfill. Because if you’re in the landfill business, you’re darn sure in the airspace business.

When it comes to operating a landfill, it’s great to think outside the box and color outside the lines. Some of the best landfills out there had to first step beyond normal industry practice, but they’ve done it while keeping their foundational mission intact. They know they’re in the landfill business and are making improvements accordingly.

If you read this article and are comfortable with your understanding and management of airspace, great.  You are in that elite class of landfill managers who get it.

On the other hand, if you got to this point and are questioning whether your actions have been lining up with your mission statement in terms of airspace, well that’s good too. Recognizing a problem is the first step toward solving it.

Most business and management experts – including Yogi Berra – agree that having a Mission Statement for your organization is vital. Your Mission Statement should be simple and to the point. A well-written Mission Statement is a lighthouse in a stormy world. If you don’t have a Mission Statement, invest the resources necessary to create one, it’s worth the effort.

The landfill business is complicated, but it’s also simple. All you need to do is figure out the main thing and focus on that. Everything else will fall into place.