In 2018, the United States had 1,269 municipal waste landfills. Most of the landfills in the United States were located on the West Coast.

Landfills
Landfills or dumps are one of the most common forms of waste treatment in the world. It is the oldest type of waste treatment technique and is still used as a form of waste management. At these sites, waste is broken down into smaller parts and is either compacted or buried with layers of soil and other organic materials. This process is essential to extending the life of landfills. Waste is often brought to landfills by waste collection vehicles. However, countries such as Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Switzerland have banned the disposal of waste in landfills. Only hazardous waste is allowed to be deposited. The largest landfill in the world was the Estrutural, located in Brazil.

Landfills in the United States
Landfills in the United States are regulated by each state’s environmental agency, however they are all required to abide by the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Food, yard trimmings, and inorganic wastes made up the highest amount of waste material in 2018 that was discarded into the municipal waste stream in the United States.

What a Waste is a global project to aggregate data on solid waste management from around the world. This database features the statistics collected through the effort, covering nearly all countries and over 330 cities. The metrics included cover all steps from the waste management value chain, including waste generation, composition, collection, and disposal, as well as information on user fees and financing, the informal sector, administrative structures, public communication, and legal information. The information presented is the best available based on a study of current literature and limited conversations with waste agencies and authorities. While there may be variations in the definitions and quality of reporting for individual data points, general trends should reflect the global reality. All sources and any estimations are noted.

As of 2022, Michigan was the highest ranking state in terms of waste sent to landfills, per capita. That year, more than 66 tons of waste per person ended up in the state's landfills.

U.S. landfills – additional information

A landfill is a site used for the disposal of waste materials. It is considered one of the oldest forms of waste treatment and is used in many places around the world. Landfills in the United States are regulated by each state’s environmental agency, which in turn, follows the guidelines set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The United States has around 1,270 landfills, with about 330 landfills situated in the West. Overall, the United States generated 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2018 – a significant increase from 88.1 million tons in 1960. However, the number of landfills in the U.S. has significantly decreased since 1990 from over 6,300 to under 1,270 landfills.

Although recycling rates have improved significantly over the last decades, the United States is far behind leading European countries. Austria and Germany had the highest recycling rates worldwide with 63 and 62 percent, respectively. Some countries like Austria, the Netherlands and Germany have virtually eliminated landfill disposal as these countries have implemented successful recycling programs and policies. In addition to waste reduction and recycling programs, there are several alternatives to landfills, including waste-to-energy incineration , anaerobic digestion, composting or mechanical biological waste treatments.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has collected and reported data on the generation and disposal of waste in the United States for more than 30 years. We use this information to measure the success of waste reduction and recycling programs across the country. Our trash, or municipal solid waste (MSW), is made up of the things we commonly use and then throw away. These materials include items such as packaging, food scraps, grass clippings, sofas, computers, tires, and refrigerators. MSW does not include industrial, hazardous, or construction waste. The data on Materials Discarded in the Municipal Waste Stream, 1960 to 2009, provides estimated data in thousands of tons discarded after recycling and compost recovery for the years 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009. In this data set, discards include combustion with energy recovery. This data table does not include construction & demolition debris, industrial process wastes, or certain other wastes. The "Other" category includes electrolytes in batteries and fluff pulp, feces, and urine in disposable diapers. Details may not add to totals due to rounding.

In the last decades, the amount of garbage being disposed in China has soared, reaching approximately ***** million tons as of 2023. During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the annual amount of garbage had decreased to around *** million tons, declining for the first time in many years. However, this drop was only short-lived, and the amount of garbage disposed in 2021 already exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Pollution and waste in China Being the most populated country in the world with a constantly growing population and economy, China was faced with multiple problems. For example, the increasing vehicle traffic on roads and the low air quality, subsequently the trash volume as well. The issue is particularly severe in prosperous the urban areas, and not to mention the trash imported to China from the rest of the world, which was put to a halt in 2018. Historically, the Chinese garbage handling ideology was landfill, however, due to shortage of land around cities and secondary pollution caused by illegal dumping, especially in rural areas, the ratio of incineration has been increasing in recent years, despite the fact that incineration poses serious health problems to citizens by emitting various toxic by-products. Rise of environmental awareness in China Many of the developed countries in the west have already adopted a more comprehensive way of dealing with waste, emphasizing on reducing the amount of waste produced at the beginning, with attention also put on recycling useful waste. Under the “Made in China 2025” strategic plan, China is trying to follow suit. Fortunately, with the economic growth, the environmental awareness in China is also on the rise, with concern rising especially about disposable or non-recyclable products. Many also consider everyone is responsible to reduce plastic and packaging, including manufacturers, governments, vendors, as well as the consumers themselves. Individuals have also begun to enforce consumer power by buying products made from recycled material and boycotting products which are not and the vendors who sell a lot of such products, whereas other individual actions involved for protecting the environment were reusing of disposable items and paying extra.

landfill emissions measurements for the Turkey run landfill in Georgia.

This dataset is associated with the following publication: De la Cruz, F., R. Green, G. Hater, J. Chanton, E. Thoma , T. Harvey, and M. Barlaz. Comparison of Field Measurements at a New Landfill to Methane Emissions Models. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, USA, 50(17): 9483-9441, (2016).

Data with the following information for large landfills: * landfill capacity * fill rates * estimated remaining capacity * engineering designs * reporting and monitoring details This dataset was last updated in 2014 and contains out of date information. It has been replaced by the Ontario landfills dataset.

The Pre-Regulatory Landfill (PRLF) program was established in 2007 to address pre-1983 non-industrial landfills and dumps. A pre-regulatory landfill is defined as any land area, whether publicly or privately owner, on which municipal solid waste disposal occurred prior to January 1, 1983, but not thereafter and does not include any landfill used primarily for industrial solid waste. The PRLF program conducts the assessment and remediation of these sites directly. Local governments may conduct the assessment work and seek reimbursement of expenses if the work was pre-approved by the Program.To learn more about the PRLF program, visit their website HERE

Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) geospatial data sets containing information on Solid Waste Landfill Facilities.

This page provides data for the Solid Waste Landfill Diversion performance measure.The performance measure dashboard is available at 4.04 Solid Waste Landfill Diversion.Additional InformationSource:Contact:Contact E-Mail:Data Source Type: Excel / CSVPreparation Method:Publish Frequency: AnnualPublish Method: ManualData Dictionary

This new data class brings over data from the Waste Management Information System (WMIS), which is an MS Access based database used by MNR to track Waste Management Sites. This was married with the spatial data from Waste Disposal Sites where possible Different Waste Disposal Site types collected by the Ministry of Natural Resources include: * Compost Disposal * Hazardous Waste Disposal * Household Waste Disposal * Industrial Waste Disposal * Septic Drying Bed * Septic Field * Sewage Disposal * Tile Bed * Transfer Station This product requires the use of GIS software. *[GIS]: geographic information system *[MNR]: Ministry of Natural Resources *[WMIS]: Waste Management Information System *[MS]: Microsoft

Abstract

Municipal Solid Waste facilities and Construction and Demolition Debris facilities for the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) database. Exact sites of landfills who are registered with EPA's FRS. Very limited information other than location, name, and ownership.

This data set defines both current and historic landfills/waste disposal storage sites for the State of Vermont. Historic landfills were identified with the publication of the Vermont Ground Water Pollution Source Inventory by the Agency of Environmental Conservation, Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering Water Quality Division, December 1980. Current landfill locations supplied by the Solid Waste Division of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Conservation.This dataset includes: active landfills - currently accepting waste, geo-located; closed landfills- ceased accepting waste and completed closure under solid waste regulations (post-1988), geo-located; historic landfills - ceased accepting waste prior to solid waste regulation implementation (pre-1988), locations obtained from a 1990 Vermont Groundwater Pollution Source Inventory completed by the Department of Waster Resources and Environmental Engineering Groundwater Management Section. The listing of historic landfills is likely incomplete.

This is a points dataset of the location of current Waste facilities (including licensed, applied, surrendered, rejected etc.) In 1996 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began licensing certain activities in the waste sector. These include landfills, transfer stations, hazardous waste disposal and other significant waste disposal and recovery activities. Further information about each license can be found on the EPA website.

Materials diverted by type and by source (residential and non-residential) for Canada, provinces and territories every year. The unit of measure is tonnes.

Locations of Solid Waste Landfill Facilities for emergency response and recovery efforts. Significant amounts of debris must be removed from impacted areas in order to facilitate access to these locations, begin the restoration process, and start the reconstruction of damaged and/or destroyed buildings in the impact zones. This dataset was developed to locate Solid Waste facilities, to which debris can be directed. This layer was initiated, based on NAICS and SIC codes, by extracting landfills from the EPA Facility Registry System (FRS) contained in HSIP Gold 2012. This collection is being supplemented, edited, and amended by source data from individual states. Initial and previous collection efforts were limited to landfills that accept Municipal Solid Waste and/or Construction and Demolition Debris, but some of the features from the initial collection were found to have been misclassified; these have been adjusted accordingly (namely, a single C&D type versus Industrial waste facilities). This collection effort focused on expanding the Type domain to include Transfer Station Facilities. All new solid waste features must be considered active facilities based on state source data or state permit at the time of release. Already-existing solid waste dataset features that have become inactive or closed since the initial release are noted as such.