Latvia weighs three options as Getliņi landfill nears capacity

Latvia is considering a new landfill, waste incineration or more extensive sorting as the Getliņi landfill, which handles unsorted household waste, is expected to run out of space in seven to eight years, LSM reports.

Even if the share of unsorted waste falls from about 30% to 10%, a further solution will still be needed, Līga Šmite, head of environmental and development management at Getliņi EKO, said during a discussion on Latvian Radio’s Krustpunktā programme.

The landfill’s gas collection equipment has a maximum capacity, Šmite said. Sifting through the existing waste mound could be possible, but would require moving some of the waste, and there is no room at the landfill to do that.

Andra Feldmane, an economic affairs adviser to the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments, said it would not be possible to sort all waste. Other options could include incineration, also known as recovery, or a biogas plant, but both would require sufficient volumes of waste and good-quality sorting.

Maija Krastiņa of Zero Waste Latvia cautioned that incineration is not a complete solution: it produces ash that still has to be disposed of and causes environmental pollution. She said the cement plant in Brocēni uses a different technology to burn waste without producing ash. The plant currently burns imported waste, but Riga Deputy Mayor Edvards Ratnieks said that is expected to change. A Getliņi representative said the composition of waste buried there is not suitable for burning at the Brocēni plant.

Krastiņa said more waste could be sorted by improving options such as furniture drop-off. She estimated that the share of unsorted waste could be reduced to about 7% of the total.