The Environmental Pressure by Open Dumpsites and Way Forward

Environmental hazard from open dumping is a severe problem occurring around the world. The composition of waste from most of developing countries accounts for more than 50% of organic matter. Prolonged incomplete handling of solid waste or lack of management at disposal sites has caused significant environmental and social challenges across the world in these regions such as pollution of nearby water supplies, pollution of groundwater, enhanced mosquito breeding sites, unintentional landfill gas fire, microbial pollution from atmospheric dust, atmospheric contaminantscreating unpleasant and highly toxic gases and Volatile Organic Carbons (VOCs), emission of green house gases (GHGs) damage to vegetation, air pollution leading to global warming etc. Among the sources of water pollution, open dumpsites have been identified as one of the significant threats. A significant amount of metal release namely Cd, As, Cr, Fe can be occurred by the disposal methods such as open dumps. Disastrous events like “dumpslides”, fires have been recorded worldwide causing casualties due to the mismanagement of open dumpsites. Composting, resource recovery, waste mining, use of bio covers are useful techniques which can be applied to existing open dumpsites. This review will address the environmental pressure from open dump sites as and the futuristic approaches in waste management aligning with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and circular economy.