Landfills

Safely disposing of non-hazardous waste

GFL owns and operates a broad network of specially-designed non-hazardous solid waste landfills and processing facilities across our North American footprint.

Our Landfills

GFL manages a number of different types of solid waste landfills. These include:

• Municipal solid waste landfills for everyday household and commercial garbage.
• Municipal solid waste landfills for non-hazardous special industrial waste, including asbestos materials and liquids.
• Inert debris landfills, for disposal of earth, concrete, curved asphalt, rock, bricks, etc.
• Construction and demolition (C&D) landfills for construction, renovation and demolition waste, some of which accept asbestos disposal.

Environmental Responsibility

Landfills play a critical role in ensuring the responsible management of waste materials that cannot be recycled. When diversion of waste materials from landfills is not an option, GFL offers safe, fully-regulated disposal solutions through our licensed facilities. Our landfills operate in strict compliance with all applicable environmental regulations, to ensure the proper management of permitted non-hazardous municipal (MSW), industrial, construction and demolition (C&D), and special solid waste.

GFL’s modern landfill management systems work to protect soil and groundwater from impacts while limiting the release of landfill gas emissions. Our landfills are engineered to include environmental protection technologies such as:

• Impermeable High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) cell lining systems to prevent landfill gas migration and create barriers to protect ground water;
• Leachate collection and treatment systems to remove leachate from landfill cells to be transported to licensed off-site disposal facilities or directed to on-site treatment plants;
• Landfill gas collection systems to direct landfill gas to energy generation facilities or facility flares for combustion. These systems work to reduce odors and the release of air emissions including greenhouse gases.
• Daily and Final cover to contain waste in place, minimize water infiltration, reduce landfill gas emissions and prevent vermin.
• Stormwater management systems including basins, drainage trenches, stormwater ponds and conveyance systems to prevent stormwater runoff from contacting the landfilled waste materials.

Our landfills also include sophisticated monitoring systems to ensure that the engineering technologies in place are working to protect the environment. Our monitoring systems include monitoring of odour, groundwater and surface water, leachate and landfill gas.

Our comprehensive safety and environmental management systems, including operations plans and standard operating procedures and training of all of our landfill employees, ensure the safe, sustainable and environmentally responsible management of our landfills.

Investment in Renewable Energy

GFL invests heavily in landfill gas-to-energy technology that captures landfill gas and converts it to a renewable source of electricity. By the end of 2019, 79% of GFL owned and operated municipal solid waste landfills had gas collection and treatment systems. One of our largest gas-to-energy solid waste landfills is our Eastern Ontario Waste Handling Facility in Moose Creek, Canada. Commissioned in 2013, the facility’s 4.2 MW landfill gas-to-energy plant was designed to generate electricity for 4,000 local homes.

Through our on-site landfill gas recovery systems, GFL typically recovers around 2,117,730 MMbtu of landfill gas per year, which results in a significant reduction in CO2e emissions. For example, in 2019, 39,751 tons of GHG emissions were avoided due to alternative energy generation at our landfills.

The energy produced by our alternative generation systems is used to supply electricity for on-site operations, residential homes, and other commercial or industrial facilities, which significantly reduces GFL’s fossil fuel consumption and on-site operational energy costs.