Modern industrial societies generate vast quantities of waste the UK alone produces more than a million tonnes every day. A large proportion of it has traditionally been put into "landfill" literally dumped into large holes in the land, but space is running out and the damage to the environment from landfill sites is of increasing concern.

Predictions indicate that increases in municipal waste, the main contributor to landfill, will more than double the amount of landfill gas generated in the next 20 years, a very high portion of which is methane, one of the most aggressive "greenhouse" gases.

To help deal with these increases, Cardiff researchers, led by Dr Keith Williams and Dr. Tony Griffiths in the School of Engineering, are conducting large-scale experiments into generating compost from municipal waste.

At a specially-constructed site in Carmarthenshire, West Wales, they are analysing constant readings of temperature, gas flows, and gas composition, to develop the most efficient ways of producing valuable compost from material which would otherwise be discarded.

Through this work, largely sponsored by Carmarthenshire Environmental Resources Trust (CERT), they are finding that, by more actively managing the composting process, they can speed up the breakdown of organic material enabling them to achieve in eight weeks a quality of compost that would take a year under traditional methods.

"This work is producing solutions to no fewer than four serious environmental concerns," said Dr. Williams.

"Firstly, it disposes of much domestic waste; secondly, it helps overcome the worldwide depletion of soil quality; thirdly, it reduces emissions of methane the highly aggressive greenhouse gas produced by landfill disposal; and fourthly, it wil
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Contact: Dr Keith Williams
WilliamsK@cardiff.ac.uk
44-2987-4847
Cardiff University
3-Jun-2003