What happens when yesterday’s landfills become today’s problem—cracking, leaking, or resurfacing in the wake of poor maintenance or climate-driven disasters? In this episode, we dive into how companies and communities are tackling the legacy of contaminated sites, and the best practices shaping a safer, more resilient future for remediation.
What happens when yesterday’s landfills become today’s problem—cracking, leaking, or resurfacing in the wake of poor maintenance or climate-driven disasters? In this episode, we dive into how companies and communities are tackling the legacy of contaminated sites, and the best practices shaping a safer, more resilient future for remediation. We hear from Angelique Dickson, co-host in this episode, President of the Inogen Alliance and EVP at Antea Group USA; Paul Walker, Technical Director at Tonkin + Taylor New Zealand; and Andrew Green, Senior Associate at Peter J. Ramsay & Associates, Australia.
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Guest Quotes
“The relationship with landfills is an interesting one. They're a necessary evil. We all use them to a greater or lesser extent. But I think there's an element that we don't want to think about them. We don't want them to be there. We just want somebody else to deal with them, basically.” - Paul
“ Our landfill space has been relatively well regulated.That's not to say that we don't have historic landfills that are sort of forgotten, or our legacy sites…But basically what we've got in Victoria is some of the highest standards for landfill design, siting design, operation and rehabilitation in the country. A lot of other states and even other countries use our standards as their default.” - Andrew
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Time Stamps
(00:00) Landfills: Out of sight, out of mind?
(00:46) Meet the hosts and guests
(01:19) Biggest risks of modern landfills
(02:41) New Zealand's legacy landfills: A case study
(09:54) Australia's best practices in landfill management
(16:59) Climate change and its impact on landfills
(22:28) Innovations and global knowledge sharing
(32:15) Key takeaways with the hosts
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Sponsor copy
Rethinking EHS is brought to you by the Inogen Alliance. Inogen Alliance is a global network of 70+ companies providing environment, health, safety and sustainability services working together to provide one point of contact to guide multinational organizations to meet their global commitments locally. Visit http://www.inogenalliance.com/ to learn more.
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Links
Phil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phildillard/
Angie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeliquedickson/
Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-walker-716a6139/\
Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-green-740b7776/
REHS S2EP2 - Landfills - V1
Phil: [00:00:00] We all know that dumping the world's trash into the ground was never a perfect solution. But once it's varied, is it really out of sight, out of mind? What happens when yesterday's landfills become today's problem, cracking, leaking, or resurfacing in the wake of age or maintenance or climate driven disasters?
Today we're digging into how companies and communities are tackling the legacy of contaminated sites and the best practices for shaping a safer, more resilient future for remediation.
Speaker 2: This is rethinking EHS where global goals meet local expertise to accelerate a resilient planet for all. We highlight practical solutions and bold strategies that drive change brought to you by Inogen Alliance.
Phil: I'm Phil Dillard, who is my co-host for this episode. Angie Dickson, president of the Inogen Alliance and Executive Price Vice President of Antea Group USA. Great to have you here, Angie.
Angie: Thanks, Phil. I'm excited to be [00:01:00] here and we have two actual additional experts, so my colleagues, uh, from around the world.
So I'd like to introduce our guest today. We have Paul Walker, who's technical director with Tonkin and Taylor in New Zealand, and we have Andrew Green, senior Associate at Peter J. Ramsey and associates from Australia. So welcome to you both.
Andrew: Thank you. Thank you, Angie.
Angie: All right, so to open this up, Andrew and Paul, can you each summarize briefly, you know, what are the biggest risks we face with landfill today?
Are they not built or managed properly? Are we worried about climate change? What is that specific situation, um, in your region? And are there any trends or concerns that we should be aware of? Paul, maybe we can start with you.
Paul: My focus or certainly recently has been on exactly what Phil was talking about, where those, those things from the past coming back to haunt us.
And we see that as a, as an increasing, increasing issue in New Zealand and as a small country, it's certainly going to put some pressure on us in terms of how we [00:02:00] manage those issues. Now we know about them and now we found out a bit more about them. So I. I think those things are come from the past.
They're coming back to buy just a little bit and I'm keen to talk a bit more about that.
Angie: And Andrew, from your perspective in Australia?
Andrew: Yeah, for us, we've got basically landfills that are now being encroached on by communities. So we're getting communities developed closer and closer to landfills, so we're getting more stringent controls regarding design, operation and rehabilitation as well.
So really it's sort of a lifecycle analysis and, and trying to have these facilities operate in the best practice matter. Alongside communities and all of the technical challenges that come with that.
Phil: That makes a lot of sense. Paul, I understand you're doing a lot of work on managing the impacts of legacy landfill sites.
Like we suggested, many of the contaminated sites may not be up to current best practices. So can you start by telling us a little bit about the work you're doing in New Zealand?
Paul: Sure. So I'll take you back to 2019 and [00:03:00] we had, we made international news in New Zealand for the wrong reasons when we had a legacy landfill, closed landfill that had closed many decades ago, and it was eroded by a, uh, a river.
The Fox River and result was tons of very visible waste, ejected into a very pristine west coast en environment, and as a country that trades on its clean green image, that was just the wrong type of headline for us. And that prompted a question at ministerial level. Which was, how many of these things are out there?
What is coming down the line? And particularly considering the influence of climate change and climate change related hazards. And so TNT embarked upon a, on a piece of work for the New Zealand of government to essentially map landfills or legacy landfills that may be vulnerable to climate change related natural hazards.
And we've gone through a process of working with the government [00:04:00] to refine that. That model, that tool. We're currently also working with New Zealand government to look at how they can support councils who have primary responsibility for, for landfills in New Zealand, to, to manage those, those issues, but also help fund those because it's recognized that these are, you know, that that's an investment in the country.
This isn't just dead money anymore. This is an, this is a future investment in the prosperity and the, and the image of New Zealand. So, as I say, we've been, um, we've built a, a tool to, to help local authorities identify vulnerable landfills. In their regions, in their districts, and we're working with a number of individual councils on actively remediating some of those sites, majority of which are coastal landfills.
In fact, this week we will be mobilizing to site to observe the, the commencement of the remediation, one of those landfills where we're seeing some, uh, hard engineering [00:05:00] going in to protect it on the south coast of the, uh, south island New Zealand.
Phil: Super. So given what you learned in putting together the tool, can you give an overview of maybe the current state of the, where we are regarding the landfills today?
And briefly how we got to this situation. Is it, what sort of grade would you give it and, and where are the major areas that are needed for improvement? That's
Paul: a really good question because I think. It's probably speaks to some of the lessons that we learned in preparing the tool. The main issue that we came across, and we ran it as a pilot tool, pilot tool initially, where we looked at three regions in New Zealand.
What we found was that the regions have very, very different levels of information about their close landfills, and as you can imagine with any predictive tool or with any planning kind of tool, it's only as good as the information that you can put in. And so that's one of the main lessons that we learned was that the, the, the understanding of these issues is very variable across councils and particularly the, the [00:06:00] councils with very small population base and fund, therefore funding base really struggled to, to prioritize, understandably looking into these issues.
'cause they have many other calls on their finances and on their funds. So that's one of the issues is getting to some level of equity around the information that we have so that we can, we can compare. Areas of the country is on an apples, apples basis. That's one of the, one of the key issues. In terms of the future, one of the key things that we recognize is that New Zealand's a small country and there are.
There are literally thousands of, of closed landfills in this country from small farm related dumps to community facilities. And some of these will sit quite happily for the next millennia and never be, never be an issue or never be at risk. But some of these, and particularly over the next a hundred years that we've seen sea level rise, they're going to be vulnerable to these, these effects.
And so it's, it's finding a way of focusing on which of the problem. Problem [00:07:00] children and, and making sure that they can be prioritized and addressed in a proactive manner. That might mean managing and proactively managing sites that aren't currently appearing on a beach. So they're not currently discharging.
It's not necessarily visible, but they may be an issue in 10 to 15 years. So it's having that future focus is a, is a key thing here, and that brings in. Every mult a very multidisciplinary aspect to what we do. So in particular, looking at our coastal coastal experts, our coastal scientists and engineers, and understanding how the coastlines, in particular, when we think about coastal landfills, how they're going to evolve with climate change and understanding therefore, where these facilities that these landfills may be at risk in the future, if not currently.
Phil: That sounds like a really interesting challenge. I mean, New Zealand is a small place with a rugged landscape, but there's a decent amount of diversity there. You mentioned, you know, one lesson, major lesson that you would share. Can you share a little bit [00:08:00] of other lessons others should take from your challenges that you've experienced as they're trying to think of challenges that they might be, uh, trying to mitigate?
Any other lessons learned that you think others should know?
Paul: One of the issues that we, we struggle with, and it's partly due to the regulatory regime that we have here, is, is the understanding of risk and also the, the drivers for responding to some of these issues. It's understandable for people to be quite concerned when they see waste appearing on a beach.
And one of the issues that we have in New Zealand at the moment is, is it's very much a whack-a-mole type scenario where we're re we're responding to issues that may or may not be in the grand scheme of things. High risk, high environmental risk, or a high risk to human health, public health. But they're visible and communities understandably want them addressed.
But the reality is that they, that sucks money away from [00:09:00] potentially more risky sites and more deserving sites. And I think where we want to get to is to understand that what the risk portfolio, risk profile of our portfolio looks like and not. Always be looking at first in first served kind of approach to dealing with these sites.
So I think to answer your question a bit more directly, I think we need to think of risk and think of what the real drivers for us doing something are cognizant of the fact that they, you know, there are going to be many demands on our, on our of
Phil: money for, for dealing with these sites. Well, that's great.
I mean, I got five key points from that that we need to be proactive and develop a budget and have some priorities, have good data, make sure we're collecting good data on the status of these landfills. Develop a risk profile and consider like a lifecycle management of the different assets in the portfolio so we understand where they are.
That sounds like a really good set.
Angie: Great. Well, let's, let's go to Andrew now because Andrew, I understand you are working on [00:10:00] a little bit different lens for landfills. You're really looking more about best practice around design and rehabilitation. So actually you can avoid some of these issues that might come down the line.
Can you tell us about the work that you're doing in Australia? You know, these standards and, you know, how are you setting these regarding landfills moving forward?
Andrew: Thanks, Angie. There's a little bit of background. We're based in Victoria, so our main city in Victoria is Melbourne. We've had an Environment protection act since 1970, so one of the oldest environment protection acts in the world.
Our landfill space has been relatively well regulated. That's not to say that we don't have similar historic landfills that are sort of forgotten about our legacy sites, similar to to New Zealand as, as Paul talked about. But basically what we've got in Victoria is some of the highest standards for landfill design, siding, design, operation, and rehabilitation in the country.
Um, a lot of other states and even other countries use our standards as their default. Standards. So we're in a great position here in Melbourne to sort of be at the forefront [00:11:00] of some of the best practice technologies that we're seeing being required and we're we're the benefits for that starter, like, for example, ensuring that all of designs are, you know, done to the best standard by.
Qualified landfill engineers. It's a very specialist area and it requires a lot of in-depth knowledge, multifaceted knowledge as well. So geotechnical engineering background knowledge and uh, on the science and technology around geosynthetics, which is another really large area that requires a lot of specialist knowledge and even around construction.
So making sure that construction of landfills is done in a very prescribed and highly regulated technical manner. It's not. Just like a, a bunch of guys on graders and diggers these days. It's much more technical and prescriptive than that, and all of the flow on effects of that are a better, better systems to, to contain waste and provide that long term surety that we're getting a system that protects the environment and human health in the long term.
Angie: Great. Well, I definitely hear the, the [00:12:00] proactive piece of that is really important, so, okay. So if Australia has some of the best standards, any lessons learned when you think about what, um, you might be able to share, whether it's EHS leaders or others around the world based on what you're learning in Australia?
Andrew: Yeah, so one of the big things is, I guess, being prepared for these projects. So understanding that there is a lot of time involved to, to get the best outcome. Um, that means, you know, understanding lead time around materials, uh, developing appropriate project teams, getting the right personnel and the right experience and qualifications on the project to allow delivery.
So yeah, you're not going to go and get a, uh, a first class sort of result unless you've put in the preparation and the. And taking the necessary steps to, to organize a team and, and structure your project to deliver it.
Phil: So Andrew, it seems like there are a lot of things about a city like Melbourne where we could share best practices across cities of similar size and different parts of the world, but there's [00:13:00] probably also things that are spec specific to your part of the world.
Can you talk a little bit about what sort of insights you get that you can share with different people from around the world and, and how they're impacted by? Climate change in your region and how it extrapolates to others. How do you think about that?
Andrew: Yes. So some of the key pressures that we face in Melbourne, like any other growing metropolitan region is that we we're getting communities coming in pro encroach on landfills.
So it's not necessarily directly linked to to climate change per se, but population growth is what's driving that and what're getting conflicts in land use now. So that's forcing operators to be much more cognizant around their landfill gas collection, for example, the way they manage their tipping faces.
Even some of the auxiliary things like, you know, keeping down bird numbers that scavenge on, on waste that can then, you know, cause nuisance to, to surrounding communities. So some of those auxiliary aspects directly lead to climate change. We're getting more and more regulation around greenhouse gas [00:14:00] emissions, so that's forcing land landfill operators to implement better practice in terms of capping systems and uh, landfill gas capture energy from waste.
From combustion of landfill gas, that kind of thing. All of that is much more at the forefront these days rather than being a sort of auxiliary component to, to landfill operation. It's, it's more at the forefront and front and center of, of landfill operators minds in their day-to-day activities.
Phil: And you know, in building on that with what Paul said about budgets and, and data and priority, it would seem that as humans encroach on places where they.
Didn't used to be where they encroached on the, the proximity to the landfill. It's going to increase the cost or make it more difficult to operate and possibly make the data capture more important so that you can develop the priorities and develop that lifecycle management that I think Paul alluded to.
Do either of you have, uh, have come stat on that? Have you, have you seen examples of this being the, the case and complicating the problem?
Andrew: Yeah, well [00:15:00] certainly as operators sort of look for last remaining airspace on some of the, the longer term sites, it becomes much more difficult, Phil, to, to use that airspace in a way that doesn't impact on, on nearby communities.
We're seeing that a few metropolitan sites around, around Melbourne at the moment, and so yeah, it certainly makes the, the cost benefit analysis around. Utilizing that remaining space, uh, much tighter. Ultimately, you're running a company, an operation that needs to make a profit at the end of the day, but it is certainly becoming much harder for some of these operators to do so in a, in an environmentally responsible manner, but also in a manner that's allowing them to, you know, make a profit at the end of the day as well, and, and get these sites to the level where they can close them up and they can become suitable in the longer term as well.
Do
Phil: you have anything to
Andrew: add to that, Paul?
Paul: I can appreciate the, uh, the complexities around the, I guess a, a somewhat of a reverse sensitivity situation where you have the population moving into, uh, into proximity with landfills. I think, and, and I think [00:16:00] that relationship with landfills that we have is an interesting one.
It's, they're a necessary evil. And we all use them to a greater or lesser extent, but I think there's an element that we don't want to think about them. We don't want to them to be there. We just want somebody else to deal with them basically. And I. I see that play out in terms of the legacy landfill space, because they may have been placed where they shouldn't have been.
And, and obviously with the, with the benefit of hindsight in some, we would never have placed these landfills in some of these locations, but they were generally community facilities. A lot of them were community facilities and there's obviously quite some. Quite some concerns, some outrage when these things daylight onto public spaces, but it's an inevitable consequence of urbanism or development as a society.
Angie: Well, so for both of you, I mean obviously, uh, landfills are a huge environmental impact, as you say. We're trying to mitigate that and we often try to ignore it, but. One of the things that we can see having an impact now is climate change. So [00:17:00] extreme weather, or, and I know New Zealand has had its share maybe a bit more than Australia in the last few years between earthquakes and, uh, I know a couple years ago when I was coming to visit, there was a terrible flood in Auckland.
So, and those are circumstantial, right? They could have an impact or not, as you mentioned with the, uh, debris, um, showing up on a beach. So what are you seeing specifically around climate change? Is impacting landfills and, and how are you able to either, you know, preemptively try to mitigate that and is that part of the plan that you're already at?
Or are there other, you know, specific plans that are being put in place, uh, around those events? And maybe Paul, we can start with you on that because I, I certainly know that New Zealand's had them, but Sure Australia has as well.
Paul: Thanks. And I should preface my answer by saying that. Modern landfills in New Zealand are, are constructed to a very, very high standard, and through the process of establishing those climate change.
And climate change related hazards are typically considered, and certainly for the [00:18:00] most recently constructed ones or the enlarged ones. That is absolutely a thing and very important. So I guess my answer relates more to, to legacy landfills and, and the reality is, is that we are going to see more of them.
If we look at sea level rise or predicted sea level rise over the next a hundred years, and we look at coastal inundation and coastal erosion, for example, and we look at the difference, look at the areas that will be exposed to erosion over those time steps. The proportion of landfills that will be. In of themselves, the eroded and exposed, but generally the, the absolute number of, of landfills that will be exposed to that will increase.
And so it's an issue, it's a known issue and it's actually prompted regulatory change in New Zealand. The Fox River issue and the recognition of the increasing vulnerability, let's say, of landfills to natural hazards, has prompted a change to the way in which these sites are funded by central government.
[00:19:00] And it's anticipated that more councils, more entities will come forward to seek funding from, from central government to investigate and clean up these sites. And the way in which that funding is, is now being. Obtained is through a diversion of waste levees, effectively building up a war chest to try and deal with contaminated, vulnerable site, vulnerable landfills and contaminated sites through the waste levee, which is a pretty smart way of making, I guess, aligning waste minimization strategy to cleaning up a legacy waste issue.
That's the race, that's the recent and, and developing regulatory. Funding landscape. And I, I guess the evolution of that will be that, that the nirvana would be to, to have a reasonably high degree of confidence about where our landfills are and what the risk levels each of them poses, and then have your portfolio and, and be able to apportion your funds accordingly.
I think we're some way off that because we just don't have the [00:20:00] level of understanding across the country of, of where the skeletons are in the closet, but I think that's a work in progress.
Angie: So Andrew, for Australia. You know, you talked about having a very high standard of regulatory intervention or, or, you know, regulations to allow a, a really high standard for your landfills.
How are, is that taking into effect into account some of the climate change implications or where is that coming from? What's, is yours a similar situation as it is in New Zealand?
Andrew: Yeah. So I think as Paul talked to, you know, very high standards for design and construction in New Zealand, for example, one of the key things we see a lot of is, uh, capping system design.
So this is the cap that goes over the waste to secure the waste in the long term. So you're designing a capping system that should last hundreds of years, hopefully. But even with modern science and technology and engineering, you know, we'll say for example, do storm water modeling for a capping system, but we're increasingly seeing, um, you know.
One off rainfall events come during construction phase, [00:21:00] washing out capping systems that have been designed to sort of foreshadow, say, a one in 20 year storm event. And it's probably because, yeah, we are seeing these, these higher intensity, lower duration storms that. You just can't even predict during, you know, your construction calculations or your design calculations.
So we are increasingly seeing that where we're increasingly seeing a push to have steeper capping systems as well, just trying to make better use of airspace on landfills and that also exaggerates the risk of erosion and in some ways, you know, limits the after use of a site as well. So yeah, we are sort of seeing these sort of.
Unforeseen things play out in real life because we're getting more unpredictable weather, uh, as we, we sort of, you know, start to live with the effects of climate change. So, absolutely. Um, and it's, it's very hard to then, you know, design for that because you know, you don't wanna over-engineer that cost.
That can cost a lot of money. Quite often the actual answer is, is to, to get vegetation on these capping systems as soon as possible to limit [00:22:00] the, uh, the erosion potential or to, you know, use a combination of geosynthetics and natural vegetation, for example, to, to limit the, the likelihood of erosion. But certainly all of these, these, uh, factors are playing out in real time as we, we deal with these sites and now are more increasingly unpredictable weather.
Phil: Cool. Thanks for sharing that. I know we, um, could do this for a while, but we're almost outta time. So I'm gonna ask you guys for one quick question and I'll start with Paul since you spoke last, the last, and then go to um, Andrew. And the question is, can you share a brief story or example. Of one innovation you've borrowed from somewhere else, somewhere else in the world, and one innovation you may have shared with somewhere else in the world.
Because as we look towards the future, we're looking to to leverage innovations that can help us either reduce what we put into landfill or manage them better. Anything that you would like to share that does, it's a interesting success story.
Paul: The way that we are at, uh, I guess TNT is, is responding to [00:23:00] these, to these challenges is, is to bring established knowledge together in a, in a particular way rather than there being necessarily anything novel.
But I think that there is certainly a degree of international knowledge around adaptation that we are. For want of a better word, harnessing in this piece and probably bringing to a number of our clients concepts that they, that, that are probably new to them in terms of, um, particularly around risk and how, how you would manage a portfolio of sites with a limited budget.
So, you know, what is your risk tolerance? What is an acceptable outcome? So two concepts that are from internationally well established. Processes. I think we're bringing more o overtly into, into New Zealand now. Cool. Andrew?
Andrew: Yeah, for us, I mean, we, we constantly looking at, say for example, American [00:24:00] standards, uh, and also, uh, standards developed in Europe.
So we're constantly borrowing from, from those jurisdictions because they've obviously, you know, every modern society has. The problem of landfill design, construction operation, right? So we're constantly looking internationally as to, you know, best practice guidance that comes out that we can then adapt to, to Australia and, and, you know, pass on to our clients.
So that's certainly something we do a lot of. Um, in terms of, I guess, giving back, I would like to sort of think that we, we are at the forefront of trying to implement best practice. So quite often, um, you know, Australian. Australians and, and, um, certainly Victorian centric firms, um, do operate in, in the sphere of best practice.
So I guess giving back is around, you know, having that overall knowledge, um, of implementing this best practice and, and then being a sort of, uh, center point of, um, information to then, you know, pass that back out. So, for example, if a, if a, um, indigent Alliance member came [00:25:00] to, to Peter Ramsey Associates, I'd like to think that we'd have a.
Very good overview of our best practice and we'd be able to disseminate that information back into the, into the network, uh, for, for our industry colleagues and their clients. So yeah, it's certainly something that's, uh, yeah, we we're doing day to day and hope to build on in the future.
Phil: Awesome. Great guys.
Thanks so much for sharing your insights.
Andrew: Thank you.
Phil: So for our audio listeners, I'm back with Angie. Andrew and Paul have left us, but that was a really fascinating conversation. So. I gotta ask, what stuck out for you, Angie?
Angie: I think I was recently in New Zealand and it is such a beautiful place. Uh, same with Australia, but, uh, the, uh, image of having landfills potentially, uh, creeping out into, you know, some of these be beautiful places is, you know, that's quite impactful.
So you can think of a visual for that. So that idea of inventorying, you know, what they have and where it is, I can imagine that is a big task. So certainly [00:26:00] appreciating, needing the, the government commitment, the regulatory framework. To do that effectively is, is really important because on the other side, what I heard from Andrew is that Australia seems to have approached it more from, they're gonna make sure they're best in class.
You know, they've got the regulations in place, they're looking at designing, well, different perspectives, uh, around the same problem, right? We create mounds and mounds of garbage and, uh, we still have to figure out how to manage it as effectively as possible.
Phil: I agree with you on, on all counts there. I felt like the first thing that struck me was how they have different perspectives.
If you're talking about legacy landfills versus designing and building new ones, right? We know that they're essential for all sorts of communities. I think that thing stuck out too, that they started as a community. Service. And then they had to get more professional. They had to get more intentional. As populations grew, as environmental hazards grew, that um, more people had to think about them and they would've done things differently had they known a little better.
Like, like you, I've been [00:27:00] to Australia and New Zealand. I was just in Mexico looking at a landfill site because we're, we were looking at a company that was removing waste from the beach and trying to take it somewhere. And for those people it was a lot like. Then, at least in the place park, the Mexico I was in, it was like, like out of sight outta mind.
Like, like the guys talked about. Once it was off the beach, most people were like, well, it's gone. Some people were dumping it back in the ocean. Some people were dragging it across the road and tossing it into a hole. But that hole led to their drinking water source. So sooner or. The environmental repercussions of where we cite the landfills and how we manage them are, are, are bound to, bound to play out.
And it just seemed like these guys, more and more I should say, it seemed like these guys clearly are seeing those from areas where they want to be. They aspire to be best in class for multiple reasons and that was interesting and refreshing. What do you think about the interaction between the government and the business perspectives?
Like how the business [00:28:00] parties need to think about. Making a profit from their operations.
Angie: You know, that is always the challenge, right? So waste is a part of a lot of operations. And on the positive side, you know, one of the things we did not talk about today is that we spend a lot of time working with businesses to minimize waste.
Because obviously that's the most cost effective way to make waste be not as impactful on your business, is literally to produce less of it. Andrew and Paul bear the responsibility of, you know, what's left. You know, no matter what happens, we still have waste and they have to take care of it. But I, I think going to that preventive piece of waste minimization, and we also spend a lot of time, to your point, validating, you know.
We talk about recycling. So the other way is, is what can you not end up going to the landfill? You know, are there things that can be recycled? If you think about circular economy, you know, I know you and I have talked about that in the past. I mean, that's the best solution. And so I do think there's a piece where the landfills you [00:29:00] hope become, you know, smaller and smaller.
Parts of the waste cycle because we're able to, you know, minimize and of course, recycle, reuse, uh, reduce, you know, all of that becomes a more critical part of it.
Phil: I think that's obviously a super point, right? What's the best way to minimize, uh, the impact of landfills? Uh, put less into them, right? And if we make them a smaller percentage of our per capita output, that's probably a really good thing.
Angie: So, going back to the regulatory question that you had as well, you're talking about your experience in Mexico. I think globally there is also the opportunity to appreciate the risk that waste brings to us. The regulatory climate can be very important around the world. Of course, it needs to be enforced.
Or you might find that, you know, like in Mexico, that risk, although you might think you're taking something to a landfill and it's being properly managed. Ca whenever needs to be done as it matures, you might find that it's, you're not, you know, you're sending your waste and it's actually going somewhere [00:30:00] that is causing communities or other people to actually suffer some type of risk.
So I think the regulatory climate is really important, and certainly there's level of maturity and enforcement around the world that. You know, has an impact on how effective that is as it relates to waste.
Phil: Right. You know, you mentioned that risk point and the, that makes me think of the engineering question.
The guys didn't wanna over-engineer a solution. They, uh, clearly had seen some things that were more significant that they'd an than they'd anticipated. Andrew mentioned extreme intense rainfall in a short period of time, so it seems like another opportunity. For industry to work with government and regulatory to address the boundaries of the problem, right To to design the solution that's gonna work inside of the budget that they've got inside of the risk tolerance that they've got, and with the best practice that they have now with anticipation of the future.
And any other thoughts or like parting, parting shots that come to.
Angie: The only two things that come to mind that I'll look forward to talking to at another [00:31:00] time is one of the other ways that we can sort of minimize that impact is actually, you know, we didn't even talk about the energy transition in waste.
So waste to energy extraction of methane. So there are some other areas besides the management that I think technology and, you know, energy transition demands. Are forcing us to think about, and I think that's something we'll probably talk about in a future episode.
Phil: Sure. I hope so. Because, you know, we've seen technologies where companies are actually going into formerly closed landfills and trying to extract things out of the landfill in, in such ways, other companies that are using robotics and and technology to sort what comes in so they can actually extract it out if the com, if the community or the local C ecosystem doesn't have the resources to extract it at the point.
It doesn't have the cultural, uh, history to, to separate it at the source that they can do it at the recovery facility before it gets into the landfill and make it a, a better resource. So hopefully we can double down and dig into that. [00:32:00] I hope to have Andrew and Paul follow their work and, um, and to learn more from them, um, over time as we work, as we go through this season.
Two.
Angie: Thanks a lot, Phil. It's been great to be with you.
Phil: Always great.
Angie: As we, uh, close out, I am excited to talk more with Andrew on our mini episode. That will be coming out next week.
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