Municipal solid waste from landfills a solution to energy crisis in South Africa

Abstract: There is a growing interest in the management of municipal solid waste globally, and South Africa is also not relenting in its effort to turning wastes from landfill into resourceful materials or energy because of the environmental issues and job opportunities that arises from the wastes generated from household to industrial by-products. Due to the escalating increase in the cost of dumping wastes into landfills and depletion of land spaces despite the popular global campaign of waste reduction, re-use and recycling there is still a rapid increase in the tonnage of wastes that is being produced on daily basis from all works of life which results in huge quantity of waste that is disposed to landfills. This calls for an urgent need to look into possible ways of managing wastes better in such a manner that it contributes and promotes sustainable socio - economic development of the nation. This research paper focuses on the type of waste generated from the City of Johannesburg, the potential biomethane that could be produced from the organic wastes, waste collection methods around the city before disposal on landfills within the City of Johannesburg and investigation of energy generation from waste as a better waste management technique. Robinson deep landfill which is one of the biggest landfill site within the city in terms of capacity is located in the South of Johannesburg. This landfill is a potential site for the establishment of a biogas plant where landfill wastes is expected to be used as feedstocks for the production of biogas. The biogas produced will be further upgraded to biomethane for powering the City of Johannesburg metro buses