In Gabon, employment and environmental protection go hand in hand

Today, nearly 200 young people are working in 11 project teams, clearing up waste for 300,000 residents in Libreville. Photo: UNDPA few years on, residents in disadvantaged areas of Libreville no longer look twice at the men and women wearing overalls, boots and protective masks as they push their wheelbarrows full of bin bags through the streets of the capital of Gabon, which is on the west coast of Africa.

The pre-collectors are now a familiar sight, helping to improve living conditions and clean up the city by collecting household waste in areas that are hard to reach for conventional collection businesses.

How to manage household waste is a very real environmental and public health problem in Gabon’s capital. To address this issue, UNDP, in partnership with local authorities in Libreville and the Public Health Ministry’s Hygiene Department, has implemented the Shared Urban Solid Waste Management project, with the support of the National Waste Control Programme. This project helps advance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by strengthening efforts to eradicate poverty, improving public and primary healthcare hygiene conditions and cleaning up the environment.

It has also had a positive economic impact as it contributes to curbing youth unemployment. Young people represent nearly 48 per cent of the population.
Trash collection services fail to keep up with demand, benefiting only 38 per cent of families. Collection was selective, essentially favouring residential areas and the city centre (80 per cent collection rate) over disadvantaged areas (6 per cent collection rate) because of a lack of communication.

In urban areas, therefore, a collaborative pre-collection system is a must. The aim is to increase the number of households involved in waste collection of waste from 40 per cent to 80 per cent in five years, and to develop measures to encourage, inform and raise awareness.

The project’s strategic approach puts those concerned at the heart of the proposed mechanism. Young people from poor areas are recruited. They receive training in waste management, administrative and financial management and a participative approach before being placed with project teams. They are also encouraged to raise awareness among subscribers on the value of environmental cleanliness.

Today, nearly 200 young people are working in 11 project teams, collecting household waste on a daily basis from 300,000 residents in the 11 areas chosen. Clients pay 5,000 CFA francs a month (less than USD10) for the service. These young people have made the service a real vocation and in the long-term aim to become organized groups with institutional and legal status enabling them to grow into viable economic operators.

Over time, many of these young people have seen their economic and social situation improve with increased purchasing power.

”Since I started I have been managing to support myself,” says one young pre-collector. “I don’t have to bother my family anymore.”

“My fiancé and I are saving money to get married. We are both pre-collectors and are making plans for our long-term future,” says another pre-collector who is head of his project team.

The commitment of ground crews and the various positive assessments of the project, have led the local authorities to involve them in the preparation of some local action plans, while entrusting them with various clean-up projects such as cleaning out gutters, sweeping the streets and markets, and clearing green spaces.

The community has made its satisfaction clear. “Since I signed up to this service, my property has been clean. Household waste no longer piles up and that has convinced my neighbors to sign up with these young people as well. We are very satisfied because our environment has been cleaned up,” says one housewife.

According to the local authorities, the Shared Solid Waste Urban Management project should be rolled out on a larger scale. In addition to creating jobs for many young people, the first project teams now operate independently as small and medium-sized businesses.

Online activists fail British oil firm's bid to gag media freedom

Probo Koala which dumped toxic waste in Ivory Coast. Photo: GreenpeaceA British oil trading company's attempt to prevent media from reporting Parliamentary proceedings in relation to its dumping of toxic waste in an African country has been thwarted after social networking sites made public the same information it tried to block.

Trafigura tried to prevent Guardian newspaper from publishing a question tabled on Monday in the British Parliament by the Labour MP Paul Farrelly. The question related to the reporting on the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast by Trafigura.

Farrelly sought to know the kind of measures taken to protect press freedom following an injunction obtained by Trafigura and its law firm, Carter Ruck, against the publication of a report into the issue.

The Guardian was forbidden from publishing anything related to Farrelly's question. But it appeared Trafigura and its lawyers underestimated the power of social networking sites like Twitter, which, upon the news of gag attempt was published, was flooded with details of Farrelly's question. Two more blogs and magazine Private Eye published the full text.

The response in twitter was overwhelming, with the three most popular search terms on the site being "outrageous gagging order trafigura dumping scandal", "ruck" and "guardian".

The attempt to keep the information secret was ludicrous, because, as pointed out by Observer media editor James Robinson, Farrelly's question was freely available on British Parliament's website and was printed on the House of Commons order paper.

It was not just Guardian which came under the gag attempt. Trafigura threatened anyone who refused to buy its version. BBC Newsnight and journalists in the Netherlands and Norway were threatened with legal consequences.

Criminal dumping

Trafigura dumped hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste in 11 habitat areas in Abidjan, the main economic capital of Ivory Coast, under cover of darkness on August 19, 2006.

The uncontrolled dumping of toxic waste sickened tens of thousands of people and killed 15. A classic case of third world countries being used by companies as waste dumping yards, it was one of the worst pollution incidents the world has ever seen after the gas leak in Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, in 1984.

The wastes were liquid sludge containing large quantities of hydrocarbons, contaminated with at least three substances: hydrogen sulphide, mercaptans and caustic soda.

Both hydrogen sulphide and mercaptans are toxic chemicals. Hydrogen sulphide is a gas which smells strongly of 'rotten eggs' and is a potent poison of the respiratory system. Exposure to high levels in air in a confined space can lead rapidly to loss of consciousness, respiratory failure and death

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, wrote: "According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations. There seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping."

Autopsy reports on 12 victims showed fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts.

Organisations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International have been clamouring for Trafigura to be prosecuted for homicide or grievous bodily harm.

Emails obtained by the Guardian and the BBC's Newsnight revealed that Trafigura knew very well that the oil slurry was so contaminated with toxic waste and that it was banned in Europe. Company traders referred to the toxic waste as "shit" or "crap".

To clean up the dirty fuel the traders planned to add caustic soda to absorb sulphur contaminants, a pernicious practice banned in the west. A chartered tanker, Probo Koala, containing the waste sailed to Ivory Coast, and the deadly toxic waste was dumped, causing burns, nausea, diarrhoea and loss of consciousness to those living in the area.

According to Greenpeace, before arriving in the Ivory Coast, Probo Koala attempted to discharge the toxic waste in the port of Amsterdam. The Amsterdam Port Service realised that the waste was of an unusually toxic character. When informed that there would be an additional expense for treating the waste, the Probo Koala chose to look for a less costly option.

Trafigura termed the dumping as a routine exercise, saying its ship had only pumped out ordinary slops from tank-cleaning.

But the 31,000 Africans couldn't be silenced as they joined in Britain's largest-ever lawsuit for compensation under London lawyer Martyn Day. Last month, the company offered 1,000 pound each in compensation to the victims.

Some hard facts about electronics recycling

Sold in 2006: 230 million computers, 1 billion cell phones, 45.5 million TVs; many destined for uncontrolled disposal without change in policies, consumer practices

Processes and policies governing the reuse and recycling of electronic products need to be standardised worldwide to stem and reverse the growing problem of illegal and harmful e-waste processing practices in developing countries, according to experts behind the world's first international e-waste academy.

Making appropriate recycling technologies available worldwide and standardising government policy approaches to reuse and recycling could dramatically extend the life of many computers, mobile phones, TVs and similar products and allow for more complete end-of-life harvesting of the highly valuable metals and other components they contain.

technologies and to flat-screen TVs and monitors, for example, is pushing every country to find more effective ways to cope with their e-waste," says Ruediger Kuehr of United Nations University, Executive Secretary of a global public-private initiative called Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEP). Based in Bonn, Germany, StEP works with policy makers, industry, academia and other stakeholders.

"Millions of old devices in North America and Europe could easily double their typical three or four year 'first life' by being put to use in classrooms and small business offices across Africa, South America and Asia," says Ramzy Kahhat, Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management at Arizona State University.

"An old Pentium II computer with an open-source operating system like Linux can run faster than some of the latest new models on store shelves."

"It's vitally important, however, to get unwanted devices into re-use before they get too old and damaged to be re-conditioned," says Dr. Kahhat, who advocates a return deposit to discourage consumers from simply storing old equipment in a drawer, garage or basement.

Dr. Kahmat and other international participants in the first E-Waste Summer School Sept. 6-11, organised by NVMP (the Dutch Foundation for the Disposal of Metal and Electrical Products) and StEP, shared and compared ideas on e-waste management.

Hosted at the Philips High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands, participants from 15 countries explored topics ranging from policy, technology and economics to the social challenges of reducing e-waste, the first ever academy to look at the e-waste issue in its entirety, rather than through the lens of a specific academic discipline.

NVMP (the Dutch Foundation for the Disposal of Metal and Electrical Products) and Philips were principal partners in the effort, headed by United Nations University and EMPA, the Swiss Federal Institute for Material Science and Technology, and Germany's oldest technical university, Technische Universität Braunschweig.

Gold in the E-waste mountains

An exhaustive study Dr. Kahhat conducted in 2008 in Peru found that more than 85 per cent of used computers imported by that country were put back into service. That record contrasts sharply with the alarming statistic from Nigeria, Pakistan and Ghana that roughly 80 per cent of imported devices classified for reuse are simply scrapped.

Computers and other electronics that can no longer be used contain valuable materials when devices are properly dismantled and recycled.

A ton of used mobile phones, for example, or approximately 6,000 handsets (a tiny fraction of today's 1 billion annual production), contains about 3.5 kilograms of silver, 340 grams of gold, 140 grams of palladium, and 130 kg of copper, according to StEP. The average mobile phone battery contains another 3.5 grams of copper. Combined value: over USD15,000 at today's prices.

Recovering these metals with state-of-the art recycling processes generates a small fraction of the CO2 emissions, land degradation and hazardous emissions caused by mining them.

Recovering 10 kilograms of aluminum via recycling, for example, uses no more than 10 per cent of the energy required for primary production, preventing the creation of 13 kilograms of bauxite residue, 20 kilograms of CO2, and 0.11 kilograms of sulphur dioxide emissions, and causes many other emissions and impacts.

Other components in e-waste like indium and coltan are increasingly hard to find but vital to electronics manufacturing.

China: 2 million backyard e-waste recyclers

UNU researcher Feng Wang estimates that of the 20 million people (roughly equal to the population of Australia) engaged in China’s waste management, 2 million are involved in the informal collection, re-use and recycling of e-waste.

All too often, e-scrap in developing countries is incinerated to recover metals, not only wasting much-needed resources but adding dangerous heavy metals, toxic dioxins, furans and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to the environment, both local and global.

Though China has banned e-waste imports, it is still one of the world's major dumping grounds for e-waste from other countries, says Wang. In addition, China produces prodigious volumes of e-waste domestically (an estimated 2.3 million tonnes next year; second only to the US with an estimated 3 million tonnes).

Rising environmental damage and health problems among those involved has prompted China, like many other countries, to initiate an ambitious new formal and regulated processes for managing e-waste with efficient, large scale facilities.

Wang is contributing to research into innovative and profitable models to help China ensure proper e-waste recycling, from the collection of equipment from households to the expansion of recycling facilities.

Waste containers to arrive back in UK from Brazil

Photo by Hervé Cozanet for representation purpose onlyUK Environment Agency to probe the alleged export

Containers of waste which were alleged to have been exported from the UK to Brazil last month are due to arrive at the port of Felixstowe today, Friday, August 21.

Seventy one out of a total of 89 containers are due to arrive on the cargo ship ‘MSC Serena’, with the remaining returning at a later date. The Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources (IBAMA) has alleged that some of the containers contain clinical waste including syringes and condoms.

The UK Environment Agency will be organising the fumigation of the containers before undertaking a full investigation of their contents. Once evidence has been gathered, the Environment Agency will then ensure that the waste is safely dealt with by an appointed contractor. The fumigation process is expected to last a week.

The shipping lines contracted to transport the containers from the UK to Brazil agreed to repatriate the containers to the UK at their own expense.

Earlier this month, officers from the Environment Agency’s National Environmental Crime Team raided premises in Swindon with assistance from Wiltshire Police, who arrested a 49-year old man, a 28-year old man and a 24-year old man in connection to the Environment Agency's ongoing enquiry into the alleged illegal shipment of waste to Brazil.

Andrew Higham, Head of the Environment Agency’s National Environment Crime Unit, said: "Our investigation into the alleged export of waste from the UK to Brazil will continue with the return of the containers back to the UK.

"We will carry out an investigation of the contents to help us to gather evidence for our ongoing enquiry into the source of this waste. The UK has taken a strong global lead to stamp out the illegal waste trade, in order to protect people and the environment. We are not going to allow our waste to be dumped on developing countries."

There is a legitimate and growing market abroad for recyclables. The laws covering waste exports are strict but clear; it is illegal to export waste for disposal, but it can be sent abroad for recycling. The maximum penalty for exporting waste illegally is an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison.

Plastics firm prosecuted for packaging waste offences

A Southampton company that manufactures polythene has been ordered to pay over GBP5,000 after failing to recover and recycle packaging waste produced by the business over three years.

Polystar Plastics Ltd, who operate from Peel Street in Northam, Southampton, appeared before Lyndhurst Magistrates Court on Wednesday 12 August 2009. The company pleaded guilty to nine offences and was fined GBP4,950 and ordered to pay costs totalling GBP750.

Under the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007, businesses who have an annual turnover in excess of more than GBP2 million and handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging each year, must be registered with the Environment Agency or a compliance scheme. Each year, obligated businesses must also provide evidence of payment for the recovery and recycling of packaging waste.

The regulations make businesses take responsibility for the packaging waste they produce by making them pay towards overall recovery and recycling costs. This should lead to a reduction in packaging, greater recycling and recovery and a decrease in the amount of packaging that ends up in landfill sites.

As part of duties undertaken by the Environment Agency to ensure compliance with the regulations, Polystar Plastics Ltd was contacted in August 2007. Investigations found that the defendant company did not register with a compliance scheme, did not meet its recycling and recovery obligations or supply a certificate of compliance for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007.

David Robinson of the Environment Agency said: “The regulations are in place to encourage a reduction in the amount of packaging used by business and to decrease the amount of waste that is sent to landfill.

“While it is encouraging that Polystar Plastics worked with us when they realised their mistake, it is disappointing that there are still companies that are not compliant with this important legislation more than a decade after it was passed.
“Money raised from compliance is invested in the recycling industry, so failure to comply means that there is less investment in the recycling industry than there should be.”

Polystar Plastics Ltd apologised for the offences and said they take their environmental responsibilities very seriously. As soon as the failures in following the regulations were brought to their attention the company immediately joined a compliance scheme.

Brazil to send back British rubbish

Police in Brazil are investigating how 1,400 tonnes of British hazardous waste, including household and hospital waste (including bags of blood), ended up rotting in three Brazilian ports.

Alarm bells have been ringing ever since, with questions being raised in many quarters that the South American country is being used as a waste dump. What is not known now is whether this is an isolated incident. The UK could be held responsible for violating the Basel convention on the movement of hazardous waste.

The British newspaper Guardian says that many European companies have traditionally used Africa as a dumping ground for hazardous waste.

In the meanwhile, Brazil's Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, was at the port of Rio Grande, with the Superintendent of IBAMA (environment agency) in Rio Grande do Sul, to witness the loading of the first batch of 40 containers containing garbage illegally exported from England to Brazil.

Before the start of shipment of cargo to be sent to England, the Minister met with representatives of the port Revenue Service, Federal Police, the Anvisa, Superintendent of the Port of Rio Grande, the TECON - Container Terminal and the Superintendency Ibama of Rio Grande do Sul to discuss measures to prevent this type of environmental crime.

In addition to defining an investigation of possible environmental liabilities left in Brazil because of illegal imports of waste, there were calls for coordination for action against environmental crimes. Among them, the change in federal law framework for this type of crime, strengthening the supervision of the Federal Revenue agency: Anvisa, Federal Police, IBAMA, and use of electronic equipment for X-ray identification of the material inside the container.

To end the operation Minister Minc reaffirmed: "Brazil is not a garbage can on the planet. We will have to play a major role on this issue, requiring change in this type of behavior on the part of rich countries. "

There are a further forty containers with illegal junk awaiting to be picked up at the port of Santos in Sao Paulo.

Making you accountable for your trash

Project aims to raise awareness of how garbage impacts the environment

What if we knew exactly where our trash was going and how much energy it took to make it disappear? Would it make us think twice about buying bottled water or "disposable" razors?

A team of MIT researchers has announced a major project called Trash Track, which aims to get people thinking about what they throw away. Trash Track relies on the development of special electronic tags that will track different types of waste on their journey through the disposal systems of New York and Seattle. The project will monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal and create awareness of the impact of trash on our environment, revealing the last journey of our everyday objects.

"Trash is one of today's most pressing issues, both directly and as a reflection of our attitudes and behaviors," says Professor Carlo Ratti, head of the MIT SENSEable City lab.

"Our project aims to reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today's recycling and sanitation systems. The project could be considered the urban equivalent of nuclear medicine, when a tracer is injected and followed through the human body."

"The study of what we could call the 'removal chain' is becoming as important as that of the supply chain," the lab's associate director, Assaf Biderman, explains. "Trash Track aims to make the removal chain more transparent. We hope that the project will promote behavioral change and encourage people to make more sustainable decisions about what they consume and how it affects the world around them."

Trash Track will enlist volunteers in two target cities, New York and Seattle, who will allow pieces of their trash to be electronically tagged with special wireless location markers, or "trash tags." Thousands of these markers, attached to a waste sample representative of the city's overall consumption, will calculate their location through triangulation and report it to a central server, where the data will be analysed and processed in real time. The public will be able to view the migration patterns of the trash online, as well as in an exhibit at the Architectural League in New York City and in the Seattle Public Library, starting in September 2009.

Trash Track was initially inspired by the Green NYC Initiative, the goal of which is to increase the rate of waste recycling in New York to almost 100 per cent by 2030.

Currently, only about 30 per cent of the city's waste is diverted from landfills for recycling. "We hope that Trash Track will also point the way to a possible urban future: that of a system where, thanks to the pervasive usage of smart tags, 100 per cent recycling could become a reality," says project leader, Musstanser Tinauli.

"Carlo Ratti and his team have come up with a visionary project to help people take ownership of their pollution," says Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist magazine, which will be helping to deploy a third batch of tags in London. "It's all too easy to throw something in the garbage and wash your hands of it if you don't know what effect you are directly having on the environment."

Recycling firm dumped waste in S Africa: EPA

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has accused an electronics recycling company of dumping waste in South Africa.

Tulsa, Okla-based EarthEcycle has been accused of shipping two 40-foot containers of computer monitors to South Africa in May. South African officials found that the monitors contained waste banned from import into the country.

Earlier, the EPA had filed an administrative complaint and compliance order against EarthEcycle after it exported electronic waste to Hong Kong.

EarthEcycle had contracts with six Western Pennsylvania NGOs to provide free recycling of their computers and other electronic equipment.

According to a UPI report, the company faces fines of USD37,500 a day if the EPA complaint stands and it fails to retrieve the waste from South Africa.

E-waste investigation prompts changes in Arizona

Photo: CBS

A CBS 5 investigation which uncovered a huge loophole into California's e-waste recycling laws is prompting enforcement action in a neighbouring state. California's recycling rules are so strict that its electronic waste is sent across state borders. CBS 5 Investigates found a huge pile of glass from California's TVs and monitors in Arizona, a pile that environmental experts said contained potential environmental hazards. Now officials in Arizona agree.

The pile consisted of thousands of pounds of glass, broken-up screens from California's supposedly recycled TVs and monitors. But that glass contains lead, and activists like Basel Action Network's Jim Puckett told CBS 5: "I was pretty horrified to tell you the truth." The owner of that glass recycling facility, Dave Dlubak, told us it wasn't a problem. "We've never really had an issue, and we don't know that we have an issue now."

But the state of Arizona has found problems as well. In an inspection conducted after CBS 5's story aired in May, Arizona's Department of Environmental Quality said it found the storage of that leaded glass violates state and federal environmental regulations requiring hazardous waste to be "stored in a building with a roof, floor and walls."

Not only that, but the report showed tests of soil samples taken from the site found the toxic metal barium, and lead. How much lead? A sample from a floor sweep indoors gave a measurement of 280 milligrams per litre, a quantity far exceeding the regulatory level of 5mg/l. And a sample taken outside along a fence next to fruit trees gave an even higher result, at 380 milligrams per litre.

Dlubak didn't respond to CBS 5's requests for comment on the notice from regulators, and those testing results. But Sheila Davis with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who reviewed those results with the help of experts, said: "The lead is very high." And she said finding it in the soil is a concern: "Lead is very well documented in terms of the health hazard." Of CBS 5's investigation, she said: "We're glad that you went over there and exposed what was really happening."

But now, California recyclers face another problem, where to send all that glass. Recyclers such as John Shegarian who heads Electronic Recyclers International, or E.R.I.

At its mammoth Fresno plant, the company processes more of California's electronic waste than anyone else, taking in everything. "From a lawn mower, to a printer, to a hard drive, this is across the board," Shegarian told CBS 5. Shegarian said he breaks it all down into commodities, most of which can be sold and reused.

But that lead-filled glass is the exception, because California's strict environmental laws don't allow it to be processed here. When CBS 5 Investigates visited E.R.I. earlier this year, Shegarian confirmed that E.R.I. sent its glass to that facility in Arizona. "We personally went there and we were satisfied by what we saw."

But after watching CBS 5 video, he said if there "were" violations found "I would say if they have not cured the violation once they have been made aware of it, then absolutely we would be concerned and they would probably not be an approved vendor."

Shegarian told CBS5 he's stopped shipping there, at least for the time being, meaning ERI has to find another place to send its glass. And where? That's the big question for all of California's recyclers: What to do with the junk TVs and computer monitors practically no one wants. "It's a crisis because they were not initially designed at all to be recycled, they're hazardous waste, and we don't know what to do with them."

So what should consumers do with their old TVs? Right now the best option is to pick a recycler that is ranked as an e-steward company by the environmental group Basel Action Network.

However, ERI is an e-steward company. And as we discovered, that company too was sending CRT glass to Yuma. So in the case of this toxic glass, unfortunately for consumers, it may not be a guarantee.

Landfill Cover Soil Methane Oxidation Underestimated

A literature review reveals that landfill cover soils oxidize more methane than guidelines suggest.

Landfilled waste decomposes in the absence of oxygen and results in the production of methane. Landfills are classified as the second-largest human-made source of CH4 in the U.S. Additionally, landfill gas contains numerous non-methane hydrocarbons that are either volatilized directly from waste materials or produced through biochemical reactions during waste degradation.

Microbial methane oxidation reduces the emissions of methane and other volatile hydrocarbons from landfills. Determining the importance of this process is one of the major uncertainties in estimating national or global CH4 emissions from landfills. Landfill gas that is not collected passes through landfill cover soils on the way to being released to the environment. Bacteria in the soil consume methane and other volatile hydrocarbons that are produced by decomposition in the underlying waste by reacting it with oxygen.

A value of 0 to 10% oxidation has been recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories. Currently, for regulatory purposes the USEPA has recommended a default value for landfill cover CH4 oxidation of 10% due to the uncertainty involved and the lack of a standard method to determine oxidation rate.

Drs. Jeffrey Chanton, David Powelson, and Roger Green of Florida State University and Waste Management Inc. reviewed and compiled literature results from 42 determinations of the fraction of methane oxidized and 30 determinations of methane oxidation rate in a variety of soil types and landfill covers. The results were published in the March-April issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality. The means for the fraction of methane oxidized upon transit across the differing types of soil covers ranged from 22% in clayey soil to 55% in sandy soil. The overall mean fraction oxidized across all studies was 36% with a standard error of 6%. For a subset of fifteen studies conducted over an annual cycle the fraction of methane oxidized ranged from 11 to 89% with a mean value of 35 ± 6%, a value that was nearly identical to the overall mean.

The literature summarized in this paper indicates that the fraction of methane oxidized in landfill cover soils is considerably greater than the default value of 10%. Of the 42 determinations of methane oxidation only four reported values of 10% or less. One reported a value of 10%. This particular study was the first to report a well constrained value for the fraction of methane oxidized in a specific landfill, and because of this, it has received undue weight in the determination of regulations. The default value of 10% should be updated based upon technological advancements in soil engineering and state-of-the-practice applications in cover design as well as recent studies detailed journals such as Journal of Environmental Quality.