The management of the Naboro landfill is calling on local municipalities to decrease the volume of waste being brought to the facility.
Landfill manager Mark Hirst Tuilau emphasised that while capacity is currently adequate, the type and amount of waste entering the landfill pose significant concerns.
Mr Hirst over the past 20 years, approximately 1.6 million tonnes of waste have been deposited at the landfill, which serves communities from Korovou to Pacific Harbour.
“It’s a solid waste facility, we don’t take any liquid waste. So we don’t take any thin sludges and that sort of thing,” Mr Hirst said.
“We take a lot of what’s called putrescent waste or smelly waste, like chicken waste, fish waste, that sort of thing, and we deal with that pretty quickly so it doesn’t affect the environment at all.”
He said the landfill also accepts construction debris and non-hazardous materials requiring special handling, including asbestos, which must be double wrapped in plastic.
He said the landfill had a comprehensive waste acceptance criterion and had discontinued accepting certain materials, such as residues from battery recycling, due to safety concerns, including spontaneous combustion.
“But other than that, we take pretty much everything that’s thrown away.
“We have tonnes and tonnes of plastic at the landfill. We spread it. We compact it. We bury it. It gets buried.
“People think that we’re like the old Lami dump that’s just hiding behind a hill. We are nothing like that at all.”
He said the facility is a fully engineered sanitary landfill, unlike older, unmanaged dump site.
Despite having substantial capacity for additional waste, he stressed the importance of reducing incoming waste.
“But part of this problem here is they’ve got to try and reduce the amount coming to us.
“That’s the thing, the municipalities and people in general got to stop bringing out.”
