The world's landfill problem, and what comes after it

You tie off the bag, set it at the curb, and a truck takes it away. Where it goes next depends on where you live, and for a large share of the world the answer is a pile in the open air.

How much waste there is
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published its Global Waste Management Outlook in 2024. As Waste Management World reported, the outlook projects that municipal solid waste will grow from 2.3 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050. An earlier World Bank report, What a Waste 2.0, counted 2.01 billion tonnes in 2016 and projected 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050. The two reports use different base years, but both put the 2050 total far above today's.

Open dumps lack basic protection
A sanitary landfill has a liner, a daily soil cover, and pipes that collect gas. An open dump has none of those. The World Bank's What a Waste data page says at least 33 percent of the world's waste is mismanaged, which it defines as open dumping or burning. If you live near one, you notice it before you read any report: the smell, the trucks that arrive before dawn, the smoke on a dry afternoon. Rain moves through those piles and carries what it dissolves into soil and water. Fires start on their own or get set by people, and the smoke drifts into nearby neighborhoods.

Methane from buried waste
Food scraps, paper, and yard waste rot without oxygen once a landfill buries them. That process produces methane, a greenhouse gas. In July 2025, a team led by Cheng Tianhai at the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a study in Nature Climate Change. The team used satellite data to find and measure 367 methane plumes across 102 landfills worldwide. According to the release on EurekAlert, the study found that landfills produce 18 percent of human-caused methane emissions. Open dumps emit 4.8 times more methane on average than engineered sanitary landfills. That gap shows that the type of site changes the methane output as much as its size does. The team also found that the EDGAR emissions database, maintained by the European Union, underestimates emissions from the worst open dumps by about fivefold.

The bill for managing it
UNEP put the direct cost of managing municipal solid waste at USD 252 billion in 2020. Once the hidden costs of pollution, poor health, and climate change are included, the figure rises to USD 361 billion. Without urgent action, UNEP says, the annual cost could almost double to USD 640.3 billion by 2050. City budgets pay for trucks, land, and cleanup, and a growing city needs more of each. A mayor who has to choose between a new school and a new disposal site feels that number in a very direct way.

Why digging more holes does not solve it
Cities run short of land close to where people live, and nobody wants a new dump next door. Cities that cannot afford liners and gas collection keep dumping in the open. Each of these problems traces back to the same choice: burying waste treats it as something with no further use. Food scraps and farm residue hold energy, and a hole in the ground wastes it. Cities that want a different result need equipment they can afford, install quickly, and run with local crews.

Where Nexus Biofuel fits
Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, works on the other side of that choice. The company converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and it avoids incineration. Because the units move, a town does not have to build a large central plant before it can start. Waste that goes into an energy conversion unit does not go into a dump.

Nexus Biofuel aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it aims to create jobs where its equipment operates. The landfill problem is large, and no single company will close it. Cities, national governments, and private firms each hold part of the answer. Portable equipment gives a smaller town or a remote community a way to act on its own waste without waiting years for a large public project to finish. A waste stream that becomes energy is one fewer pile to manage.