This technical guide seeks to demonstrate that, by encouraging small, continuous improvements in landfill siting, construction, and operation, the accumulative effect over time is the achievement of better operations. The guide does not seek an immediate adoption of sanitary landfill practices. Instead, sanitary landfill is regarded as an eventual goal for which middle- and lower-income countries can plan during the course of several years. A common theme throughout the guide is the emphasis on the practical ways landfills can evolve, as resources and confidence increase, from open dumps to "controlled" dumps to "engineered" landfills and perhaps, one day, to sanitary landfills.

Description based on print version record.