When emergency remediation is needed to address an acute or chronic threat to public health in countries with limited resources, urgent appeals should be made for international assistance. It is useful to think of landfill costs in two categories, capital costs and operating costs. Capital costs include land acquisition, professional services for design and the procurement of permits, machinery and equipment purchases, site preparation and construction, and allocations for CPC operations. This is usually paid by a public entity. Depending on the region of the world, this can be a municipality, a sub-national body, or a national body.
Corporations also finance privately owned landfills.
Careful consideration given to site selection, as discussed above, can greatly reduce the cost of a landfill. In particular, if a new landfill can be built to take advantage of natural geological features, the capital cost can be held down. Controlled dump and sanitary landfill construction will still be initially more expensive than using open dumps, but properly operated landfill sites will last longer than open dumps. When the cost of remediation of open dumps is considered, a landfill can be a realistic, cost-effective alternative. These range from salaries and wages to equipment maintenance and repairs.