This would meet the annual heating needs of 500,000 Canadian homes. More than a quarter of this is captured at 27 landfill gas recovery schemes. In Germany, almost two-thirds of municipal waste landfills recover energy from landfill gas. This would generate some 730 billion m3 of gas each year - equivalent to 345 million tonnes of oil each year. This is less than one per cent of the total theoretically available.
Landfill bans Many countries insist that certain materials, if untreated, are kept out of landfills.
This can be done to encourage a more sustainable practice. Landfill bans also make sense in restricting hazardous materials from becoming sources of pollution. Wisconsin's 1990 state recycling law also denied the landfill option to recyclable packaging, although cities and counties with effective recycling programmes are exempted from a duty to enforce these bans. A key policy development which builds on the concept of the landfill ban has been the draft European Union legislation on landfills, published early in 1997. This falls further, to 50 per cent by 2005, and 25 per cent by 2015.