A landfill is a site where waste is disposed of by burying it in the ground. An engineered, or sanitary, landfill has a lined base, leachate collection, gas capture and daily soil cover. An open dumpsite has none of these controls.
In India, a large share of municipal waste still goes to dumpsites, where it produces methane, contaminates groundwater and catches fire. Plastic does not decompose in a landfill; it stays for centuries and slowly fragments into microplastics. It is also a wasted resource, since most of it could have been recycled. The waste hierarchy places landfill last. Segregation at source, collection and recycling are what divert plastic from it.
