Dear Colleagues,

Recent industrial, commercial, and residential growth in many countries has been accompanied by rapid increases in municipal and industrial solid waste production. For technical, economic, and regulatory reasons, landfilling remains the most practical waste treatment solution, and yet it also appears the least rational approach to waste management due to emissions of biogas and leachate, which were often previously accepted as unavoidable. Landfill leachate is a complex cocktail of inorganic nutrients (especially nitrogen, NH₃-N), volatile and dissolved organic compounds (characterized as both chemical and biological oxygen demand: COD/BOD), and heavy metals (mostly remaining deposited within the waste material). Strategies for landfill leachate management (collection, retention, recirculation and final treatment) are essential prior to discharging to surface or ground waters, to avoid severe impacts on the environment and potentially on human health. As such, hazards become widely recognized, and as progressively stricter regulatory requirements are imposed, the treatment of landfill leachate becomes a major environmental concern.

This Special Issue focuses on the state-of-the-art in landfill leachate treatment, including:

• novel strategies for leachate management (quantitative and qualitative)
• influence of landfill type and pre-treatment on leachate composition
• influence of age of landfill on biodegradable and refractory organic matter composition (in relation to water infiltration and permeability)
• evaluation of treatment processes, including physical (reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration, sedimentation), chemical (precipitation, coagulation, oxidation) and biological (aerobic, and anaerobic, e.g., activated sludge) methods
• phytoremediation technologies (irrigating energy crops; treatment in constructed wetlands; evapotranspiration in zero-effluent wetland systems)
• improvements in conventional technology and innovative treatment alternatives
• bioassay alternatives to chemical analysis for assessment of leachate toxicity (individual components and synergistic/antagonistic effects)
• bioavailability and stability of toxic components (including those present at macro- micro- and nano-concentration levels)
• cryptic impacts of leachate on living organisms (e.g., endocrine disruption; embryo development, mutagenic effects)

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• leachate treatment
• leachate management
• leachate composition
• phytoremediation
• leachate toxicity assessment