MSW Management | Editorial

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Landfill Manager's Notebook

By Neal Bolton

Neal Bolton

Most landfill managers are hired for a combination of their experience, ability, and knowledge. These things are all resident inside a manager’s head. Yet, many managers spend an excessive percentage of their time processing paperwork, ordering parts, stating and re-stating policy, and, in a variety of ways, putting out fires. Most managers spend far too little time thinking, planning, and creating.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of landfill managers. I often ask the question: “How much time, during a typical day, do you spend thinking?”

Now, I’m not talking about mundane or crisis-driven thinking, but that creative, clear-your-mind time where you can step back and allow yourself to deliberate on a specific issue, activity, or problem. You might be surprised to hear that, on average, managers spend about an hour per week in focused thought.

One example of something worthy of such focus is planning the landfill’s sequencing for the next 12 months. This might include decisions on where to place access roads, temporary soil stockpiles, a wet-weather tipping pad, or a greenwaste processing operation. You’ll also have to consider how the next lift or two of trash will tie into the existing drainage system, adjacent final grades, or the landfill gas extraction system. There are many things to consider.

The best place to do this thinking might be while parked on a hill overlooking the landfill, with the most recent topographic map spread out on the hood of your pickup. Or maybe you think best sitting at the back table in the coffee shop, nursing a hot latte.

Regardless of where you do your thinking, the important thing is that you do it someplace.

The more time you set aside for focused thinking, the better chance you have of coming up with good solutions. But this doesn’t really come down to chance at all. Gary Player, that great golfer from South Africa, once said, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” This applies to managing a landfill as well as to playing golf.

And don’t be discouraged if you spend 30 minutes thinking about something and the solution doesn’t come right away. Simply the act of focusing your thoughts on a particular issue sets into motion the power of your subconscious.

There is story about a man named Elias Howe, who, in 1845, invented the sewing machine. One day, after spending considerable time trying (and thinking about how) to make such a machine, he fell asleep and had a dream. He dreamed he was being chased by natives who were carrying spears—and the spears had holes in the points. When he woke up, he realized that was it. By pulling the thread through a hole in the point of the needle, the sewing machine could wrap and knot each stitch. All of that thinking had put his mind into overtime, and the solution came, unexpectedly.

All of us have that kind of creative ability, but most of us don’t take the time to engage it. That incredible computer (inside your head) is just waiting for some way to apply creativity.

But first, you must provide the input—you must take time out of your busy schedule to think.

Surprisingly, I’ve found that many of the issues we are concerned with shouldn’t be issues at all; or at worst, they shouldn’t be nearly as important as we make them out to be. I recently worked on a project where a landfill was planning to buy a new scraper. They had a scraper that was old and tired, and it made sense to get a new one. But after thinking it over, it became apparent that the existing scraper wasn’t used very much, and with some tightening of the cover soil budget it would be used much less. As a result, we changed course and, instead of spending lots of money on a new machine, we changed the operation, cut the scraper’s workload, and found a way to keep that old machine—and several hundred thousand dollars to boot.

Here’s a challenge. Identify a specific task, issue, or problem that is important for your landfill. Gather some basic background information, grab a notepad, and go someplace where you can focus on that issue for an uninterrupted time—even 15–20 minutes is enough. Focus on the issue. Ask yourself “why?” Jot down your thoughts and don’t leave until you’ve identified the next, most immediate task or hurdle between you and the solution, even if you aren’t exactly sure what the solution is.

Develop a pattern of doing this on a regular basis and you’ll discover that, when it comes to finding solutions, you just got a whole lot luckier. What do you think?

Consultant Neal Bolton specializes in landfill operations.

MSW - May/June 2008