In Juiz de Fora, a city with approximately 500,000 (five hundred thousand) inhabitants, in the Zona da Mata region of the State of Minas Gerais, sanitary landfill technology came into use from May
2005, changing the paradigm of solid waste management in the municipality after the closure and recuperation of the former Salvaterra rubbish heap. For the sanitary landfill that is now in operation, we tried to establish a methodology that would not only satisfy the project parameters, but also the demands of the state environmental control organ and the desires of the surrounding community,
since the present sanitary landfill is adjacent to the former rubbish heap which went into service in
January 1999 (Figure 1).