Admittedly, all environmental design proposals have trade-offs. And presumably, the Semakau Landfill was the outcome of far-sighted planning and a positive benefit to cost weighing exercise (see Tan et al., 2009). Evidence also shows that due environmental conservation procedures were taken in the construction of the landfill (Burkard, 2000), for instance, where the coral reefs along Pulau Semakau’s western shore has remained largely intact (NEA, 2015). Yet this does not mean that as a widely admired ‘solution’ to the wicked urban waste problem in Singapore, the landfill is without unintentional and undesirable consequences. ‘Solving’ the problem of urban waste in the form of Semakau Landfill led to many consequences, which in turn educed new problems (Dörner, 1997: 66). Here, I analyze the case further along the vectors of ‘taming’ and ‘solution’ with the aim of drawing out the ethical dimensions of this wicked problem.