A laboratory study of the compaction characteristics of disposable diapers in a landfill

This investigation was undertaken to examine the compaction characteristics of used disposable diapers in a landfill. A standard mixture of solid wastes containing various amounts (between 0 up to 15% by wet weight) of used disposable diapers were compacted in eight randomly ordered tests and the densities of the compacted waste for the applied pressures were noted. Analyses of variance (two-way fixed effects) and simple linear regression were carried out on the data and F-tests were applied. The results showed that the diapers do not take up volume in a landfill which could be taken up by other materials but merely fill in the voids around the more rigid items when the diapers constitute less than 10% (wet weight) of the total mix.