The recent trends of increasing awareness of economic and environmental cost of conventional landfilling are being developed in accelerating pace for the degradation of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW).

Groundwater quality data on physico-chemical, bacteriological and heavy metal concentrations in three cities (Faridabad, Allahabad and Varanasi) in Ganga-Yamuna basin was subjected to multivariate analysis using SPSS. The factors extracted showed high loading (>0.3) of various parameters, such Cl, conductivity, TDS, hardness, Na, Mg and SO4 indicating contamination due to leaching of pollutants.