Tracing leaks in landfills winner for young scientist

Jessica North is the 2005 MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year. Picture / Greg Bowker

It's not glamorous and most of us would rather not contemplate it, but Canadian-born Jessica North has a passion for rubbish she cannot ignore.

Last night the 31-year-old, who is completing her PhD in environmental chemistry at Otago University, was named the 2005 MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year at a ceremony in Auckland for her work tracing contamination from leaky landfills.

The technology she has developed could lead to greater protection of water supplies and eventually be incorporated into the management conditions for landfills.

The awards, organised by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and named after Nobel Prize-winning scientist Alan MacDiarmid, aim to celebrate the achievements of the country's top young researchers.

Canterbury University PhD student Shelley Scott was the overall runner-up.

Ms North's work will provide conclusive information on whether leachate, which can seep from landfills, is contaminating water supplies and damaging ecosystems in the surrounding area.

She decided to dedicate her life to environmental protection after a year spent studying in Thailand and seeing the hillsides of rubbish left by tourists.

She picked New Zealand to complete a Commonwealth scholarship because of its "clean, green image" but soon discovered it was "no better or worse" than anywhere else when it came to waste management.

Ms North said it was hard to inspire enthusiasm in others for her passion.

"The number of times people start telling me about their sewage issues. I keep saying I must get a T-shirt made up to say, 'I don't do poo'."

But she hoped that eventually her work would be used commercially to create safer, more environmentally friendly landfills throughout the country.

Bruce Horide, an engineering manager for New Zealand company Waste Management, which collaborated on the research, said it could be used to resolve potentially huge environmental problems. Less than 200 of the 900 landfill sites in New Zealand were in use, but few had systems to prevent leachate leaking, he said.

"If you find contamination in water supplies near a landfill it's difficult to be sure if it's from the landfill or other sources such as agricultural or industrial sites. This technology gives us much more certainty."