The view standing on a giant mountain of rubbish is stunning if you can ignore the smell.
A thin layer of soil covers more than half a century of waste at Townsville's Jensen landfill, the biggest to close in north Queensland.
The $20 million project will "cap" 135,000 square metres of landfill, equivalent to the size of 20 football fields.
1.8 million tonnes of rubbish will be concealed to look like a hill.
But the prior land use means nothing can be built on the land, trees won’t grow nor will the area be used as a recreational space indefinitely.
A Townsville City Council spokesperson said the process was expected to take about 18 months and followed the "capping" of the Hervey Range Landfill, which was completed in 2020.
Councillor Russ Cook chairs the Townsville City Council’s committee on Water and Waste and said landfill capping had become more regulated in the past decade.
"Gone are the days where you dug a hole, fill it up, turf it and turned it into a park," Cr Cook said.
"Nationally, 10 or 15 years ago, we didn't know half the things we know now.
"We found out over the years the dangers with some materials and the federal government is assisting us."
Cr Cook said flares on the site would ignite escaping methane before it entered the atmosphere, minimising the impact on climate change by converting it into carbon dioxide.
"A lot of methane gas is produced in there and that’s why we've got flares, which are built all spasmodically where the gas builds underneath."
A membrane over the waste has been designed to prevent rainwater reaching the landfill and creating leachate — a harmful pollutant that can leach into waterways.
Instead, the team at Jensen will drain any leachate and allow it to evaporate.
Landfill closures are not uncommon across the country and are completed under strict requirements from state and federal governments.
Abroad, uncapped and overflowing landfills in undeveloped countries can present issues including a risk of catastrophic fires,
Townsville City Council aims to put zero waste in landfill by 2030.
"It's achievable, it’s just about educating people," Cr Cook said.
Nationally, a 2019 action plan aims to achieve an 80 per cent recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030, although concerns remain about environmental impacts of single use plastics, tyres and electronic goods.
The national peak body for the waste industry is the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia.
CEO Gayle Sloan said landfills would continue to have a place for irrecoverable waste, but practices needed to change more broadly.
"As a sector, landfill is key towards managing poorly designed material, in terms of debris from bushfire and floods, for example," Ms Sloan said.
“We try and manage other people's poor design, you put it somewhere safe in highly engineered facilities.
"The real shift has got to come from those who put products on the market to make sure they can be recycled, reused, repaired … and not go to landfill."
Ms Sloan said Australia was falling behind on targets to reduce reliance on landfill.
"We know from national waste targets that we're not on track.
"Every indication is that we've stagnated. For the first time ever, we've gone up in the amount we throw out.
"We've gone from 27 million tonnes to 28 million tonnes of waste disposed into landfill.
“A great example of that are solar panels. There’s an attitude that down the line someone else will fix the problem and we're realising that's not happening,” Ms Sloane said.
The not-for-profit, independent Total Environment Centre maintains landfill is the least preferred method of waste management.
Director Jeff Angel said metropolitan and larger regional centres were running out of space for them and the next era of waste management needed to be massive recycling and a circular economy.
"Large landfills like Jensen are an unfortunate consequence of some very ill-informed practices of the past and we’ve been stuck with the legacy," he said.
