The European landfill directive increases demands on landfills. The amount of organic matter being landfilled is restricted and landfills should be as dry as possible. The consequences of these changes are not yet fully understood. In this study the first landfill in Sweden to be constructed according to the directive, Fläskebo, has served as an example of future landfills. Its leachate has been studied with multivariate techniques (principal component analysis and canonical correlation analysis) and with the geochemical model PHREEQC. Several interesting correlations were found and the results clearly show that multivariate statistics can be of great use when studying landfill leachate. Their ability to extract the most important information is one thing that can be very useful. Combined with geochemical models they can provide an increased understanding of processes governing leachate quality. The next part of the study will be to use multivariate statistics to compare Fläskebo’s leachate with that from older landfills to find interesting differences and similarities
