In order to reduce the leachate strength from landfill at source, a novel landfill, functional layer embedded landfill, was developed through the introduction of the functional layers, and a comparative study was conducted between the functional layer embedded landfill (FLEL, R1) and the conventional landfill (CL, R2). It was found that the pollutant in leachate effluent from R1 was 20-50%, 14-43% and 33-75% of that from R2, in terms of COD. TN and NH(3)-N. The cumulative movement of waste settlement was about 16.4 and 13.1 cm in R1 and R2 under the test period of 1 years, resulting in 13.7% and 10.9% of the original landfill height. Therefore, FLEL could save the land area and the cost of the leachate treatment process due to the reduction of leachate strength, and more waste could be disposed in landfill through the acceleration of the MSW degradation process, comparing to the CL Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.