At present, landfill is the main method for garbage disposal, accounting for about 70% of the total processing capacity. This method is used for garbage disposal in most countries around the world, especially in underdeveloped countries. The characteristics of this method are low construction and operation costs, simple operation, and large processing capacity. But there are also many drawbacks:

Firstly, it occupies a large amount of land, makes site selection difficult, and incurs high land acquisition costs;

The second is the waste of a large amount of garbage resources, artificially converting garbage into "resources that cannot grow and huge wealth thrown away", which cannot meet the needs of resource utilization processing;

Thirdly, there is severe environmental pollution. Due to the fact that most of the existing landfill sites cannot meet the requirements of sanitary landfill, bacteria and toxins in the garbage continue to seep downwards, polluting the land and water quality.

With the increase of accumulation and the continuation of time, pollution deeply spreads to the surrounding and underground areas, causing damage for thousands of years. The toxic gas emitted by garbage spreads to the surrounding area, forming a three-dimensional pollution of the air, surroundings, and underground. Although some "sanitary landfills" have been built in many developed countries and some more developed cities in China to reduce pollution, there are still many environmental pollution problems caused by inadequate technology that cannot be fundamentally solved.

Therefore, the advantages of garbage sorting equipment are highlighted. Using garbage sorting equipment to recycle household waste, accurately classify urban household waste, and then adopt appropriate treatment methods according to the different properties of the classified waste, so that it can be recycled and reused, thereby truly achieving harmless, reduced, and beneficial waste, while reducing human demand for natural resources and achieving sustainable resource utilization. Therefore, the development prospects of garbage sorting equipment are very promising.

At present, garbage sorting machines are mainly screening machines and magnetic separators, which work according to material size and magnetic characteristics, and classify and recycle garbage materials. The drum screen has high efficiency and is suitable for separating materials of different sizes, but it requires disassembly and replacement of the screen surface. The disc screen can avoid the trouble of disassembly and replacement by adjusting the distance between the disc shafts to adapt to the separation of materials of different sizes. It has self-cleaning ability and does not require other cleaning devices. Therefore, it may be the future development direction, and the application of disc screens in garbage separation will become increasingly widespread. Next is the wind selection equipment, which is also a very important separator that can separate garbage materials of different densities by adjusting the wind speed, making it very suitable for the separation of some lightweight materials.

The working principle of magnetic separation machinery is relatively simple, using the magnetic properties of metals to work, but the layout during the sorting process is crucial. A reasonable layout of sorting equipment can make sorting twice as efficient. In addition to screening machines and magnetic separators, other equipment has also begun to be used for garbage sorting. For example, infrared technology and near-infrared technology are divided into glass bottles and plastic bottles.