Waiting lists for selective colleges, fine restaurants and overbooked flights are familiar enough — but Singapore may have the only landfill with a four-month wait once you sign up to visit.

Then again, this landfill is no dump. It’s a manmade island that resembles a nature preserve, despite the 9.8 million tons of incinerated waste lying just a foot under the parklike surface.

Singapore’s land scarcity — the city-state is smaller than Rhode Island — has led the government to develop innovative waste disposal techniques. Among them is an island off the southern part of the mainland that opened after Singapore’s last city dump, Lorong Halus, closed in 1999. By joining two small islands in an area roughly the size of Central Park, the government created Semakau Landfill, Singapore’s first offshore dumping ground, and now a popular local getaway.

The $360 million facility includes a 4.4-mile-long sea wall made of sand, rock and clay, as well as a geomembrane of polyethylene, which lines the island’s periphery to prevent leakage. Incinerated trash from the mainland comes over in barges, and the wet ash is emptied into one of several pits, or “cells,” to eventually be covered over with dirt, where palm trees and other plants naturally take root.