The present article considers the characteristics of the chemical composition of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills leachate. It also focuses on the need for leachate purification as leachate migrates outside the territory of the landfills impacting negatively environmental objects (soils, surface and underground waters). The authors provide a literature review of different wastewater treatment methods: mechanical, biological and physicochemical. It is shown that each method aims at purification from specific pollutants, for example: organic impurities are removed by biological method using the potential of the vital activity of microorganisms; physicochemical methods such as precipitation, ion exchange, evaporation, reverse osmosis are used for the removal of heavy metals ions, salts cations and anions; water disinfection is carried out using chlorination, ozonation or ultraviolet radiation. Due to the presence of an extensive list of pollutants in the leachate as well as its variability depending on the