Much of Chicago’s lakefront park system has been created and expanded by filling the edge of Laake Michigan with spoil from new basements and tunnels, supplemented by ashes from the coal-burning furnaces of the 1910s and 1920s. Details and pictures.
I figured you guys had the serious answers pretty well sewn up.
Also, I hear you can buy it dirt cheap.
Also, I think the concept of “clean dirt” sounds a little silly. 
My hometown has several factories that make things from red clay, mainly bricks and roof tiles; according to my brother who used to be a construction foreman, some of the brick factories will take clay from local construction sites so long as it meets specs (pretty common actually).
It’s dirt all the way down.
Well there we were, discussing this hole
A hole in the ground so big and sort of round
Well it’s not there now, the ground’s all flat
And beneath it is the bloke in the bowler hat.
A guy I know retired 15 years ago. He put a “Clean Fill Wanted” sign next to a valley that comprises a big chunk of his land. His usable property has expanded a foot or two each year, and he works each day dozing and grading.
Since the factual answer seems secure here…
What do you call a guy with no arms or legs, in a hole?
Phil. (or Doug).
Sorry, it’s hard to tell sometimes. :o
You’d be surprised at some of the things people ask about (or more often complain about) regarding excavation and backfill.
Just last week, on a water main replacement project, I had a lady complaining about the vibration from the compaction equipment. She wanted to know why the contractor couldn’t just push all of the backfill material back into a trench all at once and then maybe go back and forth a couple of times with a roller. (The reason is that a roller will only compact the top 12" or so. As time goes by, you will then end up with a depression in the road as the rest of the backfilled material settles. To prevent this, we backfill in 1-2 foot lifts and thoroughly compact each lift with plate compactors and the like.)
Then I had the crazy resident who complained for months to municipal and state authorities that one of our contractors was allegedly stealing all of the good material from a site that the contractor had excavated and was then backfilling with “trash.” (He wasn’t. The exact same material that was excavated was then used as backfill.) What it ultimately came down to is that he apparently thought that excavated material consisted of loamy topsoil all the way down, when in reality the topsoil layer is only about 6" thick for a typical grassed area. Below the topsoil, it looks much different (typically sand/silt, gravel, and cobbles).
Depending on the area and geologic history, of course.
Back in the '90s, my wife and I saw so many of those signs that we joked about getting rich by operating a clearance site to be called “FillDirt.com.” It turned out that someone had gotten there first with “DirtFill.com.”
There [del]is[/del] was a hill near here that had a sign along the road reading, “Need Fill? Take This Hill”.
The sign apparently worked.
The solutions are presented here for clean fill. What’s happening to the dirty fill? Anything with pavement in it is considered hazardous waste in some places. There’s debris from torn down buildings, polluted sites, where is all that going?
At least in Pakistan (or more accurately in Islamabad aka earthquake central) they use some debris from torn down buildings as foundations for newer ones.
Good question. Dirty Phil’s Twitter account has been inactive for years.
See robby’s post #6. Depending on the level of contamination, it’s taken to a regular landfill for use as daily cover, or if there are hazardous materials, taken to a hazardous waste landfill or treatment facility. And it might still be fine to use as fill in some cases: in a region with a deep groundwater table, capping is sometimes the best option, so putting it under a parking lot, for example, could be allowed.
Use of construction debris as fill for new construction can be limited not only in cases of contamination, but also because of its physical characteristics. If it’s not uniformly compressible, using it under some foundations won’t work.
Hello…is this mike on? 
I talked about environmentally-impacted material extensively in Post #6.
Also, I’m an environmental engineer, and there is no place that I am aware of where asphalt or concrete pavement is considered hazardous waste (which has a formal definition under RCRA in the U.S.), unless it is contaminated with some other hazardous pollutant (like dioxin or PCBs).
The chemicals found in asphalt, may in certain instances, result in soil that is mixed with asphalt being considered polluted (i.e. containing regulated chemical species in concentrations above background levels), or even contaminated (i.e. containing regulated chemical species in concentrations above regulatory standards), but would not result in the material being considered hazardous waste.
Consider, if asphalt was hazardous, it would be banned from use (like PCBs have been banned).
Very old asphalt can contain lead from vehicle exhaust at levels that would make it hazardous. But like you, I’m not aware of any blanket designation of pavement as hazardous (I used to be an environmental engineer). Maybe some localities have such rules left on the books from times when leaded gasoline was more recent history.
Sorry, missed your earlier post. I don’t know the terminology, but I do recall debris from roadway and other paved surface costs more to dispose of. I assume there are business that specialize in non-clean fill, and covering for landfills makes a lot of sense.