9.07 Waste Not, Want Not

chapter 3

-How are the rates of MSW expected to change? Per capita waste generation rates are going to go from 1.2 kg to 1.42 kg per person per day in the next 15 years. -Which regions produce the most MSW? The least? On average, the OECD produces the most MSW, and SAR produces the least per capita per day. -What is the relationship between MSW generation and income levels? The higher the income, the more waste generation per capita per day.

Questions to Answer

- What are the three R's? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - What are three ways you can reduce your solid waste disposal? Choose items that have less packaging, are made from recycled products, or are bought in bulk. - What two ways you can reuse things rather than throwing them out? Buy used things like clothes, and look for products that use less packaging because they are using less raw material. - What are four benefits of recycling? Reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and combustion facilities, conserves natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals, saves energy, and prevents pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials. - Name six things that can be recycled. Paper, batteries, plastics, glass, used oil, tires. - How do different communities help people recycle? They can donate their old computers to schools, or donate used electronics, set up a neighborhood composting program, or organize a recycling drive. - What are two things you do or will now do to help reduce waste? I can leave my grass clippings on the lawn instead of in a bag, I can also set up a compost in my backyard. - What are the advantages to recycling: Newspapers: saves energy, water, and landfill space. Reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and is cost-saving for making new paper products. Aluminum: saves energy and avoids the mining of new Bauxite ore used for aluminum production. Plastic: decreased pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Glass: less energy needed to melt the glass, saves energy. Yard waste: reduce the production of methane (a greenhouse gas), sending less material to the landfill. - What are two examples of hazardous trash? Drain cleaner, mothballs, silver polish, rug deodorizer, furniture polish, and glass cleaner.

Where can it go?

- a recent World Bank report projected that the amount of solid waste generated globally will nearly double by 2025, going from 3.5 million tons to 6 million tons - per day. And we likely will not hit peak garbage - the moment when our global trash production hits its highest rate, then levels off - until after 2100, we will produce 11 millions tons of trash per day, according to the projection. - the United States is one of the largest producers of all the world's MSW created each year. With only about 5% of the world's population, we generate more than one third of the solid waste! - the disposal of waste causes many problems for us all. Waste that is not properly disposed can cause illness, and this is typical in developing countries that do not have the organizations in place to remove the waste. In the more developed countries where there is waste removal, it must be taken somewhere. Landfills are created to house the wasted and these are dangerous places full of rodents, disease, and perhaps more importantly, pollution. Many landfills are "hidden," which means people are not even aware that they may live near one. We are quickly running out of viable places to put landfills to store the MSW. -options for solid waste include recycling, composting, landfilling, and incinerating.

chapter 2

-How do definitions of global waste differ? Some definitions say that MSW is households, buildings, and other businesses. On the other hand, another definition says that it is just the waste from population centers including domestic and commercial, small scale institutions (like hospitals), and public cleansing. -Review the chart comparing solid waste management practices by income level. What are some of the solid waste management practices? How do they differ by the income levels of the countries? Source reduction, collection, recycling, composting, incineration, landfilling/dumping. Depending on the income (low, middle, high) you will see less being done about it, to being used all the time in a orderly way.

Incinerating

-Incineration is waste destruction by controlled burning at high temperatures, in a furnace. This process can also be called "thermal treatment." Incineration removes water from hazardous sludge, reduces its mass and/or volume, and converts it into a non-burnable ash that can be safely disposed of on land, in some waters, or in underground pits. In some cases, the heat generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power. Incineration with energy recovery is one of several waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies. - However, incineration is a highly controversial method because incomplete incineration can produce carbon monoxide gas, gaseous dioxins, and/or other harmful substances. In several countries, there are still concerns from experts and local communities about the environmental impact of incinerators. In some countries, incinerators built just a few decades ago often did not include a materials separation to remove hazardous, bulky, or recyclable materials before combustion. These facilities tended to risk the health of the plant workers and the local environment due to inadequate levels of gas cleaning and combustion process control. Most of these facilities did not generate electricity. -incineration has particularly strong benefits for the treatment of certain waste types, such as clinical wastes and certain hazardous wastes where pathogens and toxins can be destroyed by high temperatures. Examples include chemical multi-product plants with diverse toxic or very toxic wastewater streams, which cannot be routed to a conventional wastewater treatment plant.

chapter 7

-Look at Figure 14: what are the most to least desirable options for waste management? Reduce, reuse, recycle, recover (digestion, composting), landfill, incineration (with energy recovery), controlled dump.

Problems with MSW

-One problem caused by the disposal of waste is the depletion of our resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. Non-renewable resources are used up each time we make something plastic or aluminum. Simply throwing these items away essentially "throws away" the resource. Even disposing of something like paper, which is made from trees, a renewable resource, results in a reduction of our resources because it takes so long to replace the trees to make the paper. -That is why we should all work together to solve the problem of MSW. Each of us has a hand in creating it, and no one can escape its effects. Pollution, wasting of natural resources, and running out of places to store the waste are issues that face each person in the world, and we will all suffer the consequences if we don't begin to find solutions. Let's take care of this beautiful earth and all that is in it that God has given us as humans to have dominion over. -That is why we should all work together to solve the problem of MSW. Each of us has a hand in creating it, and no one can escape its effects. Pollution, wasting of natural resources, and running out of places to store the waste are issues that face each person in the world, and we will all suffer the consequences if we do not begin to find solutions.

chapter 4

-What are some different ways that MSW is collected? House-to-house, community bins, curbside pick-up, self delivered, and contracted or delegated service. -Which regions and income levels tend to have higher collection rates? The higher the income, the higher the rate. OECD high, AFR low (for both income and region rates)

chapter 6

-What are some options for waste disposal? Dumps, landfills, compost, recycled, incineration, other. -What is the most common form of waste disposal worldwide? Landfill

chapter 5

-What are the different types of waste, and where do they come from? Organic, paper, plastic, glass, metal, other. Food scraps, yard waste, wood, process residues. paper scraps, cardboard, newspapers/magazines, bags, wrapping paper, and paper cups. Bottles, packaging, containers, bags, lids, and cups. Bottles, broken glassware, light bulbs, and colored glass. Cans, foil, tins, aerosol cans, appliances, railings, and bicycles. Textiles, leather, rubber, appliances, ash, other inert materials, and multi-laminates. -What is the composition of our global waste? (what percent is each category?) organic 46%, other 18%, paper 17%, plastic 10%, glass 5%, and metal 4%. -Look at the composition of waste by the wealth of the countries. How does it differ? The higher the income of the country, the less organic waste they have. The higher the income of the country, the more paper waste they have.

chapter 1

-Why is solid waste management an issue? Managing it is an intensive service, and if not taken care of, can lead to pollution. Also, they have to get rid of the waste in the most economically, socially, and environmentally optimal manner. -What is the significance of urban vs. rural areas and MSW? Most of the population lives in cities, so the waste rates tend to be much lower in rural areas. -What is the correlation between MSW and the wealth of a nation? Solid waste is inextricably linked to urbanization and economic development. As countries urbanize, their economic wealth increases. As standards of living and disposable incomes increase, consumption of goods and services increases, which results in a corresponding increase in the amount of waste generated. -What has and has not changed in the last decade? By 2025, the daily MSW generation rate in Asia would be 1.8 million tonnes per day and this is still accurate. Low-income countries continue to spend most their SWM budgets on waste collection, with only a fraction going towards disposal (this is the opposite of high-income countries were the main expenditure is on disposal). Asia continues to have a majority of organics and paper in its waste stream: the combined totals are 72% for EAP and 54% for SAR (growth in waste quantities is fastest in Asia). There is a greater emphasis on labor issues: in high-income countries, demographics and immigration are critical factors; in low-income countries working conditions and integration of waste pickers has gained in importance. Rates of recycling are increasingly influenced by global markets, relative shipping costs, and commodity prices.

Composting

-composting is nature's process of recycling decomposed organic materials into a rich soil known as compost. Anything that was once living will decompose. Basically, backyard composting is an acceleration of the same process nature uses. By composting your organic waste, you are returning nutrients back into the soil in order for the cycle of life to continue. Finished compost looks like soil - dark brown and crumbly - and smells like a forest floor.

Recycling

-recycling is a process to change waste materials into new products. Recycling can prevent the waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the use of new raw materials, reduce energy usage, the reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the 3rd component of the "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" waste hierarchy. -recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastics, textiles, and electronics. Materials to be recycled are usually brought to a collection center or picked up from homes. Then, it is sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing. -there is some disagreement about the net economic and environmental benefits of recycling due to its costs. Critics argue that the costs and energy used in collection and transportation detract from (and outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the production process.

abbreviations

ECA: Eastern and Central Asia EAP: East Asia and the Pacific Region LAC: Latin America and the Caribbean MENA: Middle East and North Africa SAR: South Asia OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (This includes wealthy industrialized countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Japan, Korea, Chile, and many other European countries.) PAHO: Pan-American Health Organization IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

municipal solid waste

In 2012, the world generated approximately 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage, otherwise known as municipal solid waste or MSW. MSW refers to packaging, clothing, furniture, bottles, household items, and even hazardous materials that come from homes and businesses.

Landfilling

There are two ways to bury trash... 1) a landfill is a carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is separated from the surrounding environment (groundwater, air, rain). This is done by lining the bottom and adding a daily covering of soil. A sanitary landfill uses a clay liner to isolate the trash from the environment. A MSW landfill uses a synthetic (plastic) liner to isolate the trash from the environment. The purpose of a landfill is to bury the trash in such a way that it will be isolated from groundwater, will be kept dry, and will not be in contact with air. Under these conditions, trash will not decompose very much. As the trash decomposes, it produces methane gas, which must be carefully monitored. It is estimated that global methane emissions from landfills are between 30 and 70 million tons each year. 2) a dump is an open hole in the ground where trash is buried and where precautions have not been made to separate the waste from the groundwater and air. There is no liner, and the waste is not usually covered.