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Waste management is essentially the systematic handling of garbage. It involves the proper way of collection, transportation, and disposal of waste materials. Waste management has been a significant issue addressed in the modern and industrialized generation largely owing to the fact that more waste materials are produced today than during the early generations, a critical increase resulting from population explosion and industrial revolution.

While it seems to be a modern response to waste production, waste management is not at all a new practice. Records from all over the world showed that early people had a way of managing and regulating their garbage. One of the common ways of waste management before was digging pits to contain solid wastes. As the civilization progressed, waste management practices became more regulated. As far back as 500 BC, for instance, there were existing policies in Athens Greece that required people to dispose of their waste materials in areas at least one mile from city limits. In 1388, the English Parliament in England banned waste disposal into the water systems. And in 1885, the United States built its first incinerator.

Waste management methods and procedures have improved since then, with emphasis on their relevance to modernity and quantity of produced waste. Incineration, for instance, is still a common process of waste disposal. With the use of incinerators, waste materials are combusted and are converted to energy. This waste-to-energy benefit is proven helpful to many industries, although there have been environmental and health concerns over the creation and emission of dangerous pollutants and chemicals during the burning process.

Using landfills is also a common method of waste disposal. Landfills are basically a big piece of lot where truckloads of waste are gathered and buried. In some countries, using landfills is the most common way of waste disposal primarily because they are relatively cheap and don’t require intricate machineries. Since landfills can potentially attract vermin and emit dangerous landfill gas, landfills have to be well-designed and credibly managed.

Waste management is also targeting to minimize waste, an effort that eventually gave way to the global campaign to recycle. Recycling means reprocessing some or all parts of an item to make a new or completely different product. Scrap metals and papers are two of the most recycled materials today. To date, several people and organizations are committed to recycling, whose collaborated efforts are contributing to proper waste management.

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This is because in waste minimization, control and management would go back to the waste producers themselves (individual persons, companies, manufacturers, factories) and not only on the waste materials.

Minimization

Traditionally, waste management processes the waste material after it had been created. From there, other waste management systems take place: re-use, recycling, composting, incineration, energy conversion, etc.

Waste minimization takes the process one step further back. It actually is one system that includes the process itself and the policy of simply reducing the amount of waste generated to the barest minimum by the primary producer itself – a single person or a company.

Waste sources

The main sources of waste vary from country to country. In developed countries in Europe, most waste comes from the manufacturing industry, agriculture, construction and demolition industries. In developing or under-developed countries, a big part of waste comes from the households and society at large.

Waste minimization processes

The following are some of the waste minimization processes at work these days.

• Both waste minimization and resource maximization of products can begin at the design stage. A product’s number of components can be reduced to make it easier to take apart for repairs or recycling. At the design stage, a product may be steered away from using toxic materials, or reduce its volume.

• Minimization of waste and maximization of resources again go hand-in-hand in optimizing the use of raw materials. Patterns for a dress can be cut in such a way that there is a minimum of unused portions in the clothing materials.

• Another way is the reuse of scrapped materials back into the production process. In industries like paper manufacture, damaged rolls and other scraps are returned and incorporated again to the paper-making process. In plastics manufacture, cut-offs and other scraps are re-incorporated into new products.

• This is for products specifically designed for its intended use. Packaging materials will be a waste if for reasons of, say cost-cutting, the quality is reduced and the food it is intended to protect is spoiled instead.

• Through improved quality control and monitoring, the number of product rejects is kept to a minimum. Increasing inspection frequency and the number of inspection points via automated and continuous monitoring equipments is now integrated into existing systems.

• Shipping raw materials directly to the places of manufacture reduces accidents, less protective wrappings and enclosures and other safety measures and devices designed for long circuitous handling and shipment.

Benefits and other considerations

Waste minimization is related to the efforts of minimizing the use of resources and energy by way of fewer materials and efficient designs, for instance.

This also entails thorough knowledge of the production process, continuous tracking of the material’s life cycle from cradle (extraction/creation) to grave (waste). This is feasible in large manufacturing industries starting from the plants to the stores all the way to the consumer.

Today, waste management is employing waste minimization as yet another reliable ammunition in the fight against pollution and environmental hazards in the complex business of waste disposal and management.

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Each of these methods has its own good and bad points in terms of efficiency, cleanliness in relation to the environment, and economic feasibility. There has not been a total winner in any of these waste disposal methods.

Recycling comes nearest because it is clean (no harmful emissions or toxic waste discharges) it is efficient (does not need big spaces) and cheap (little or no investments).

What is recycling, and what are its advantages over the other waste disposal methods?

Recycling

In absolute terms, recycling is actually not a disposal system. It is the reuse of materials that had been disposed of as waste. Theoretically, recycling is the continued use of materials for the same purpose.

In practice, recycling is the extension of the useful life of the material, but it can be in some other form. Most of today’s recyclable materials are post-consumer waste (empty glass and plastic bottles, used paper and cartoons, etc.)

The most common items that are recycled in industrialized nations are aluminum soda cans, aerosol cans, plastic and glass bottles and jars, old newspapers and magazines, and cardboards or used carton boxes.

New materials

When paper is recycled, the fibers lose their length, thereby making it less useful for high grade paper (book or bond paper, etc). Most of them are used to make cartoons, low-grade newsprint and other low-grade paper products. Some types of plastic are composed of the same type of materials and are relatively easy to recycle into new products.

As an alternative to plain garbage disposal, recycling is useful in the sense that it does not add to the waste in landfills, and it becomes another material resource.

Resource recovery

Today, experts and the enlightened populace have acknowledged that simply disposing of waste materials is unsustainable in the long run. The supply of raw materials from nature is finite and cannot last.

In waste management, there is a new idea that considers waste materials as a resource to be exploited and used, and not the old concept of looking at them as a challenge to be managed or disposed of. It is called resource recovery.

Resource recovery can take different forms. One is the materials might be extracted and recycled accordingly, or some of them are to be converted into energy (electricity).

Costs and economics

Used materials have to compete with new materials in manufacturing. Most often, collection costs of recyclables are higher than costs of new materials.

However, not many are aware that it usually requires less energy, less water, and less other resources to recycle materials than produce the product from new materials. (Recycling 1000 kilos of aluminum cans save 5000 kilos of bauxite ore to be mined, and 95% of the energy to refine it.)

The economics of a successful recycling process depends on manufacturers making products from recovered materials and consumers buying these products.

Recycling is one method of waste management that is nearest to the ideal – less or no actual physical wastage, low costs, and no environmental damage.

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Waste management is important since it has a major impact of human and community health.  There could be chemical spills which could pose danger to water supplies.  Poor landfills and incinerators could release cancerous carcinogen in the air and other pollutants.  They could also be causes of pests, vermin, flies and other similar carriers of communicable diseases.

People would often associate that implementing waste management plans and policies is about protecting human health and the environment.  Other than that, waste disposal could also have an impact on different environmental aspects such as climate change. Waste disposal can also be attributed in producing more greenhouse gases that makes the Earth’s climate warmer.  Landfills in Asia, Latin America and Africa are to blame for about 40 % of methane emissions every year.  That 40 % is equal to about 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Experts approximate that developed and industrialized nations produce more waste compared to developing countries.  In the United States, each American will produce an average of .75 tons of trash every year.  Those in Europe are estimated to accumulate almost half a ton of trash annually. In Asia, an average person would produce .2 tons of trash annually.

Although, Asia has the lowest waste average, it does not mean that they have better waste management system.  There are studies and surveys conducted in Asia about waste disposal procedure.  According to World Bank, China’s whopping 190 million tons of waste every year is not totally properly disposed.  Only less than 50 % of China’s solid waste are treated properly, whether it is through landfill or incineration.  China is not alone.  Other Asian countries, like India, Indonesia and the Philippines also have poor waste disposal methods.

Regardless of territories and boundaries, pollution affects everybody.  Environmental problems in Asia could still affect North America, Europe and Africa.  This is why there are efforts among different countries in helping each other resolve environmental and waste problems.

An example would be the efforts between European and Asian countries.  Europe is leading in environmental technologies, about 60 % of environmental discoveries and technologies came from them.  They would play a major role in helping Asian countries become aware of different environmental damage happening in their nations.  Asian countries mostly would have to deal with issues of water and air pollution, waste management for both households and industries, deforestation and loss of biodiversity.

Countries, like the United States and Canada, are encouraging more individuals to go back to the basics of waste reduction:  reduce, reuse and recycle.  The government are passing laws, state regulations about trash disposal that would help homeowners to start smart and proper waste management at home.

Environmental issues are not just an issue of a specified country.  We should be more away that by starting waste management in our homes, workplace or school, we get to reduce the impact of pollution and climate change.

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Incineration

Incineration is a waste treatment technology that involves burning of waste materials. It converts them into bottom ash, flue gases, particulates, and heat.

In modern incinerators, the by-product of heat is sometimes used to generate electric power. Flue gases are cleaned of pollutants before their release into the atmosphere.

Benefits

One big advantage of incinerators over landfills is the significant reduction of waste matter into 80-85% of the original volume.

One good use for incineration is destroying highly-hazardous clinical and hospital wastes. The same is true with toxic waste water from chemical multi-product plants that cannot be processed in regular water treatment plants.

In countries like Japan where land is scarce, incineration is particularly popular. In Europe, Denmark and Sweden had been using incinerators for a hundred years. Today, they are the leading countries that re-use the heat energy by-product of incinerators into electricity. The Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg are countries that depend largely on incineration in handling their wastes.

Pros

There are several good reasons why incineration is a good waste management system to augment, if not replace other systems like landfills.

In incineration, the volume of burnt waste is reduced by about 90% which increases the life of landfills.

Incinerators can generate electricity from the produced heat and it can supplement current power needs. These incinerating plants generate a biomass-powered energy that offsets the greenhouse emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.

The bottom ash residue from incinerators had been found to be non-hazardous solid waste which can be used safely for landfills or recycled into other useful materials.

With modern incinerators having temperatures ranging from 1800 up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, these ashes become vitrified after incineration. In this form, the leaching capacity and toxicity of these solidified remains are drastically reduced, if not eliminated.

Meantime, the fine particles can be efficiently removed from the flue gases with filters. Even without filters, studies from actual plants showed that incinerators emit only about 0.3% of the total particulates.

Incineration prevents the release of methane and carbon dioxide (equivalent to the weight of MSW or municipal solid wastes incinerated) into the air.

Cons

People are still uneasy over dioxin and furan emissions from old incineration plants. Also, incinerators emit varying levels of heavy metals like vanadium, manganese, nickel, cadmium, chromium, mercury, arsenic and lead. All of these are highly toxic even at minute quantities.

If they are not emitted, these heavy metals remain in the bottom ash which is toxic if not reused properly. Added to this concern is the fact that the technology for metal reuse is still in its infancy.

Today, incineration still ranks high in efficiency among the many other waste management system in use today. Maybe, what is needed is fine-tuning the various technologies associated with it to make the whole system of incineration totally efficient, safe and economical.

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