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Solid waste management
From CopperWiki
Solid waste management usually relates to waste created by human activities. It involves collection, transportation, processing, recycling or disposal of such waste materials.
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[edit] Why should I be aware of this?
Solid waste is generated much more in modern societies. . Daily several pounds of solid waste is generated per person in industrialized nations, not only in their homes, but indirectly in factories that manufacture goods purchased by consumers. Solid waste management is a system for handling all of this garbage. Municipal waste collection is solid waste management, as are recycling programs, dumps, and incinerators.
[edit] All about solid waste management
Solid waste management is a multibillion dollar business which is also crucial to survival. In most industrialized nations, garbage collection agencies remove tons of garbage yearly and sort it for recycling or ultimate disposal. While citizens are required to pay for waste collection, rural areas have dumps and recycling facilities for citizens to bring their garbage to. The process helps reduce the amount of garbage clogging the streets and polluting the environment.
Environmentally sound methods of solid waste management involve avoiding dumping waste into oceans or unlined pits. Scientific solid waste management practices eliminated the unhealthy practices of burying garbage or throwing them into the streets, making a stroll to the corner store an unpleasant prospect. In response, many cities started to set up municipal garbage collection, in the form of rag and bone men who would buy useful garbage from people and recycle it, or waste collection teams which would dispose of unusable garbage.
[edit] Types of solid waste
There are several types of solid waste.
- Recyclable waste
These include objects which are useful, but no longer wanted. Facilities need to be constructed to recycle these goods, which include scrap metal, glass, cans, paper, plastics, wood, and similar materials.
- Toxic waste
This is waste which could potentially contaminate the environment, and has to be handled with care. This category includes electronic waste, a growing problem in many industrialized nations.
- Green waste
These include such items as compost and yard clippings. People with land can compost their own green waste, and many cities collect it separately from true garbage, the final category, so that the green waste can be composted and returned to the earth.
[edit] CopperBytes
- If just 25% of U.S. families used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save over 2.5 billion bags a year.
- On the average, the 140 million cars in America are estimated to travel almost 4 billion miles in a day, and according to the Department of Transportation, they use over 200 million gallons of gasoline doing it.
- Every year we throw away 24 million tons of leaves and grass. Leaves alone account for 75% of our solid waste in the fall.
- Over 100 pesticide ingredients are suspected to cause birth defects, cancer, and gene mutations.
- Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil.
- About 1% of U.S. landfill space is full of disposable diapers, which take 500 years to decompose.
- Energy saved from one recycled aluminum can will operate a TV set for 3 hours, and is the equivalent to half a can of gasoline.
- Glass produced from recycled glass instead of raw materials reduces related air pollution by 20%, and water pollution by 50%.
- Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually -- consuming more than 850 million trees.
- Homeowners use up to 10 times more toxic chemicals per acre than farmers.
- Enough glass was thrown away in 1990 to fill the Twin Towers (1,350 feet high) of New York's World Trade Center every two weeks.
[edit] 90 degrees
In developing countries, it is common for municipalities to spend 20-50 percent of their available recurrent budget on solid waste management. Yet, it is also common that 30-60 percent of all the urban solid waste in developing countries is uncollected and less than 50 percent of the population is served. In some cases, as much as 80 percent of the collection and transport equipment is out of service, in need of repair or maintenance. In most developing countries, open dumping with open burning is the norm. [1]
