Solid and Hazardous Waste

WHAT ARE SOLID WASTE &

HAZARDOUS WASTE,
& WHY ARE THEY PROBLEMS?
 We throw away huge amounts of useful things and
hazardous materials

• No waste in natural world because wastes of one organism become

nutrients for others as a natural recycling of nutrients occurs.
• Modern humans produce huge amounts of waste that go unused and
pollute.
• Solid waste—any unwanted or discarded material we produce that is not
a liquid or a gas.
– Industrial solid waste produced by mines, agriculture, and industries
that supply people with goods and services.
– Municipal solid waste (MSW), consisting of the combined solid waste
produced by homes and workplaces.
We throw away huge amounts of useful things and
hazardous materials
• Hazardous, or toxic, waste threatens human health or the environment
because it is poisonous, dangerously chemically reactive, corrosive, or
flammable. Examples include:
– Industrial solvents.
– Hospital medical waste.
– Car batteries.
– Household pesticide products.
– Dry-cell batteries.
– Ash from incinerators and coal-burning power plants.
We throw away huge amounts of useful things and
hazardous materials

• Classes of hazardous wastes are:

– Organic compounds
• Various solvents, pesticides, PCBs, and dioxins.
– Nondegradable toxic heavy metals
• Lead, mercury, and arsenic.
– Highly radioactive waste produced by nuclear power
plants and nuclear weapons facilities.
HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH
SOLID WASTE?
 We can burn or bury solid waste or
produce less of it
• Waste management in which we attempt to manage wastes in ways
that reduce their environmental harm without seriously trying to
reduce the amount of waste produced.
• Waste reduction (produce much less waste and pollution), and the
wastes we do produce are considered to be potential resources that
can be reused, recycled, or composted.
• Integrated waste management—a variety of strategies for both
waste reduction and waste management.
 Integrated Waste Management
First Priority Second Priority Last Priority

Primary Pollution and Waste Second Pollution and Waste Management

Prevention Waste Prevention

•Change industrial process to eliminate •Reuse •Treat waste to reduce

use of harmful chemicals toxicity
•Repair
•Use less of a harmful product •Incinerate waste
•Recycle
•Reduce packaging and materials in •Bury waste in landfills
products •Compost
•Release waste into
•Make products that last longer and are •Buy reusable and recyclable environment for dispersal or
recyclable, reusable, or easy to repair products dilution
 We can cut solid wastes by reducing,
reusing, and recycling

• Waste reduction is based on three Rs:

– Reduce: consume less and live a simpler lifestyle.
– Reuse: rely more on items that can be used
repeatedly instead of on throwaway items, and buy
necessary items secondhand or borrow or rent them.
– Recycle: separate and recycle paper, glass, cans,
plastics, metal, and other items, and buy products
made from recycled materials.
 We can cut solid wastes by reducing,
reusing, and recycling
• Strategies that industries and communities have used to reduce
resource use, waste, and pollution.
– Redesign manufacturing processes and products to use less
material and energy.
– Develop products that are easy to repair, reuse, remanufacture,
compost, or recycle.
– Eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging.
– Charge consumers by amount of waste they throw away but
provide free pickup of recyclable and reusable items.
– Establish cradle-to-grave responsibility laws that require companies
to take back various discarded consumer products, such as
electronic equipment, appliances, and motor vehicles.
You can save resources by reducing your output
of solid waste and pollution
 WHY IS REUSING AND
RECYCLING MATERIALS
IMPORTANT?
 Reuse is an important way to reduce solid waste
and pollution, and to save money
• Increasingly substituted throwaway items for reusable ones, which has
resulted in growing masses of solid waste.
• Reuse involves cleaning and using materials over and over and thus
increasing the typical life span of a product.
• Waste reduction decreases the use of matter and energy resources,
cuts pollution and waste, creates local jobs, and saves money.
• In many less-developed countries, the poor scavenge in open dumps
for food scraps and items that they can reuse or sell, and are often
exposed to toxins and infectious diseases.
 Reuse is an important way to reduce solid
waste and pollution, and to save money
• Reuse strategies in more-developed countries include yard sales, flea
markets, secondhand stores, and online sites such as eBay and
craigslist.
• To encourage people reusable bags, the governments of Ireland,
Taiwan, and the Netherlands tax plastic shopping bags.
• Australia, France, Italy, and the U.S. city of San Francisco have
banned the use of all or most types of plastic shopping bags.
• Plastics industry officials have mounted a massive advertising and
political campaign to prevent such bans.
There are many ways to reuse the
items we purchase
There are two types of recycling
• Recycling involves reprocessing discarded solid
materials into new, useful products.
• Households and workplaces produce five major
types of materials that we can recycle: paper
products, glass, aluminum, steel, and some
plastics.
• Primary, or closed-loop, recycling—materials are
recycled into new products of the same type.
• Secondary recycling— waste materials
converted into different products.
There are two types of recycling
• Key questions about recycling:
– Do the items that are separated for recycling actually
get recycled?
– Do businesses, governments, and individuals
complete the recycling loop by buying products that
are made from recycled materials?
 Composting is a form of recycling that
mimics nature’s recycling of nutrients
• Involves using decomposer bacteria to recycle yard trimmings, food
scraps, and other organic wastes.
• The resulting organic material can be added to soil to supply plant
nutrients, slow soil erosion, retain water, and improve crop yields.
• Homeowners can compost such wastes in simple backyard
containers.
• Some cities in Canada and in many European Union countries
collect and compost more than 85% of their biodegradable wastes in
centralized community facilities.
• In the US, about 3,000 municipal composting programs recycle
about 60% of the yard wastes.
 Recycling has advantages and
disadvantages
• Whether recycling makes economic sense depends on how we look
at its economic and environmental benefits and costs.
• Critics of recycling programs argue that recycling is costly and adds
to the taxpayer burden in communities where recycling is funded
through taxation.
• Proponents of recycling point to studies showing that the net
economic, health, and environmental benefits of recycling far
outweigh the costs.
• Critics say that recycling may make economic sense for valuable
and easy-to-recycle materials such as aluminum, paper, and steel.
Recycling has advantages and
disadvantages
We can encourage reuse and recycling
• Three factors hinder reuse and recycling.
– The market prices of almost all products do not include the
harmful environmental and health costs associated with
producing, using, and discarding them.
– The economic playing field is uneven, because in most countries,
resource-extracting industries receive more government tax
breaks and subsidies than reuse and recycling industries.
– The demand, and thus the price paid, for recycled materials
fluctuates, mostly because buying goods made with recycled
materials is not a priority for most governments, businesses, and
individuals.
We can encourage reuse and recycling
• Ways to encourage reuse and recycling:
– Increase subsidies and tax breaks for reusing and recycling
materials and decrease subsidies and tax breaks for making items
from virgin resources.
– Increase use of the fee-per-bag waste collection system and
encourage or require government purchases of recycled products
to help increase demand for and lower prices of these products.
– Pass laws requiring companies to take back and recycle/reuse
packaging and electronic waste.
– Citizens can pressure governments to require product labeling
that lists recycled content of products and the types and amounts
of any hazardous materials.
We can encourage reuse and recycling
• Recycling is popular because it helps to soothe
the consciences of people living in a throwaway
society.
• Reducing resource consumption and reusing
resources are more effective prevention
approaches to reducing the flow and waste of
resources.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES
AND DISADVANTAGES OF
BURNING OR BURYING
SOLID WASTE?
 Burning solid waste has advantages and
disadvantages
• Globally, MSW is burned in more than 600 large waste-to-energy
incinerators which use the heat they generate to boil water and
make steam for heating water or interior spaces, or for producing
electricity.
• The US incinerates only about 12% of its MSW.
– Incineration has a bad reputation stemming from past use of
highly polluting and poorly regulated incinerators.
– Incineration competes with an abundance of low-cost landfills in
many areas.
Burning solid waste has advantages and
disadvantages
 Burying solid waste has advantages
and disadvantages
• About 54%, by weight, of the MSW in the United States
is buried in sanitary landfills, compared to 80% in
Canada, 15% in Japan, and 4% in Denmark.
• Sanitary landfills are where solid wastes are spread out
in thin layers, compacted, and covered daily with a fresh
layer of clay or plastic foam, which helps to keep the
material dry and reduces leakage of contaminated water.
 Burying solid waste has advantages and
disadvantages
• Open dumps are essentially fields or holes in the ground
where garbage is deposited and sometimes burned.
– Rare in more-developed countries.
– China disposes of about 85% of its solid waste in
rural open dumps or in poorly designed and poorly
regulated landfills.
A waste-to-energy incinerator with
pollution controls
 Electricity

Smokestack

Furnace

Boiler

Waste
pit

Ash for treatment, disposal in landfill, or use as landfill cover

Burying solid waste has advantages and
disadvantages
A state-of-the-art sanitary landfill
 When landfill is full, layers
Topsoil of soil and clay seal in trash
Sand
Electricity
Methane
generator
Clay storage and
building
compressor Leachate
Garbage building treatment system
Probes to
detect
methane Pipes collect
Methane gas explosive methane
leaks recovery for use as fuel
well to generate
electricity Leachate
storage
Compacted tank
solid waste

Garbage Leachate Groundwater

pipes Leachate pumped monitoring
Sand up to storage tank well
for safe disposal
Synthetic
liner
Groundwater Leachate
Sand monitoring
Clay and plastic lining to
Clay well
prevent leaks; pipes collect
Subsoil leachate from bottom of landfill
HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH
HAZARDOUS WASTE?
 We can use integrated management of
hazardous waste
• Integrated management establishes three levels of priority:
– Produce less.
– Convert as much of it as possible to less hazardous substances.
– Put the rest in long-term, safe storage.
• Industries try to find substitutes for toxic or hazardous materials, reuse or
recycle the hazardous materials within industrial processes, or use them as
raw materials for making other products.
• Industrial hazardous wastes are exchanged through clearinghouses where
they are sold as raw materials for use by other industries.
• Most e-waste recycling efforts create further hazards and can result in serious
threats to other species.
 Integrated Hazardous Waste Management
Produce Less Convert to Less Hazardous or Put in
Hazardous Waste Nonhazardous Substances Perpetual Storage

•Change industrial processes •Natural decomposition •Landfill

to reduce or eliminate
hazardous waste production •Incineration •Underground injection wells

•Recycle and reuse hazardous •Thermal treatment •Surface impoundments

waste
•Chemical, physical, and biological •Underground salt formations
treatment

•Dilution in air or water

 We can detoxify hazardous wastes
• Bioremediation employs bacteria and enzymes that help destroy
toxic or hazardous substances or convert them to harmless
compounds.
• Phytoremediation involves using natural or genetically engineered
plants to absorb, filter, and remove contaminants from polluted soil
and water.
• Hazardous wastes can be incinerated to break them down and
convert them to harmless or less harmful chemicals such as carbon
dioxide and water.
• Detoxify hazardous wastes by using a plasma arc torch, somewhat
similar to a welding torch, to incinerate them at very high
temperatures.
 We can store some forms of
hazardous waste
• Burial on land or long-term storage of hazardous and toxic wastes
should be used only as the last resort.
• Currently, burial on land is the most widely used method in the
United States and in most countries, largely because it is the least
expensive of all methods.
– The most common form of burial is deep-well disposal.
• Liquid hazardous wastes are pumped under pressure
through a pipe into dry, porous rock formations far beneath
aquifers that are tapped for drinking and irrigation water.
 We can store some forms of
hazardous waste
• Cost is low and the wastes can often be retrieved if problems
develop.
• Problems with deep-well disposal:
• Limited number of such sites and limited space within them.
• Wastes can leak into groundwater from the well shaft or
migrate into groundwater in unexpected ways.
• Encourages the production of hazardous wastes.
We can store some forms of hazardous waste

– Surface impoundments are ponds, pits, or lagoons in which

wastes are stored.
• May have liners to help contain the waste.
• 70% of the storage ponds in the United States have no liners.
• Eventually all impoundment liners are likely to leak and could
contaminate groundwater.
– Liquid and solid hazardous wastes can be put into drums or
other containers and buried in carefully designed and monitored
secure hazardous waste landfills.
Storing liquid hazardous wastes in
surface impoundments has
advantages and disadvantages
How hazardous wastes can be isolated and stored in
a secure hazardous waste landfill
 Bulk Gas Topsoil
Plastic cover
waste vent Earth
Sand Impervious Clay
Impervious
clay cap cap
clay

Water
table
Earth
Leak
Groundwater detection
system
Double leachate Plastic Reactive Groundwater
collection system double wastes monitoring
liner in drums well
You can reduce your output of
hazardous wastes
HOW CAN WE MAKE THE TRANSITION
TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE
LOW-WASTE SOCIETY?
 Grassroots action has led to better solid and
hazardous waste management

• Individuals have organized to prevent the construction of hundreds

of incinerators, landfills, treatment plants for hazardous and
radioactive wastes, and polluting chemical plants in or near their
communities.
• If local citizens adopt a “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) approach, the
waste will always end up in someone’s back yard.
• A call for drastically reducing production of such wastes by
emphasizing pollution prevention and using the precautionary
principle.
 Providing environmental justice for everyone
is an important goal
• Environmental justice is an ideal whereby every person is entitled to
protection from environmental hazards regardless of race, gender,
age, national origin, income, social class, or any political factors.
• A larger share of polluting factories, hazardous waste dumps,
incinerators, and landfills in the United States are located in or near
communities populated mostly by African Americans, Asian
Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.
• In general, toxic waste sites in Caucasian communities have been
cleaned up faster and more completely than such sites in African
American and Latino communities.
 International treaties have reduced
hazardous waste
• For decades, some more-developed countries had been shipping
hazardous wastes to less-developed countries.
• Since 1992, international treaty known as the Basel Convention has
banned participating countries from shipping hazardous waste to or
through other countries without their permission.
– In 1995, the treaty was amended to outlaw all transfers of
hazardous wastes from industrial countries to less-developed
countries.
 International treaties have reduced
hazardous waste
– By 2010, this agreement had been signed by 175
countries and ratified by 172 countries.
– The United States, Afghanistan, and Haiti have
signed but have not ratified the convention.
• Hazardous waste smugglers evade the laws by using an
array of tactics.
International treaties have reduced hazardous waste
• In 2000, delegates from 122 countries completed a global treaty called the
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) to control 12
POPs.
– POPs are widely used toxic chemicals that can accumulate in the fatty
tissues of humans and other organisms at high trophic levels in food
webs.
– The original list of 12 chemicals, called the dirty dozen, includes DDT and
eight other chlorine-containing persistent pesticides, PCBs, dioxins, and
furans.
– By 2009, 169 countries had signed a strengthened version of the POPs
treaty that seeks to ban or phase out the use of these chemicals and to
detoxify or isolate stockpiles of them.
– It does allow 25 countries to continue using DDT to combat malaria until
safer alternatives are available.
– The United States has not yet ratified this treaty.
 International treaties have reduced
hazardous waste
• In 2000, the Swedish Parliament enacted a law that, by 2020, will ban
all chemicals that are persistent in the environment and that can
accumulate in living tissue.
– Industries required to perform risk assessments on the chemicals
they use and to show that these chemicals are safe to use, as
opposed to requiring the government to show that they are
dangerous.
– Strong opposition to this approach in the United States.
 We can make the transition to
low-waste societies
• Many environmental scientists argue that we can make a transition
to a low-waste society by understanding and following key
principles:
– Everything is connected.
– There is no away, as in to throw away, for the wastes we
produce.
– Polluters and producers should pay for the wastes they produce.
– Different categories of hazardous waste and recyclable waste
should not be mixed.
 Three big ideas
• The order of priorities for dealing with solid waste should be to
produce less of it, reuse, and recycle as much as possible and safely
burn or bury what is left.
• The order of priority for dealing with hazardous waste should be to
produce less of it, reuse or recycle it, convert it to less-hazardous
material, and safely store what is left.
• We need to view solid wastes as wasted resources and hazardous
wastes as materials that we should not be producing in the first place.
ANY QUESTIONS?