Solid, Toxic, and Hazardous Waste

Kacy George

Solid Waste• The EPA states that the US produces 11 billion

tons of solid waste each year. 23% of the world’s waste.

• The biggest contributor of almost half is agriculture.

• The second is mining.

• The third happens to be road and building construction.

Solid Waste

•What do we throw out?

• We throw out a lot of stuff, we throw out the regular organic matter•Yard and Garden Waste

•Food

•Sewage

• Junk Cars

•Worn out furniture

•Newspaper

•Magazines, etc.

Hazardous and Toxic Wastes

• The most dangerous part of the waste stream is the fact that it is highly toxic and hazardous and can adversely affect human and environmental health.

• A hazardous waste is defined as discarded materials that are:•Fatal to humans

•Toxic or mutagenic to organic life forms

• Ignitable

•Corrosive

•Explosive

Open Dumps

• Big problem in Megacities

• Mexico City has 10,000 tons of trash a day

• The Philippines has the “Smoky Mountain” which is an open dump that people work and live in. -_-

• After a typhoon, ½ of the mountain collapsed, and 215 people were trapped.

Ocean Dumping

• Illegal in US (hooray!), but common in most countries (boo!)• Until recently, NYC dumped its sewage, municipal and

industrial waste, in the ocean off Long Island.

• 55 million lbs/yr of packaging are dumped into ocean.

• 330 million lbs/yr of fishing gear lost or discarded

• Deadly to marine life (ex. seals get entangled in fishing nets) :(

• Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988- includes sewage sludge, industrial waste.

Ocean Dumping

• There is a place in the central Pacific known as the Great Pacific Garbage Pitch and it was made by gyres (ocean currents) that collectively picked up trash. It is twice the size of Texas and very little is known about it.

E-Waste

• E-waste is not spam, but electronic devices that are usually exported to developing countries, like China were families and children work under primitive conditions to gather valuables.

• Outdated electronic devices are the biggest contributors to the e-waste as TV’s are thrown out every 5 yrs. And PlayStation, laptops, etc. even quicker. These contain high lead, etc.

Landfills

• Over the past 50 yrs. Countries have seen a change as they decided to stop open dumping and start sanitary landfills.

• In these sanitary landfills, landfill operators are asked to place a layer of dirt over it to stop any smells of litter and to discourage insect and rodent populations.

Landfills• Landfills are becoming increasingly

expensive, as the rising land prices and shipping costs as well as construction and maintenance are driving the prices through the roof.

• Citizens however have become more vocal about the health hazards and natural aesthetics that comes when they are willing to accept a new landfill.

Landfills

• New "Sanitary" landfills are engineered to avoid water contamination

• must now be set on stable, impermeable bedrock, away from streams, rivers, lakes etc.

• double lined with plastic liners made of high density polyethylene will only be degraded by household chemicals (like moth balls, margarine, vinegar and booze) so it lasts longer.

• Leachate Collection Toxic: fluids seep to bottom of landfill where they are collected by complex drainage pipes

Incineration

• Energy recovering or burning is another way to get rid of trash. Waste to energy is when the heat derived from burning the trash, is used to produce steam as well as generate electricity.

Incinerator Cost and Safety

• To build an incinerator is around 100- 300 million dollars.

• In the ash there are high levels of dioxins, lead, cadmium, and other high levels of incinerator ash.

• One way to reduce dangerous emissions is by removing batteries with heavy metals and plastics that contain chlorine. EXPENSIVE.

Brownfield• Large areas that are contaminated and

abandoned are known as brownfields and most of commercial and industrial sites fall under that category in urban places.

• The EPA are immensely uptight about the environment, a man could have paid 1 million but instead had to pay 4 million, because according to the EPA, the dirt should be clean enough for children to eat from it for 70 yrs.

SUPER-fund sites

• The Superfund is a revolving pool designed to provide an immediate response to emergency situation that pose immediate hazards and to clean up or remediate derelict or inactive sites. Without this fund, these sites would stay for years before being refurbished

Demanufacturing

• Demanufacturing is the process of taking apart the items that are obsolete in a household, usually as aforementioned, electronic products are the most obsolete and are constantly being replaced.

• It is cost effective and contain 700 different chemical compounds, including:•$6 Gold

•$5 Copper

•$1 Silver

Composting

• Composting is a process in which organic yard waste is broken down by bacteria into a nutrient rich soil amendment.

• Compost piles are an easy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly way of disposing of organic wastes.

• Thermal Conversion Process (TCP) takes pressured cook manure, plastic, etc. and with extreme heat breaks it down to reduce organic molecules and hydrocarbons.

• Recycling will grow as land prices and fuel cost continues to rise and people look for an alternative.

The Waste Stream

• The waste stream is a term that describes the steady flow of waste from domestic to industrial refuse.

• We can recycle and take out some of the valuable garbage if it was not dumped and crushed with other useless garbage

• There are also hazardous materials intertwined with the regular waste, this includes spray paint, pesticides, and batteries, cleaning solvents, smoke detectors that contain radioactive materials and could be dangerous to crush or burn.

STOP!

• How can be make the waste stream safer?

Shrinking the Waste Stream

•Reduce

•Reuse

•Recycle

Recycling

• Recycling is re-processing discarded materials aluminum, plastic, tires, and newspapers)• 2/3 aluminum is now being recycled- cuts bauxite ore by 95%

• bottles may be reforged as bottles

• tires may be turned into roadways or sandals!

• Benefits include more efficient use of non-renewable resources• cheaper method of waste disposal- $35/ton versus $80/ton to bury it

• less air and water pollution

• cuts waste volume in landfill

Reuse• Cleaning and reusing items in their current

state is much cheaper than recycling or composting.

• In less wealthy and affluent countries, the reusing of manufactured products have become an established tradition that is profitable and practically everyone takes part of to survive.

Reduce• Paper, plastic gas, metal, etc. make up 50% volume

wise of the total landfill

• In Canada, their National Packaging Protocol recommends that people refer to their producers their preferred hierarchy of•No packaging

•Minimal packaging

•Reusable packaging

•Recyclable packaging

In Europe…

• The European Union are strict with their environmental laws and state that all companies and household should follow the waste hierarchy of prevention, reusing, recycling, and disposal as a last resort. If you do not follow, you must pay. Polluters Pay.

Convert Less Hazardous Substances

• Bioremediation is when we take the ability of microorganisms to break down and absorb the toxic compound, however some microorganisms can be invasive species and can negatively affect the area. Therefore they need to be maintained under a controlled environment.

Work Cited"The Basics of Landfills." EJnet.org: Web Resources for Environmental Justice Activists. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Electronic Waste." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Extracting Thermal Energy From Composting." Composting, Renewable Energy & Sustainability | BioCycle. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Hazardous Waste | Wastes | US EPA." US Environmental Protection Agency. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Ocean Dumping - Water, Effects, Environmental, Pollutants." Pollution Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

"Waste Types." US Environmental Protection Agency. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.