ESC110 Chapter Thirteen Solid and Hazardous Waste

1
ESC110 Chapter ThirteenSolid and Hazardous Waste
2
Chapter Thirteen Readings Objectives
Required ReadingsCunningham Cunningham
Chapter 13 Solid Hazardous Waste

• At the end of this lesson, you should be able to
• identify the major components of the waste
  stream, and describe how wastes have been - and
  are being - deposited in North America and around
  the world.
• explain the differences between dumps, sanitary
  landfills, and modern, secure landfills.
• summarize the benefits, problems, and potential
  of recycling and reusing wastes.
• analyze some alternatives for reducing the waste
  we generate.
• understand what hazardous and toxic wastes are
  and how we dispose of them.
• evaluate the options for hazardous-waste
  management.
• outline some ways we can destroy or permanently
  store hazardous wastes.

3
Chapter Thirteen Key Terms
? biodegradable plastics page 310 of text ?
bioremediation 315 ? brownfields 314 ?
composting 308 ? demanufacturing 308 ? energy
recovery 305 ? hazardous waste 311 ? mass burn
305 ? permanent retrievable storage 315

• photodegradable plastics 310
• ? recycling 306
• ? refuse-derived fuel 305
• ? sanitary landfills 302
• ? secure landfills 316
• ? Superfund 313
• ? Toxic Release Inventory 312
• ? waste stream 301

4
Chapter Thirteen Topics

• Waste
• Waste-Disposal Methods
• Shrinking the Waste Stream
• Hazardous and Toxic Wastes

5
PART 1 WASTE
The United States produces 11 billion tons of
solid waste each year.

• Agricultural waste (50)
• Residues produced by mining and primary metal
  processing (30)
• Industrial waste - 400 million metric tons/year
  (3.6) with a large toxic/hazardous part!
• Municipal waste - 200 million metric tons/year
  (1.8) or 2 kg/person/day.

6
Composition of U.S. Domestic Waste
7
The Waste Stream

• Waste stream is the steady flow of varied wastes
  we all produce.
• In spite of recent progress in recycling, many
  recyclable materials end up in the trash.
• A major problem is refuse mixing where recyclable
  and nonrecyclable materials, hazardous and
  nonhazardous materials are mixed and crushed
  together is the collection process.

8
PART 2 WASTE DISPOSAL METHODS

• Low to High Preferences of Waste Disposal Are
• Open Dumps
• Ocean Dumping
• Landfills
• Exporting Waste
• Incineration

9
Open Dumps

• Open dumping is a predominant method of waste
  disposal in developing countries.
• Illegal dumping classifies as a type of open
  dumping.
• Groundwater contamination is one of the many
  problems with open dumping.

10
Sanitary Landfills

• Landfills control and regulate solid waste
  disposal with less smell, litter and vermin
• Refuse compacted and covered everyday with a
  layer of dirt. Dirt takes up as much as 20 of
  landfill space.
• Since 1994, all operating landfills in the US
  have been required to control hazardous
  substances.
• More than 1,200 of the 1,500 existing landfills
  in the U.S. have closed, and many major cities
  must export their trash.

11
Exporting Waste and Garbage Imperialism

• Although most industrialized nations in the world
  have agreed to stop shipping hazardous and toxic
  waste to less developed countries, the practice
  still continues.
• Within rich nations, poor neighborhoods and
  minority populations are more likely to be the
  recipients of Locally Unwanted Land Use (LULUs).
• Toxic wastes are sometimes recycled as building
  materials, fertilizer or soil amendments.

12
Incineration and Resource Recovery

• Incineration is burning refuse to reduce disposal
  volume by 80-90.
• Energy recovery is possible through heat derived
  from incineration. Steam from this process can be
  used for heating buildings or generating
  electricity.
• Refuse-derived fuel is when waste is sorted to
  remove recyclable and unburnable materials. This
  yields refuse with a higher energy content than
  raw trash.
• Mass burn means everything smaller than major
  furniture and appliances is loaded into furnace.
  It results in greater problems with air
  pollution.
• Residual ash has toxic components including
  dioxins.
• High construction costs and environmental
  regulations have resulted in closures and waste
  exportation.

13
Mass-Burn Garbage Incinerator

• Initial construction costs are usually between
  100 and 300 million for a typical municipal
  facility. Tipping fess are often much higher at
  incinerators than tipping fees at landfills.

14
PART 3 SHRINKING THE WASTE STREAMReduce, Reuse
and Recycle (the 3 R's)
Recycling is the reprocessing of discarded
material into new, useful products.

• Reusing is a wash refill process unlike
  recycling.
• Recycling success stars are aluminum auto
  batteries.
• Problems include fluctuating market prices
  contamination.
• Recycling is better than dumping or burning.

15

• Recycling Benefits
• Saves money, raw materials, and land.
• Encourages individual responsibility.
• Reduces pressure on disposal systems. Japan (an
  island nation short on land) recycles about half
  of all household and commercial wastes.
• Lowers demand for raw resources.
• Reduces energy consumption and air pollution.
• Benefits Example
• Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves 4 tons of
  bauxite, 700 kg of coke and pitch, and keeps 35
  kg of aluminum fluoride out of the air.
• Producing aluminum from scrap instead of bauxite
  ore cuts energy use by 95.

16
Municipal Waste, 1995
17
Source Separation in the Kitchen
18
U.S. Recycling Rates
19
U.S. Recycled Materials - 1994
20
Ways Other Than Recycling to Shrink the Waste
Stream

• Composting is the biological degradation of
  organic material under aerobic conditions.
• Energy can be obtained from waste.
• Demanufacturing is the disassembly and recycling
  of obsolete consumer products such as computers
  household appliances.
• Reuse is exemplified each time you clean a bottle
  and drink from it again. A reusable glass
  container makes an average of 15 round-trips
  between factory and customer before it has to be
  recycled.
• Generating less waste by not consuming originally
  or using more compostable and degradable
  packaging.

21
Shrinking the Waste Stream

• Excess packaging of food and consumer products is
  one of our greatest sources of unnecessary waste.
• Paper, plastic, glass, and metal packaging
  material make up 50 of domestic trash by volume.
• Producing less waste
• Some environmentalists think that society
  currently places too much emphasis on recycling,
  thus ignoring better solutions such as reduced
  consumption and reuse.

22
Composting
23
Demanufacturing

• Demanufacturing is the disassembly and recycling
  of obsolete consumer products
• Refrigerators and air conditioners produce CFC's.
  The CFC's can be recycled, thus avoiding their
  release too the environment.
• Computers and other electronics produce both
  toxic and valuable metals
• A problem is that electronics that are turned in
  for recycling in the U.S. are sometimes dumped in
  developing countries where their components end
  up as environmental toxins.

24
Reuse

• Better than recycling or composting.
• Salvage from old houses is an increasingly
  popular trend in construction.
• Glass and plastic bottle potential for reuse is
  poorly realized.
• Large national companies favor recycling over
  reuse.

25
Producing Less Waste

• Reduction in consumption is the best way to
  reduce our waste stream.
• Excess packaging of food and consumer products is
  one of our greatest sources of unnecessary waste.
• Photodegradable plastics break down when exposed
  to UV rays.
• Biodegradable plastics can be decomposed by
  microorganisms.
• There are problems with photodegradable and
  biodegradable plastics.

26
PART 4 HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC WASTES

• Hazardous wastes are discarded solids or liquids
  with substances that are fatal in low
  concentrations, toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic or
  teratogenic. This includes corrosive, explosive,
  reactive and flammable materials.
• U.S. industries generate about about 265 million
  metric tons of officially classified toxic wastes
  each year.
• Chemical and petroleum industries are the biggest
  sources of toxins

27
U.S. Hazardous Waste Producers
28
Hazardous Waste Disposal Legislation

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
  Comprehensive program requiring rigorous testing
  and management of toxic and hazardous substances
  with cradle to grave accounting.
• Comprehensive Environmental Response,
  Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or
  Superfund Act)
• Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act
  (SARA) created a Toxic Release Inventory. The
  act requires manufacturing facilities to report
  annually on releases of hundreds of types of
  toxins.

29
Tracking Toxic and Hazardous Wastes
30
Superfund Sites

• EPA estimates 36,000 seriously contaminated sites
  in the U.S. and by 2000, 1,551 sites were placed
  on the National Priority List for cleanup with
  with Superfund financing. Superfund is a
  revolving pool designed to
• Provide immediate response to emergency
  situations posing imminent hazards.
• Clean-up abandoned or inactive sites.

31

• Comprehensive Environmental Response,
  Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).
• Modified in 1984 by Superfund Amendments and
  Reauthorization Act.
• Aimed at rapid containment, cleanup, or
  remediation of abandoned toxic waste sites.
• Toxic Release Inventory - Requires gt20,000
  manufacturing facilities to report annually on
  releases of more than 300 toxic materials.
• In order to act the government does not have to
  prove anyone violated a law, or what role they
  played in a superfund site.
• Liability under CERCLA is strict, joint, and
  several, meaning anyone associated with a site
  can be held responsible for the entire clean-up
  cost.

32
National Priority List (NPL) Brownfields

• EPA estimate 36,000 seriously contaminated sites
  in the U.S.
• General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that
  there are gt 400,000 seriously contaminated sites
• NPL sites are waste sites that are especially
  hazardous to human health or environmental
  quality
• How clean is clean? Brownfields are large areas
  of contaminated properties that have lost their
  potential value. Because of the presence of
  assumed pollutants, the areas are considered
  liability risks. This business attitude
  discourages redevelopment and can be gt30 of the
  land within urban areas. In many cases, property
  owners complain that unreasonably high purity
  levels are demanded in remediation programs.

33
Bioremediation
34
Options for Hazardous Waste Management

• Produce less waste using 3 R's
• Physical treatments (isolation)
• Incineration
• Chemical processing (transformation
• Bioremediation (microorganisms)
• Permanent retrievable storage
• Secure landfills

35
When Hazardous Waste Management Options To
Cleanup Fail, Storage Is Required

• Ways to Store Permanently are
• Retrievable Storage
• Can be inspected and periodically retrieved.
• Secure Landfills
• Modern, complex landfills with multiple liners
  and other impervious layers and monitoring
  systems.
• To guard and monitor these sites for leakage is
  very costly.

36
Secure Landfills