Human Consumption and Waste Disposal

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Human Consumption and Waste Disposal
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• Along with population growth and
  industrialization
• in the 19th and 20th centuries has come a growing
• waste stream - a term that describes the steady
• flow of varied wastes that we all produce, from
• domestic garbage and yard wastes to industrial,
• commercial, and construction refuse.
• All countries generate wastes . . .
• MDCs produce a lot more due to their high
  consumption rates
• LDCs will produce more as they industrialize

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Over the next lecture or two well discuss

• waste generation rates
• peak inside a landfill
• waste disposal methods
• shrinking the waste stream
• hazardous wastes

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• According to the EPA, the U.S. produces about 11
  billion tons of solid waste per year. About half
  of this is agricultural waste (crop residues,
  etc.) and one-third is produced by the mining and
  metals processing industries (overburden, etc.).
  Other industries also contribute significantly to
  the waste stream.
• Solid waste also includes municipal waste. In
  this class, we are primarily interested in
  municipal waste that is, a combination of
  household and commercial waste.
• Lets take a look at municipal solid waste
  generation in a bit more detail.

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• How much solid waste do we produce?
• How has this changed over time?

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Solid Waste Generation in the U.S., 1960 - 2007
How much is 254 million tons? Equivalent to a
convoy of 10-ton garbage trucks over 145,000
miles long (Half way to the moon!)
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Ohioans throw out about 5.5 pounds per person
per day. Sound like a lot?

• Think how much we discard each day, each week to
  the Athens County landfill on Route 33.
• Check the trash cans on campus today, see how
  many recyclable items we toss into the trash
  (bottles, cans, plastic containers, cardboard,
  newspapers).
• Imagine how much less trash there would be if
  these items were not discarded. Once these items
  reach the landfill, they get mixed with other
  garbage and they lose their value.

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• According to the citys sanitation department,
  New
• Yorkers discard about 6.1 pounds of waste per
• day. Why so much?
• Elizabeth Royte, who wrote Garbage Land, states
• We have a lot of wealthy people, and rich
  people throw out more trash than poor people do.
  Rich people are also more likely to throw things
  out based on style obsolescence like changing
  the towels when youre tired of the color.

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• Where does all our waste go?
• We dispose of waste in a variety of ways
• some better than others.

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Waste Disposal Methods

• Open dumps
• Ocean dumping
• Landfills
• Exporting waste
• Incineration

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Open Dumps

• Open and unregulated dumps are still the
  predominant method of waste disposal in most
  LDCs. This is a particularly serious problem in
  the worlds mega-cities - places like Mexico City
  and Manila.
• Mexico City generates 10,000 tons of trash every
  day. Until recently, all of this refuse was
  piled into enormous dumps.

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• Smoky Mountain in Manila is a 30-meter high
  smoldering heap of refuse. (www.trinitystores.com)
  

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Open Dumps

• Open dumping is generally forbidden in MDCs (at
  least in urban areas) but it was once a common
  method of disposal.
• In the good old days, wastes were even dumped
  directly into local streams, rivers, and
  wetlands. We know now that this is a particularly
  bad way to dispose of waste. Materials decompose
  and make their way to groundwater, poisoning our
  drinking water supply. Remember - across
  America, 50 of us depend on groundwater to meet
  our drinking water needs.
• Open dumping is still a problem in MDCs, whether
  it is the blight of roadside litter or the 200
  million liters of toxic motor oil that gets
  poured on the ground or into sewers every year.

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Ocean Dumping
Every year about 25,000 tons of trash gets dumped
in the oceans. We do not usually notice the
problem until the waste starts to wash up on our
beaches. This was a particularly serious problem
back in the 1980s, when medical waste (e.g.,
spent syringes) started washing up on New Jersey
beaches.
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Ocean Dumping

• Cities in the U.S. used to dispose of their waste
  in this way. New York finally ended the practice
  of off-shore sewage sludge disposal in 1992 - the
  last major U.S. city to do so. It is still a
  common practice in other parts of the world.
• At left, urban organic compost (Urban
• Harvest)

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Landfills

• Beginning in the 1930s, a new method of waste
  disposal emerged - the sanitary landfill, where
  disposal is regulated and controlled. Over time,
  these landfills replaced open pits as the chief
  means of waste disposal.
• Originally, many of these facilities were poorly
  sited. Today, landfills are high-tech. They are
  designed to . . .
• a) minimize leakage
• b) protect drinking water supplies and
• c) protect human health.
• Since 1994, operating landfills are even required
  to control for
• hazardous substances like oil and chemicals.

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The effect?

• A lot of material never breaks down because rain
  and water are prevented from getting inside so
  oxygen-loving bacteria play only a limited role
  in the breakdown of a lot of the garbage found in
  landfills.

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• Archaeologist William Rathje of the University of
  Arizona, who conducts landfill digs, has turned
  up still-readable newspapers dumped back in 1952!
• At Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island,
  Rathjes team unearthed a hunk of ham fat thrown
  away five years earlier, and still as plump and
  supple as if it had been trimmed from yesterdays
  dinner!
• At left, clipping from National Geographic
  Magazine.

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How long does it take to break down?

• Piece of paper 4-5 years
• Piece of wood 1-4 years
• Tin can 10 years
• Aluminum can 200-500 years
• 6-pack rings 450 years

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Whats in a landfill?

• Paper 38
• Food Waste 11
• Yard Waste 12
• Glass 6
• Plastics 10
• Misc. 15
• Metals 8
• Photo Castlereagh Borough Council

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What else do we throw away?

• 240 million tires annually
• 25 billion Styrofoam cups
• 1.6 billion pens
• 2 billion razors and blades
• 18 billion diapers
• 7 million cars
• 50 million computers

I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash
you got. - Nicholas Cage (Raising Arizona)
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e-waste
Chrisjordan.com
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It piles up fast! (Garbage collectors strike in
Naples, NYT 2007)
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Landfills

• The U.S. now spends about 10 billion annually to
  dispose of trash. That figure could rise to 100
  billion a decade from now. Why?
• While the landfill has been a convenient and
  relatively inexpensive waste-disposal option in
  the past, the situation is changing rapidly as
  land prices and shipping costs increase. Many
  cities are simply running out of affordable
  local landfill space and it costs a lot to ship
  waste elsewhere for disposal.
• More than half of New Jerseys solid waste gets
  shipped out-of-state.
• Pennsylvania imports the most waste of any of the
  50 states.

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Exporting Waste

• A common practice for MDCs has been to export
  trash to LDCs. Why? Disposal costs are much
  lower. While most MDCs have agreed not to ship
  toxic and hazardous wastes abroad for storage,
  the practice still takes place.
• A continually emerging field is that of
  environmental justice. Poor neighborhoods and
  neighborhoods with a high percentage of
  minorities are often the recipients of LULUs
  (locally unwanted land uses). Why? It is often
  in these areas where land prices are lower.
  Also, these communities do not generally have the
  political wherewithal to resist these kinds of
  actions.

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In order to cut back on volume of trash, some
communities have turned to incineration. After
burning, we are left with a much smaller amount
of material - 10-20 of the original volume. The
ash is then placed in a landfill. Today, more
than 110 waste incinerators burn 45,000 tons of
trash per day. Some of these are simple waste
incinerators others use the steam from burning
to generate electricity for nearby
municipalities. www.yorkregionnature.ca/is
sues.html
Incineration
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Incineration

• While the initial cost of constructing an
  incinerator is high, the long-term savings may
  make it worth it.
• While the U.S. EPA generally supports
  incineration, safety concerns have arisen. High
  levels of toxic chemicals become concentrated in
  the ash and, in this form, more readily inhaled
  by humans.

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Shrinking the Waste Stream

• The best way to solve the waste problems
• we face today is to . . .
• reduce
• reuse
• recycle

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Shrinking the Waste Stream - Reduce

• Excess packaging of food and consumer products
  is one of our greatest sources of unnecessary
  waste. Paper, plastic, glass, and packaging
  material make up 50 percent of our domestic trash
  by volume. Much of that packaging is primarily
  for marketing and has little to do with product
  protection (Cunningham and Cunningham 2007).
• What can you do to prevent more material from
  entering the waste stream?
• buy foods with less packaging
• use your own containers and grocery bags
• carry around a washable and refillable beverage
  container
• push to outlaw single-use plastic beverage
  containers
• compost yard and garden wastes

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Shrinking the Waste Stream - Reuse

• Reusing materials rather than throwing them away
  saves money and energy.
• Around the world, scavenging has become a
  profitable - albeit sometimes dangerous - pursuit.

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The sheer volume of trash in NYC has inspired a
new movement . . .

• Freegans, according to a New York Times
  article, are scavengers of the developed world,
  living off consumer waste in an effort to
  minimize their support of corporations and their
  impact on the planet, and to distance themselves
  from what they see as out-of-control consumerism.
  They forage through supermarket trash and eat
  the slightly bruised produce or just-expired
  canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and
  negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic
  stores and restaurants. They dress in castoff
  clothes and furnish their homes with items found
  on the street at freecycle.com, where users post
  unwanted items and at so-called freemeets, flea
  markets where no money is exchanged.

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freegan.info

• Freegans are people who employ alternative
  strategies for living based on limited
  participation in the conventional economy and
  minimal consumption of resources. Freegans
  embrace community, generosity, social concern,
  freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition
  to a society based on materialism, moral apathy,
  competition, conformity, and greed.
• After years of trying to boycott products from
  egregious corporations responsible for human
  rights violations, environmental destruction, and
  animal abuse, many of us found that no matter
  what we bought we ended up supporting something
  deplorable. We came to realize that the problem
  isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire
  system itself.

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freegan.info

• Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic
  system where the profit motive has eclipsed
  ethical considerations and where massively
  complex systems of productions ensure that all
  the products we buy will have detrimental impacts
  most of which we may never even consider. Thus,
  instead of avoiding the purchase of products from
  one bad company only to support another, we avoid
  buying anything to the greatest degree we are
  able.

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New York Times, 21 June 2007
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Shrinking the Waste Stream - Recycle

• Once we have reduced our contribution to the
  waste
• stream and reused what we can, we should recycle
• materials - that is, reprocess materials into new
  and useful
• products.
• It is a better alternative than dumping or
  burning.
• Recycling not only saves room in landfills, it
  saves energy,
• money, and raw materials and cuts back on litter
  and air
• pollution.
• Recycling is critical because it reduces pressure
  on landfills.
• The U.S. currently, landfills 60 of its waste
  (75 of our
• trash can be recycled). Imagine if we made it a
  national
• priority to reduce this waste stream and recycle
  rather than
• discard much of this waste.

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Cans Seurat, 2007
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in
the US every thirty seconds.
Chrisjordan.com
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Cans Seurat, 2007
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in
the US every thirty seconds.
Chrisjordan.com
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106,000 the number of cans discarded every 30
seconds in the U.S.
Chrisjordan.com
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Shrinking the Waste Stream - Recycle

• Although 2/3 of all aluminum cans are now
  recycled in the U.S., 250,000 tons are still
  thrown away - enough aluminum to manufacture
  3,800 747 jet airliners!

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Aluminum

• Recycling one can saves enough energy to run a
  television for three hours or the equivalent of
  one half gallon of gasoline.
• There is no limit to the number of times an
  aluminum can can be recycled.
• 350,000 aluminum cans are produced every minute.

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Plastic

• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles . . .
  every hour!

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Shrinking the Waste Stream - Recycle

• By contrast, we recycle just 5 of our plastics.
• According to the Athens County Recycling Center,
  about 15-20 of recyclable items actually get
  recycled. Check the trash cans on campus - they
  usually contain recyclable newspapers, bottles,
  and cans.
• In some cases, it is not cost-effective to
  recycle. One of the reasons is that we dont
  always pay the real cost of the natural resources
  we use.

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Hazardous Waste

• World War II in this country brought about great
  industrial expansion.
• This industrial expansion was accompanied by
  increased output of
• hazardous waste. A hazardous waste is any
  discarded material, liquid
• or solid, that contains substances known to be
  harmful to humans.
• Hazardous wastes can include items such as . . .
• 1) heavy metals (lead, zinc, arsenic)
• 2) synthetic organic compounds (PCBs, DDT,
  dioxin)
• 3) petroleum products (POLs)
• 4) acids (HCl, HSO4)
• 5) biological substances (esp., medical wastes)

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Hazardous Waste

• When hazardous waste enters the waste stream or
  the environment, it creates serious problems.
• It is estimated that 5 billion tons of poisonous
  chemicals were improperly disposed of in the U.S.
  between 1950 and 1975.

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Hazardous Waste

• High profile cases like Love Canal spurred public
  demand for tighter controls and resulted in
  establishment of laws that regulate production,
  use, distribution, and disposal of hazardous
  wastes.
• In 1978 and 1980, 833 families were evacuated
  from Love Canal when 20,000 tons of toxic
  chemicals were discovered.

Lois Gibbs (jamd.com)
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Hazardous Waste

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA,
  1976)
• Generators, shippers, users, and disposers of
  hazardous materials must keep track of what they
  handle from cradle to grave.
• Comprehensive Environmental Response,
  Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, 1980)
• The goal of Superfund was to clean up old waste
  sites. There are an estimated 36,000 - 400,000
  contaminated sites in the U.S.
• The total estimated costs for hazardous waste
  cleanup in the U.S. is between 370 billion and
  1.7 trillion.
• Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act
  (SARA, 1984)

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(Cunningham and Cunningham 2007)
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Hazardous Waste

• The health effects of hazardous wastes are poorly
  known
• Some have acute effects - single exposure could
  prove lethal
• Some have chronic effects - repeated exposure at
  low levels may build up
• Some have latent effects - symptoms may not
  surface for a long time

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Hazardous Waste

• December 3, 1984,
• more than 27 tons of
• poisonous gases leak
• from a storage tank at
• a Union Carbide
• pesticide factory in Bhopal,
• India, immediately killing
• 8,000 people (20,000 killed,
• 170,000 affected).

utexas.edu
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Hazardous Waste

• The same basic principles apply to our use
• of hazardous materials. We should reduce
• our use where possible, recycle what we
• can, and then securely dispose of the rest.