Waste Management

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Waste Management

• Industrial and agricultural waste

• Municipal solid waste

• Hazardous wastes

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Solid Waste in U.S.gt100 lbs/person/day

• Agriculture - 51

• Mining wastes - 38

• Industries - 8 (fly ash)

• Municipal - 3 (70 paper, food,
• yard wastes)

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U.S. Municipal Wastes

• Multi-billion dollar industry

• Resource Conservation and Recovery
• Act - 1976
• - outlawed open dumping

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Managing Todays Wastes

• Sanitary landfill - 80

• Recycling - 10

• Incineration - 9 (dioxin)

• Composting - 1

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Sanitary Landfill

• Synthetic liner
• 2) Earth cover
• 3) Leachate
• collection system
• 4) Methane venting

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Changing Landfills

• Filling up rapidly

• Difficult finding new sites
• - restrictions
• - NIMBY - NOT IN MY BACK YARD!

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Recycling

• Easily isolated from other wastes

• Large quantities

• Valuable

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Recycling Aluminum, Wastepaper, and Plastics

• 40 of aluminum recycled in US

• Recycled aluminum uses over 90 fewer resources

• Paper pre-consumer vs. post-consumer recycling

• 10 or less of plastic recycled in US

• Plastics can be very difficult to recycle

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Burning Wastes

• Mass burn incineration

• Air pollution

• Waste to energy

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Hazardous Wastes

• U.S. - gt1 ton/person/year

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Todays Management
1) reduce, reuse, recycle (5)
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Todays Management
2) detoxification, incineration (5)

• Physical reactions

• Chemical reactions

• Land-farming

• Burning

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Todays Management
3) Land disposal (90)

• Landfills, pits, lagoons, injection wells,
• midnight dumping, sewage systems,
• surface waters

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Hazardous Waste Regulation in the United States

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

• EPA identifies hazardous wastes, sets
• standards for management

• Superfund - established to clean up
• hazardous waste sites

• Love Canal - Hooker Chemical plant in
• suburban Niagara Falls, NY