Chapter 23 Solid and Hazardous Waste

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Chapter 23Solid and Hazardous Waste
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Overview of Chapter 23

• Solid Waste
• Types of Solid Waste
• Waste Prevention
• Reducing the Amount of Waste
• Reusing Products
• Recycling Materials
• Hazardous Waste
• Types of Hazardous Waste
• Management of Hazardous Waste
• Environmental Justice

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Humans generate waste that other organisms cannot
use
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• Plastic lunch bags
• Throw-away napkins
• Disposable diapers replaced cloth in the 60s
• Disposable plates and forks
• Larger items made NOT to last
• Packaging!!!

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• Past broken bookcase ? wooden stool ? wood for
  fire

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Solid Waste

• US generates more solid waste per capita than any
  other country
• 2.1kg per person per day (4 ½ lbs)
• Types of Solid Waste
• Municipal solid waste
• Solid material discarded by homes, office
  buildings, retail stores, schools, hospitals,
  prisons, etc
• Non-municipal solid waste
• Solid waste generated by industry, agriculture,
  and mining

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Composition of Municipal Solid Waste
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e-waste

• Small by weight, but effects are large
• Contain valuable metals lead, mercury, cadmium
• Cathode ray tubes (CRT) (hazardous waste)
• More expensive to recycle than to go to landfill
• Some recycled waste goes to China no protective
  clothing/respiratory gear

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• PVC polyvinyl chloride
• Wire insulator
• Pipes
• Leather-like material clothes
• Water beds
• Shower curtains
• Pool toys
• Inflatable structures

Releases dioxins when burned
Most environmentally harmful plastic dioxins
cancer and endocrine disrupter
Solution phase out PVC use for other materials
Difficult to recycle because of many additives
PVC or vinyl
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Reduce Reuse Recycle
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REduce

• Individual print double sided, email
  assignments (dont print), dont print emails,
  downloading music and not buying CDs, less paper
  towels
• Corporations less packaging that protects
  product equally

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Reducing Waste

• Purchase products with less packaging

HW identify a product with wasteful packaging
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REuse

• Ideally requires no more energy input
• Newspapers for animal beds, wrapping paper
• Reuse coffee mug instead of styrofoam/paper cup.
• eBay, Craigslist, Freecycle
• Bottling factory wash, sterilized, refilled

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REcycle

• Convert materials into raw materials for some
  other purpose
• Closed-loop recycle into same product (aluminum
  cans) cheaper to recycle than to make new
• Open-loop plastic soda bottle into polar fleece
  jacket, tires into playground
• Avoids landfill, but still requires raw material
  (petroleum) for new bottles

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• Requires more energy than reducing or reusing
  cleaning, transporting, sorting
• Sometimes difficult to find buyers for glass and
  plastic
• 1/3 MSW in US recycled

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Recycling Materials

• Every ton of recycled paper saves
• 17 trees
• 7000 gallons of water
• 4100 kw-hrs of energy
• 3 cubic yards of landfill space

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Recycling

• Recycling Plastic
• Less expensive to make from raw materials
• Recycling Glass
• Costs less than new glass
• Can be used to make glassphalt (right)

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Recycling

• Recycling Aluminum
• Making new can from recycled one costs far less
  than making a brand new one

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Recycling

• Recycling Tires
• Few products are made from old tires
• Playground equipment
• Trashcans
• Garden hose
• Carpet

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composting

• Pros
• Diverts organic materials (food and yard waste)
  from landfills
• Space is saved and methane gas (from anaerobic
  respiration) is avoided
• Produces humus to enrich soil
• Other info
• Turn frequently to aerate
• Worms can be used

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Disposal of Solid Waste

• Three methods
• Sanitary Landfills
• Recycling
• Incineration

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Sanitary Landfill

• NIMBY
• Problems
• They fill up
• Methane gas production by microorganisms (MSW
  compacted into cells to save space)
• Greenhouse gas and explosive
• Can be captured to generate heat or electricity
• Contamination of ground water by leachate

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Sanitary Landfill

• Clay or plastic lining bottom
• Underneath pipes collect leachate
• Soil and clay cover (cap) when at capacity

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Sanitary Landfill

• Ideally
• No metals (aluminum, copper, etc) valuable and
  leach
• No organic matter (food scraps, yard waste)
  source of methane
• No toxic material (household cleaners, oil-based
  paints, electronics)
• Glass and plastic only if cant recycle

• Special Problem of Tires
• Cannot be melted and reused for tires
• Can be incinerated or shredded
• Mosquito breeding

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North Pacific Gyre collects vortex of garbage
Approximately the size of TEXAS
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Other than landfills, how else do we dispose of
garbage???????
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Incineration

• Pros
• Volume of solid waste reduced by 90
• Produces heat that can make steam to generate
  electricity
• Called waste-to-energy
• Produce less carbon emissions than fossil fuel
  power plants (right)

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Incineration
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Incinerator

• Problems Associated with Incineration
• Yields air pollution (HCl, SO2, NOX)
• Produce large amounts of ash
• Sent to landfill if safe (e.g.lacking lead) or
  used elsewhere (e.g. cement blocks)
• Sent to hazardous waste landfill if toxic
• Site selection often controversial, expensive
  (and then requires lots of MSW to be profitable,
  may reduce municipal push to recycle)

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Integrated Waste Management
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Hazardous Waste

• Any discarded chemical that threatens human
  health or the environment
• Reactive, corrosive, explosive or toxic chemicals
• Types of Hazardous Waste
• Dioxins
• PCBs (insulator in transformers)
• Radioactive waste
• See chart (right)

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Love Canal, New York (1978-80)

• A hazardous waste landfill ? school and housing
• Cancer-causing (carcinogen) waste (benzene) found
  in basement
• Instrumental in leading to the development of
  CERCLA (superfund next slide)

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Management of Hazardous Waste

1. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
   (1976, 1984) identifies what constitutes
   hazardous waste and provides guidelines regarding
   transporting and waste disposal cradle to
   grave keeps a record of hazardous waste to
   reduce illegal dumping
2. Comprehensive Environmental Response,
   Compensation, and Liability Act (1980) (CERCLA)
   aka superfund pays for cleanup

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Management of Hazardous Waste
States with the greatest number of sites New
Jersey (115) California (93) Pennsylvania
(93) New York (86) Michigan (65)

• Cleaning up existing hazardous waste superfund
  program
• 400,000 waste sites
• Leaking chemical storage tanks and drums (right)
• Pesticides dumps
• Piles of mining wastes

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Cleaning up hazardous waste

• Bioremediation using microorganisms (little
  longer but cheap) excellent for petroleum
• Phytoremediation use plants and then plants
  disposed of at hazardous waste landfill
• Dig up contaminated soil and burn it
• Dilute soil contaminate water, water shortage
• Vapor extraction (inject air in soil remove
  volatile compounds)

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Management of Hazardous Waste

• Treatment of
• (1) conversion to less hazardous materials (e.g.
  neutralize a corrosive acid with a base)
• (2) Incinerate/burn dispose ash at special
  landfill
• (3) Hazardous waste landfill several clay
  layers/heavy plastic liner on bottom
• Contents placed in containers
• Careful monitoring of nearby groundwater
• Final cover must limit liquids through landfill

Another solution use less hazardous waste
(substitute with less harmful product) in the
first place.
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• Hazardous Waste Landfill

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Environmental Justice

• International Waste Management
• Developed countries sometimes send their waste to
  developing countries
• Less expensive than following laws within the
  country
• Basel Convention (1989)
• Restricts international transport of hazardous
  waste

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Persistent organic pollutants

• Persist, bioaccumulate in tissue, biomagnify in
  food chain
• Stockholm Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants
• Include
• PCB
• DDT
• dioxins