Bo Yu Zhang
Every year, the United States generates approximately 230 million tons of "trash"--about 4.6 pounds per person per day. In 2004, the urban areas of China generated approximately 209 million tons of municipal solid waste, catapulting the nation past the U.S. as the largest generator of waste in the world. As we know, with the population increased in urbanizing global society, huge amounts of solid waste will be generated each year. How to manage these wastes by effective way seems like a big mission for the human being.
EPA defines solid waste as any garbage or refuse, sludge from a wastewater treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semi-solid, or contained gaseous material resulting from industrial, commercial, mining, and agricultural operations, and from community activities. The most common waste in our daily life is municipal solid waste (MSW) - known as trash or garbage which consists of everyday items people consume and then throw away. According to the EPA report on MSW generation, recycling, and disposal, in 2009, Americans produced about 243 million tons of MSW, or about 4.3 pounds of waste per person per day. How to deal with those wastes? Where these wastes go?
Most people may not know the detail behind the treatment on municipal solid waste. A majority of the municipal solid waste will ship to the landfill where close to your area. The municipal solid waste landfill can also receive non-hazardous sludge, industrial solid waste, and construction and demolition debris. However, not all the municipal solid waste can go to landfill. Some materials which including common household items such as paints, cleaners/chemicals, motor oil, batteries, and pesticides are not require to disposal in municipal solid waste landfills. Leftover portions of these products are called household hazardous waste. In many municipal landfills have a household hazardous waste drop-off station for these materials. After the MSW come to the landfill, through the anaerobic process, the MSW will generate some gases which can be captured by the landfill gas facilities, then combust them for energy use. Despite the benefit that landfill brings in, there is no enough space to build a landfill in some large city such as New York city, Tokyo, and Shanghai. This is also an issue we have to face right now. Based on the population expand in metropolis, build a large size of landfill seems to be impossible in those places. As a result, Incineration with energy recovery has become the waste disposal method of choice in several European countries. Relied on this method, it can save the landfill space apparently. More importantly, the waste can be exploited as the renewable energy source. At the same time, the incineration of MSW eliminates the same amount of carbon being emitted from a landfill in the form of CH4 (methane), which has 23 times the global warming impact of CO2. The primary argument against incineration has been force on its emissions. They believe the incomplete combustion of certain materials can result in the creation of potent greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) but also particulate matter emissions and gases that affect local air quality such as SOx and NOx (Pablo Paster, 2010). They also indicate that the byproduct from incineration will have heavy metals and other harmful substances, which include dioxins and furans. In addition, they point out the incineration could have a significant changes on the volume of landfill waste which about 95% of waste reduction, the ash that remains can be toxic and require special disposal facilities.
Of course, we still cannot find a new approach to replace the landfill method and incineration method completely. However, with the technology pushing forward, we will get more and more ways to cope with our wastes.
Pablo Paster. (2010). Ask Pablo: Waste Incineration, Good or Bad? Retrieved from http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/ask-pablo-waste-incineration-good-or-bad.php
2 comments:
With population and industrial, commercial, and personal consumption rising at an unprecedented rate, it's become impossible to deal with the amount of waste we create. I don't know if there could ever be an efficient, cost effective way to take care of our waste, not even if we ship it to the moon! I think a lot of people either are unaware of the situation or just simply don't care, making it hard to manage waste where it begins. The habit that companies have to package everything under the sun (did you know they're starting to individually package bananas?!) and the demand rising for these over-packaged goods creates a problem that shouldn't be solved at its ends (the landfill), but at its beginnings. I believe that in order to atually solve the waste problem, it won't just take new waste management technologies. Without changing our production and consumption habits, waste will continue to be a problem forever and ever, no matter what new type of facility is built. Many countries, particularly Germany, have defeated most waste problems by changing the options right from the source in cheap and easy ways! People are required (and choose) to recycle and reuse everything from their old clothes to their TV Dinner trays, and businesses don't offer to-go items, such as paper coffee cups, at any of their restaurants or cafes... Not even the Starbucks in Germany! They have booming markets for the creation and maintenance of reusable materials and have thus effectively mitigated the problem at the source. I hope that China and America can someday be so forward thinking!
This was a very interesting topic, with some good information. This issue may need to be dealt with on a few fronts. Along with finding more efficient ways of disposing of wastes we need to be looking at more efficiently reducing waste as well.
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