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Solid waste

Any unwanted or discarded material that is not a liquid or a gas.

Industrial solid waste

Waste produced by mines, farms, and industries that supply people with goods and services.

Municipal solid waste

Often called garbage or trash, which consists of the combined solid waste produced by homes and workplaces other than factories.

Why are plastic bags so damaging to the environment?

They never disintegrate completely, they can kill wildlife and livestock that try to eat them or become ensnared by them, they can block drains and sewage systems, marine animals often eat them or get caught in the plastic.

According to the EPA, 98.5% of all solid waste produced in the US is industrial waste from

Mining, agriculture, and industry.

Hazardous or toxic waste

Any discarded material or substance that threatens human health or the environment because it is toxic, is corrosive, is flammable, can undergo violent or explosive chemical reactions, or can cause disease.

Improper handling of toxic wastes can lead to…

Air and water pollution, degradation of ecosystems, and health threats.

What are the two main classes of hazardous wastes? Name examples.

Organic compounds: various solvents, pesticides, PCBs, dioxins. Toxic heavy metals: lead, mercury, arsenic.

E-waste

Discarded electronic equipment such as computers, cell phones, television sets, etc. It is the fastest-growing solid waste problem in the US and the world, especially in China.

Name the 2 ways society deals with solid wastes.

Waste management, waste reduction.

Waste reduction

Producing much less solid waste and reusing, recycling, and composting whenever possible.

Waste management

Focuses on controlling waste in order to limit its environmental harm but does not attempt to reduce the amount of waste produced.

What happens to waste in “waste management”?

It involves mixing wastes together and then burying them, burning them, or shipping them to another location.

Integrated waste management

A variety of coordinated strategies for both waste management and waste reduction.

Name the “4 R’s” listed in priority.

Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Composting

Mimics nature by using bacteria and other decomposers to break down yard trimmings, vegetable food scraps, and other biodegradable organic wastes into material that can be used to improve soil fertility.

Name some strategies that communities can use to reduce the amount of waste produced.

Change industrial processes to eliminate or reduce the use of harmful chemicals, redesign manufacturing processes and products to use less material and energy, develop products that are easy to repair, reuse, remanufacture, compost, or recycle, establish cradle-to-cradle responsibility laws, eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging, use fee-per-bag solid waste collection systems.

Describe the cradle-to-cradle idea.

Companies are required to take back various consumer products for recycling or remanufacturing - very significant for e-waste.

Describe the difference between upcycling and downcycling.

Upcycling: items recycled into a form that is more useful than the recycled item was. Downcycling: the recycled product is still useful, but not as useful or long-lived as the original item.

What are the 5 major types of recycled material?

Paper, Glass, Aluminum, Steel, Some plastics.

Primary recycling

Using materials again for the same purpose, such as aluminum.

Secondary recycling

Involves downcycling or upcycling waste materials into different products, such as turning tires into flip-flops.

What is the issue with using material-recovery facilities?

They encourage the production of more trash because in order for them to be profitable, they need a constant flow of waste.

Plastics consist of various types of large

Polymers or resins-organic molecules made by chemically linking organic chemicals produced mostly from oil and natural gas.

Describe a waste-to-energy incinerator.

It contains a combustion chamber where waste is burned at extremely high temperature. Heat from the burning material is used to boil water and produce steam. The steam in turn drives a turbine that generates electricity.

Why does the US have such a low incineration rate of waste?

Incineration earned a bad reputation for high pollution and poorly regulated incineration, it competes with the low cost of landfills.

Sanitary landfill

Solid wastes are spread out in thin layers, compacted, and covered daily with a fresh layer of clay or plastic foam.

What is the purpose of leachate pipes?

To contain contaminated water—called leachate—so that it does not leak out of the landfill and pollute nearby soil and groundwater.

Open dump

A field or large pit where garbage is deposited and sometimes burned; these are rare in more developed countries.

Pros and cons of waste-to-energy incineration.

Pros: reduces trash volume, produces energy, concentrates hazardous substances into ash for burial. Cons: expensive to build, produces hazardous waste, encourages waste production.

Pros and cons of sanitary landfills.

Pros: low operating cost, can handle large amounts of waste, filled land can be used for other purposes. Cons: noise, traffic, dust, releases greenhouse gases, encourages waste production, can contaminate groundwater if leaks.

Three priorities for dealing with hazardous waste.

Produce less, convert as much of it as possible to less-hazardous substances, put the rest in long-term safe storage.

Name the different ways to detoxify hazardous wastes.

Physical methods, chemical methods, biological methods (bioremediation, phytoremediation), thermal methods (incineration, plasma gasification).

Deep well disposal

Liquid hazardous wastes are pumped under high pressure through a pipe into dry, porous rock formations far beneath aquifers that are tapped for drinking and irrigation water.

Surface impoundments

Liquid hazardous wastes are stored in lined ponds, pits, or lagoons.

What is the purpose of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act?

The EPA can set standards for the management of several types of hazardous waste and issue permits to companies that allow them to produce and dispose of a certain amount of those wastes by approved methods.

What is the EPA’s toxic release inventory?

It is a website that allows you to find out where toxic chemicals are being stored and released.

What was established by the Stockholm Convention?

Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty - The treaty started by regulating the use of 12 widely used persistent organic pollutants that can accumulate in the fatty tissues of humans and other animals that occupy high trophic levels in food webs.

What are the factors that hinder reuse and recycling?

The market prices of almost all products do not include the harmful environmental and health costs associated with producing, using, and discarding them, the economic playing field is uneven because in most countries resource extraction industries receive more government tax breaks and subsidies than reuse and recycling industries, the demand and price paid for recycled materials fluctuates, mostly because it is not a high priority for most governments, businesses, and individuals to buy goods made of recycled materials.

Biomimicry

Redesigning manufacturing processes to mimic the way nature deals with wastes.

Industrial ecosystem

A complex web of interactions among various industries, in which “wastes” produced by one industrial process are sold to other companies as raw materials. Finding profitable uses for a company’s wastes is an extension of sustainable manufacturing.