INTRODUCTION

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials. The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management is also carried out to recover resources from it. Waste management can involve solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances, with different methods and fields of expertise for each. Waste management practices differ for developed and developing nations, for urban and rural areas, and for residential and industrial, producers. Management for non-hazardous residential and institutional waste in metropolitan areas is usually the responsibility of local government authorities, while management for non-hazardous commercial and industrial waste is usually the responsibility of the generator.

Types of waste:
1) Solid waste:
Solid waste has become a problem for many urban cities and an actual crisis for some. Each household puts out several bags of trash every week for pick up. The city then brings the trash to the dump and has to determine what to do with it. Hopefully, citizens have separated their recycling from their trash and even better, hopefully theyve also got a compost pile in their yard so that their trash is further reduced. People need to ensure that theyre not putting hazardous waste into their trash bags also.

Companies that pick up waste and deliver it to landfill sites may also help in the solid waste management process. Managing the solid waste is an extensive process.Helping your city or town by sorting your garbage and reducing waste wherever possible is critical. Because we have lived in a throwaway society for several generations since the industrial revolution, our planet has paid the price. Newspaper is highly recyclable so taking a small amount of

care in recycling will reduce the need for landfill sites and the high number of resources and dollars that it takes to manage solid waste.

2) Industrial waste:
It takes a lot of valuable energy and materials to create and manufacture products and the resulting industrial waste can be difficult to manage. Many cities and countries have put new laws into place to heavily tax companies that produce excess amounts of waste or create potentially harmful effects on the air and ecosystem. Smog alerts in many cases result from not only harmful transportation emissions but also from the output of factories into the air we breathe.

Companies need to be responsible with their industrial waste management and specifically their hazardous waste. Part of this includes reducing harmful emissions into the environment over a period of time and correctly disposing of waste materials. Companies who have no choice but to continue creating hazardous industrial waste due to the nature of their business need to ensure that they properly dispose of that material and are upfront an honest about the contents of their vehicles, their facilities and management of the waste.

3) Hazardous waste:
Hazardous waste products need to be sorted from the rest of your trash. Materials that are toxic, corrosive and poisonous need to be kept separate otherwise they can cause serious problems at landfill sites. Items such as broken thermometers (containing mercury) or cans of paint, household chemicals and batteries cannot simply be sent to landfill or dump sites. Pesticides and other harmful contaminants could pose further problems for the environment if not disposed of properly.

What happens to hazardous waste? Depending upon what the product is, landfill or special disposal sites have the means to carefully dispose of these items. Some products are packaged and carefully shipped to holding locations. Other products can be buried in an area and in such a way that they pose little or no risk to people or the environment. Whatever the case is, you need to ensure that you correctly dispose of these hazardous waste materials in order to protect the environment and the planets future.

4) Nuclear waste:
The management of nuclear waste disposal is frightening for many people. People are concerned because of the scale of problems that would result from human error.

Nuclear waste can be dangerous. Radioactive products, nuclear byproducts resulting from use in modern medicine, and products such as uranium, and plutonium are a concern. Responsible management of these products is crucial to environmental safety and the safety of residents. In managing nuclear waste, some products are buried in sealed containers for either long term or short-term storage. Other products go through a process of transmutation. Transmutation takes the nuclear waste and transforms it into a less harmful product or to a product with a shorter shelf life. All in all, most countries through careful processes are very responsible about nuclear waste disposal.

Methods of disposal:
1) Recycling: Recycling is the act of reusing products rather than simply disposing of them after you use them. To recycle is extremely helpful to your environment. The manufacturing process requires a lot of energy and raw materials. This uses up valuable resources and can also harm the environment. Once those goods are made and then used, many of them are simply discarded. The process of recycling them either in your home for other uses or having them sent to a recycling facility to be either reused or made into something else is a responsible and commendable act.

Simply recycling household items such as clothing, cans, bottles and paper goods can make a huge difference. 2) Land filling: Landfill sites provide many benefits to the ecosystem. They are a necessary solution to a growing waste management problem. Various types of landfills exist to manage different types of waste. They are effective in managing that waste and are often equipped to treat hazardous waste and compost trash. Some landfill sites are even able to harness the gas byproducts from that waste into renewable and environmentally friendly fuel.

Landfill sites can be managed for trash disposal at a basic level or at a more advanced level. Basically, trash is piled and buried and covered with dirt. Much consideration is weighed in choosing a landfill site such as proximity to rivers, streams and homes. Rubber tarps are often put at the bottom level to ensure that waste does not leach into the ground to create a problem for the watershed. Landfills can be managed with layers of soil, rock, clay and other matter to manage and compress the waste.

For example, if you leave recyclable paper in your trash bag instead of separating it for the recycling bin, that paper can take generations to break down into compost. Most landfill sites have sections for hazardous material that can either be disposed of at that location or brought to another treatment facility. Composting, recycling and alternative waste management systems shape the future in terms of the ability of landfill sites to effectively manage waste. 3) Incineration
Incineration is a disposal method in which solid organic wastes are subjected to combustion so as to convert them into residue and gaseous products. This method is useful for disposal of residue of both solid waste management and solid residue from waste water management.This process reduces the volumes of solid waste to 20 to 30 percent of the original

volume. Incineration and other high temperature waste treatment systems are sometimes described as "thermal treatment". Incinerators convert waste materials into heat, gas, steam and ash. Incineration is carried out both on a small scale by individuals and on a large scale by industry. It is used to dispose of solid, liquid and gaseous waste. It is recognized as a practical method of disposing of certain hazardous waste materials (such as biological medical waste). Incineration is a controversial method of waste disposal, due to issues such as emission of gaseous pollutants. 4) Energy recovery

The energy content of waste products can be harnessed directly by using them as a direct combustion fuel, or indirectly by processing them into another type of fuel. Thermal treatment ranges from using waste as a fuel source for cooking or heating and the use of the gas fuel (see above), to fuel for boilers to generate steam and electricity in a turbine. Pyrolysis andgasification are two related forms of thermal treatment where waste materials are heated to high temperatures with limitedoxygen availability. The process usually occurs in a sealed vessel under high pressure. Pyrolysis of solid waste converts the material into solid, liquid and gas products. The liquid and gas can be burnt to produce energy or refined into other chemical products (chemical refinery). The solid residue (char) can be further refined into products such as activated carbon. Gasification and advanced Plasma arc gasification are used to convert organic materials directly into a synthetic gas (syngas) composed ofcarbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is then burnt to produce electricity and steam. An alternative to pyrolisis is high temperature and pressure supercritical water decomposition (hydrothermal monophasic oxidation).

Waste management concepts

There are a number of concepts about waste management which vary in their usage between countries or regions. Some of the most general, widely used concepts include:

Waste hierarchy - The waste hierarchy refers to the "3 Rs" reduce, reuse and recycle, which classify waste management strategies according to their desirability in terms of waste minimization. The waste hierarchy remains the cornerstone of most waste minimization strategies. The aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste see: resource recovery.
Polluter pays principle - the Polluter Pays Principle is a principle where the polluting party pays for the impact caused to the environment. With respect to waste management, this generally refers to the requirement for a waste generator to pay for appropriate disposal of the waste.

CONCLUSION
Education and awareness in the area of waste and waste management is increasingly important from a global perspective of resource management. The Talloires Declaration is a declaration for sustainability concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources. Local, regional, and global air pollution; accumulation and distribution of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of "green house" gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the security of nations, and the heritage of future generations. Several universities have implemented the Talloires Declaration by establishing environmental management and waste management programs, e.g. the waste management university project. University and vocational education are promoted by various organizations, e.g. WAMITAB and Chartered Institution of Wastes Management

Diagram of the waste hierarchy. Anaerobic digestion component of Lbeck mechanical biological treatment plant in Germany, 2007