Solid and Hazardous Waste

Chapter 16
Section 16-1

WHAT ARE SOLID WASTE AND

HAZARDOUS WASTE, AND WHY
ARE THEY PROBLEMS?
We throw away huge amounts of useful
things and hazardous materials
• No waste in natural world because wastes of one
organism become nutrients for others as a natural
recycling of nutrients occurs.
• Modern humans produce huge amounts of waste
that go unused and pollute.
• Solid waste—any unwanted or discarded material
we produce that is not a liquid or a gas.
– Industrial solid waste produced by mines, agriculture,
and industries that supply people with goods and
services.
– Municipal solid waste (MSW), consisting of the combined
solid waste produced by homes and workplaces.
We throw away huge amounts of useful
things and hazardous materials
• Hazardous, or toxic, waste threatens human
health or the environment because it is
poisonous, dangerously chemically reactive,
corrosive, or flammable. Examples include:
– Industrial solvents.
– Hospital medical waste.
– Car batteries.
– Household pesticide products.
– Dry-cell batteries.
– Ash from incinerators and coal-burning power plants.
Harmful chemicals are found in
many homes
 What Harmful Chemicals Are
in Your Home?

Cleaning Gardening
Disinfectants Pesticides
Drain, toilet, and Weed killers
window cleaners
Ant and rodent killers
Spot removers
Flea powders
Septic tank cleaners

Paint Products
Paints, stains,
varnishes, and lacquers
Paint thinners, solvents,
and strippers
Wood preservatives Automotive
Artist paints and inks Gasoline
Used motor oil
General Antifreeze
Dry-cell batteries Battery acid
(mercury and cadmium) Brake and
Glues and cements transmission fluid
Fig. 16-2, p. 413
 What Harmful Chemicals
Are in Your Home?
Cleaning Gardening
Disinfectants Pesticides
Drain, toilet, and Weed killers
window cleaners
Ant and rodent killers
Spot removers Flea powders
Septic tank cleaners

Paint Products
Paints, stains,
varnishes, and
lacquers
Paint thinners,
solvents, and
strippers Automotive
Wood preservatives Gasoline
Artist paints and inks Used motor oil
General Antifreeze
Dry-cell batteries Battery acid
(mercury and
cadmium) Brake and
transmission fluid
Glues and cements Stepped Art
Fig. 16-2, p. 413
We throw away huge amounts of useful
things and hazardous materials
• Classes of hazardous wastes are:
– Organic compounds
• Various solvents, pesticides, PCBs, and dioxins.
– Nondegradable toxic heavy metals
• Lead, mercury, and arsenic.
– Highly radioactive waste produced by nuclear
power plants and nuclear weapons facilities.
Section 16-2

HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH

SOLID WASTE?
We can burn or bury solid waste
or produce less of it
• Waste management in which we attempt to
manage wastes in ways that reduce their
environmental harm without seriously trying to
reduce the amount of waste produced.
• Waste reduction (produce much less waste and
pollution), and the wastes we do produce are
considered to be potential resources that can be
reused, recycled, or composted.
• Integrated waste management—a variety of
strategies for both waste reduction and waste
management.
Integrated waste management
First Priority Second Priority Last Priority
Primary Pollution and Secondary Pollution Waste Management
Waste Prevention and Waste Prevention
Change industrial process to Reuse Treat waste to reduce
eliminate use of harmful chemicals toxicity
Repair Incinerate waste
Use less of a harmful product
Recycle Bury waste in
Reduce packaging and materials landfills
in products Compost Release waste into
Make products that last longer environment for
and are recyclable, reusable, or Buy reusable and dispersal or dilution
easy to repair recyclable products

Fig. 16-4, p. 415

First Priority Second Priority Last Priority

Primary Pollution and Waste Second Pollution and Waste Management

Prevention Waste Prevention
•Change industrial process to eliminate •Reuse •Treat waste to reduce
use of harmful chemicals toxicity
•Repair
•Use less of a harmful product •Incinerate waste
•Recycle
•Reduce packaging and materials in •Bury waste in landfills
products •Compost
•Release waste into
•Make products that last longer and are •Buy reusable and recyclable environment for dispersal or
recyclable, reusable, or easy to repair products dilution

Stepped Art
Fig. 16-4, p. 415
 We can cut solid wastes by
reducing, reusing, and recycling
• Waste reduction is based on three Rs:
– Reduce: consume less and live a simpler
lifestyle.
– Reuse: rely more on items that can be used
repeatedly instead of on throwaway items,
and buy necessary items secondhand or
borrow or rent them.
– Recycle: separate and recycle paper, glass,
cans, plastics, metal, and other items, and
buy products made from recycled materials.
 We can cut solid wastes by
reducing, reusing, and recycling
• Strategies that industries and communities have
used to reduce resource use, waste, and pollution.
– Redesign manufacturing processes and products to use
less material and energy.
– Develop products that are easy to repair, reuse,
remanufacture, compost, or recycle.
– Eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging.
– Charge consumers by amount of waste they throw away
but provide free pickup of recyclable and reusable items.
– Establish cradle-to-grave responsibility laws that require
companies to take back various discarded consumer
products, such as electronic equipment, appliances, and
motor vehicles.
 You can save resources by reducing
your output of solid waste and pollution
Section 16-3

WHY IS REUSING AND

RECYCLING MATERIALS SO
IMPORTANT?
 Reuse is an important way to reduce solid
waste and pollution, and to save money
• Increasingly substituted throwaway items for reusable
ones, which has resulted in growing masses of solid
waste.
• Reuse involves cleaning and using materials over and
over and thus increasing the typical life span of a product.
• Waste reduction decreases the use of matter and energy
resources, cuts pollution and waste, creates local jobs,
and saves money.
• In many less-developed countries, the poor scavenge in
open dumps for food scraps and items that they can reuse
or sell, and are often exposed to toxins and infectious
diseases.
 Reuse is an important way to reduce solid
waste and pollution, and to save money
• Reuse strategies in more-developed countries include
yard sales, flea markets, secondhand stores, and online
sites such as eBay and craigslist.
• To encourage people reusable bags, the governments of
Ireland, Taiwan, and the Netherlands tax plastic shopping
bags.
• Australia, France, Italy, and the U.S. city of San Francisco
have banned the use of all or most types of plastic
shopping bags.
• Plastics industry officials have mounted a massive
advertising and political campaign to prevent such bans.
There are many ways to reuse
the items we purchase
There are two types of recycling
• Recycling involves reprocessing discarded solid
materials into new, useful products.
• Households and workplaces produce five major
types of materials that we can recycle: paper
products, glass, aluminum, steel, and some
plastics.
• Primary, or closed-loop, recycling—materials are
recycled into new products of the same type.
• Secondary recycling— waste materials
converted into different products.
There are two types of recycling
• Key questions about recycling:
– Do the items that are separated for recycling actually
get recycled?
– Do businesses, governments, and individuals
complete the recycling loop by buying products that
are made from recycled materials?
 Composting is a form of recycling that
mimics nature’s recycling of nutrients
• Involves using decomposer bacteria to recycle yard
trimmings, food scraps, and other organic wastes.
• The resulting organic material can be added to soil to
supply plant nutrients, slow soil erosion, retain water,
and improve crop yields.
• Homeowners can compost such wastes in simple
backyard containers.
• Some cities in Canada and in many European Union
countries collect and compost more than 85% of their
biodegradable wastes in centralized community facilities.
• In the US, about 3,000 municipal composting programs
recycle about 60% of the yard wastes.
 Recycling has advantages and
disadvantages
• Whether recycling makes economic sense depends on
how we look at its economic and environmental benefits
and costs.
• Critics of recycling programs argue that recycling is
costly and adds to the taxpayer burden in communities
where recycling is funded through taxation.
• Proponents of recycling point to studies showing that the
net economic, health, and environmental benefits of
recycling far outweigh the costs.
• Critics say that recycling may make economic sense for
valuable and easy-to-recycle materials such as
aluminum, paper, and steel.
Recycling has advantages and
disadvantages
 We can encourage reuse and
recycling
• Three factors 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-extracting industries receive more
government tax breaks and subsidies than reuse and
recycling industries.
– The demand, and thus the price paid, for recycled
materials fluctuates, mostly because buying goods
made with recycled materials is not a priority for most
governments, businesses, and individuals.
 We can encourage reuse and
recycling
• Ways to encourage reuse and recycling:
– Increase subsidies and tax breaks for reusing and
recycling materials and decrease subsidies and tax
breaks for making items from virgin resources.
– Increase use of the fee-per-bag waste collection
system and encourage or require government
purchases of recycled products to help increase
demand for and lower prices of these products.
– Pass laws requiring companies to take back and
recycle/reuse packaging and electronic waste.
– Citizens can pressure governments to require product
labeling that lists recycled content of products and the
types and amounts of any hazardous materials.
 We can encourage reuse and
recycling
• Recycling is popular because it helps to soothe
the consciences of people living in a throwaway
society.
• Reducing resource consumption and reusing
resources are more effective prevention
approaches to reducing the flow and waste of
resources.
Section 16-4

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES

AND DISADVANTAGES OF
BURNING OR BURYING SOLID
WASTE?
 Burning solid waste has
advantages and disadvantages
• Globally, MSW is burned in more than 600 large
waste-to-energy incinerators which use the heat
they generate to boil water and make steam for
heating water or interior spaces, or for producing
electricity.
• The US incinerates only about 12% of its MSW.
– Incineration has a bad reputation stemming from past
use of highly polluting and poorly regulated
incinerators.
– Incineration competes with an abundance of low-cost
landfills in many areas.
 Burning solid waste has
advantages and disadvantages
 Burying solid waste has
advantages and disadvantages
• About 54%, by weight, of the MSW in the
United States is buried in sanitary landfills,
compared to 80% in Canada, 15% in
Japan, and 4% in Denmark.
• Sanitary landfills are where solid wastes
are spread out in thin layers, compacted,
and covered daily with a fresh layer of clay
or plastic foam, which helps to keep the
material dry and reduces leakage of
contaminated water.
 Burying solid waste has
advantages and disadvantages
• Open dumps are essentially fields or holes
in the ground where garbage is deposited
and sometimes burned.
– Rare in more-developed countries.
– China disposes of about 85% of its solid
waste in rural open dumps or in poorly
designed and poorly regulated landfills.
A waste-to-energy incinerator
with pollution controls
 Electricity

Smokestack

Furnace

Boiler

Waste
pit

Ash for treatment,

disposal in
landfill, or use as
landfill cover Fig. 16-9, p.420
 Burying solid waste has
advantages and disadvantages
A state-of-the-art sanitary
landfill
 When landfill is full, layers
Topsoil of soil and clay seal in trash
Sand
Electricity
Methane
generator
Clay storage and
building
compressor Leachate
Garbage building treatment system
Probes to
detect
methane Pipes collect
Methane gas explosive methane
leaks recovery for use as fuel
well to generate
electricity Leachate
storage
Compacted tank
solid waste

Garbage Leachate Groundwater

pipes Leachate pumped monitoring
Sand up to storage tank well
for safe disposal
Synthetic
liner
Groundwater Leachate
Sand monitoring
Clay and plastic lining to
Clay well
prevent leaks; pipes collect
Subsoil leachate from bottom of landfill Fig. 16-11, p. 421
Section 16-5

HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH

HAZARDOUS WASTE?
 We can use integrated
management of hazardous waste
• Integrated management establishes three levels of priority:
– Produce less.
– Convert as much of it as possible to less hazardous substances.
– Put the rest in long-term, safe storage.
• Industries try to find substitutes for toxic or hazardous
materials, reuse or recycle the hazardous materials within
industrial processes, or use them as raw materials for
making other products.
• Industrial hazardous wastes are exchanged through
clearinghouses where they are sold as raw materials for
use by other industries.
• Most e-waste recycling efforts create further hazards and
can result in serious threats to other species.
Integrated hazardous waste
management
Produce Less Convert to Less Hazardous Put in
Hazardous Waste or Nonhazardous Substances Perpetual Storage
Change industrial Natural decomposition Landfill
processes to reduce Underground
or eliminate hazardous Incineration
waste production injection wells
Thermal treatment Surface
Recycle and reuse impoundments
hazardous waste Chemical, physical, and
biological treatment Underground salt
Dilution in air or water formations

Fig. 16-13, p. 422

Produce Less Convert to Less Hazardous or Put in
Hazardous Waste Nonhazardous Substances Perpetual Storage

•Change industrial processes •Natural decomposition •Landfill

to reduce or eliminate
hazardous waste production •Incineration •Underground injection wells

•Recycle and reuse hazardous •Thermal treatment •Surface impoundments

waste
•Chemical, physical, and biological •Underground salt formations
treatment

•Dilution in air or water

Stepped Art
Fig. 16-13, p. 422
 We can detoxify hazardous
wastes
• Bioremediation employs bacteria and enzymes that help
destroy toxic or hazardous substances or convert them
to harmless compounds.
• Phytoremediation involves using natural or genetically
engineered plants to absorb, filter, and remove
contaminants from polluted soil and water.
• Hazardous wastes can be incinerated to break them
down and convert them to harmless or less harmful
chemicals such as carbon dioxide and water.
• Detoxify hazardous wastes by using a plasma arc torch,
somewhat similar to a welding torch, to incinerate them
at very high temperatures.
 We can store some forms of
hazardous waste
• Burial on land or long-term storage of hazardous
and toxic wastes should be used only as the last
resort.
• Currently, burial on land is the most widely used
method in the United States and in most
countries, largely because it is the least
expensive of all methods.
– The most common form of burial is deep-well
disposal.
• Liquid hazardous wastes are pumped under pressure
through a pipe into dry, porous rock formations far beneath
aquifers that are tapped for drinking and irrigation water.
We can store some forms of
hazardous waste
• Cost is low and the wastes can often be retrieved if
problems develop.
• Problems with deep-well disposal:
• Limited number of such sites and limited space
within them.
• Wastes can leak into groundwater from the well
shaft or migrate into groundwater in unexpected
ways.
• Encourages the production of hazardous wastes.
We can store some forms of
hazardous waste
– Surface impoundments are ponds, pits, or
lagoons in which wastes are stored.
• May have liners to help contain the waste.
• 70% of the storage ponds in the United States
have no liners.
• Eventually all impoundment liners are likely to leak
and could contaminate groundwater.
– Liquid and solid hazardous wastes can be put
into drums or other containers and buried in
carefully designed and monitored secure
hazardous waste landfills.
Storing liquid hazardous wastes in surface
impoundments has advantages and
disadvantages
How hazardous wastes can be isolated and
stored in a secure hazardous waste landfill
 Bulk Gas Topsoil
Plastic cover
waste vent Earth
Sand Impervious Clay
Impervious
clay cap cap
clay

Water
table
Earth
Leak
Groundwater detection
system
Double leachate Plastic Reactive Groundwater
collection system double wastes monitoring
liner in drums well Fig. 16-16, p. 425
You can reduce your output of
hazardous wastes
Section 16-6

HOW CAN WE MAKE THE TRANSITION

TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE LOW-
WASTE SOCIETY?
Grassroots action has led to better solid and
hazardous waste management
• Individuals have organized to prevent the
construction of hundreds of incinerators,
landfills, treatment plants for hazardous and
radioactive wastes, and polluting chemical
plants in or near their communities.
• If local citizens adopt a “not in my back yard”
(NIMBY) approach, the waste will always end up
in someone’s back yard.
• A call for drastically reducing production of such
wastes by emphasizing pollution prevention and
using the precautionary principle.
 Providing environmental justice for
everyone is an important goal
• Environmental justice is an ideal whereby every person
is entitled to protection from environmental hazards
regardless of race, gender, age, national origin, income,
social class, or any political factors.
• A larger share of polluting factories, hazardous waste
dumps, incinerators, and landfills in the United States
are located in or near communities populated mostly by
African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and
Native Americans.
• In general, toxic waste sites in Caucasian communities
have been cleaned up faster and more completely than
such sites in African American and Latino communities.
 International treaties have
reduced hazardous waste
• For decades, some more-developed countries
had been shipping hazardous wastes to less-
developed countries.
• Since 1992, international treaty known as the
Basel Convention has banned participating
countries from shipping hazardous waste to or
through other countries without their permission.
– In 1995, the treaty was amended to outlaw all
transfers of hazardous wastes from industrial
countries to less-developed countries.
 International treaties have
reduced hazardous waste
– By 2010, this agreement had been signed by
175 countries and ratified by 172 countries.
– The United States, Afghanistan, and Haiti
have signed but have not ratified the
convention.
• Hazardous waste smugglers evade the
laws by using an array of tactics.
 International treaties have
reduced hazardous waste
• In 2000, delegates from 122 countries completed a global
treaty called the Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POPs) to control 12 POPs.
– POPs are widely used toxic chemicals that can accumulate in the
fatty tissues of humans and other organisms at high trophic levels
in food webs.
– The original list of 12 chemicals, called the dirty dozen, includes
DDT and eight other chlorine-containing persistent pesticides,
PCBs, dioxins, and furans.
– By 2009, 169 countries had signed a strengthened version of the
POPs treaty that seeks to ban or phase out the use of these
chemicals and to detoxify or isolate stockpiles of them.
– It does allow 25 countries to continue using DDT to combat
malaria until safer alternatives are available.
– The United States has not yet ratified this treaty.
 International treaties have
reduced hazardous waste
• In 2000, the Swedish Parliament enacted a law
that, by 2020, will ban all chemicals that are
persistent in the environment and that can
accumulate in living tissue.
– Industries required to perform risk assessments on the
chemicals they use and to show that these chemicals
are safe to use, as opposed to requiring the
government to show that they are dangerous.
– Strong opposition to this approach in the United States.
 We can make the transition to
low-waste societies
• Many environmental scientists argue that we can
make a transition to a low-waste society by
understanding and following key principles:
– Everything is connected.
– There is no away, as in to throw away, for the wastes
we produce.
– Polluters and producers should pay for the wastes
they produce.
– Different categories of hazardous waste and
recyclable waste should not be mixed.
 Three big ideas
• The order of priorities for dealing with solid waste
should be to produce less of it, reuse, and recycle
as much of it as possible and safely burn or bury
what is left.
• The order of priority for dealing with hazardous
waste should be to produce less of it, reuse or
recycle it, convert it to less-hazardous material,
and safely store what is left.
• We need to view solid wastes as wasted
resources and hazardous wastes as materials
that we should not be producing in the first place.