Waste Disposal

High-consumption technological societies tend to generate copious quantities of wastes. In the United States alone each person generates, on average, about 4.6 pounds(more than 2 kilograms) of what is broadly called garbage everyday. That represents an increase of more than 70% over 1960 per capita waste production.
Every five years, each average American generates a mass of waste

greater than the mass of the Statue of Liberty. Most of the 40 billion gallons of water withdrawn daily by public water departments ends up as sewage-tainted wastewater, and more concentrated liquid wastes are generated by industry. Each day, the question of where to put the growing accumulations of radioactive waste materials becomes more pressing. Proper secure disposal of all these varied wastes is critical to minimizing environmental pollution.

Solid Waste
The principal sources of solid waste in the United States are shown in

figure 16.1. More than 50% of the waste are linked to agricultural actvities, with the dominant component being waste from livesstock.Most of the this waste is not highly toxic except when contaminated with agricultural chemicals, nor isit collected for systematic disposal. The volume of the problem, therefore is seldom realized. The other major waste source is the mineral industry, which generates immense quantities of spoils,tailings, slag and other rock and mineral wastes. Materials such as tailings and spoils are geenrally handled onsite, as for example when surface mines are reclaimed. The amount of waste involved makes long-distance transportation or sophisticated treatment of the wastes uneconomical. The weathering of mining wastes can be significant water-pollution hazard, depending on the nature of the rocks, with metals and sulifuric acid among the principal pollutants. Shileding the pulverized rocks from rapid weathering with a soil cover is a common control/disposal strategy. In addition, certainchemicals used to extract metals during processing are toxic and require special handling in disposal like other industrial wastes.

 Non-mining industrial wastes likewise command a relatively large

share of attention because many industrial wastes are highly toxic. Most of the highly publicized unsafe hazardous waste disposal sites involve improper disposal of industrial chemical wastes. While industrial wastes may supply the largest volumes of toxic materials, municipal waste is far from the harmless. Aside from the organic materials like food waste and paper, a wide variety of poisons is used in every household: corrosive cleaning fluids, insecticides and insect repellants and so on. These toxic chemicals together represents a substantial, if more dilute, potential source of pollution if carelessly handled.

Municipal Waste Disposal

A great variety of materials

collectively make upthe solidwaste diposal problem that costs municipalities several billion dollars each year. The complexity nof the wastedisposal problem is thus compounded by the mix of diffrent materials to be dealt with. The best disposal method for one kind of waste may not be appropriate for another.

Principal Industrial Solid Waste

 A long-established method for solid-waste disposal that

demands a minimum of effort and expense has been the open dump site. Drawbacks to such facilities are fairly obvious, especially to those having the misfortune to live nearby. Open dumps are unsightly, unsanitary and generally smelly ; they attract rats, insects, and other pests. There are fire hazards. Surface water percolating through the trash can dissolve out or leach, harmful chemicals that are then carried away from the dump site.

Municipal Solid Waste Composition

Sanitary Landfills
The major share of municipal solid

waste in the United State ends up in sanitary landfills. The method has been in used seen the early twentieth. In basic sanitary landfill operation, a layer of compacted trash is covered with a layer of earth at least once a day. The earth cover keeps out vermin and helps to confine the refuse. Landfills have generally been sited in low placesnatural valleys old abandoned gravel pits, or surface mines.

Incineration
Incineration as a means of waste disposal provides a partial solution to

the space requirements of landfills. However, it is an imperfect solution, since burning wastes contributes to air pollution, adding considerable carbon dioxide ( co2) if nothing else. At moderate temperatures, incineration may also produce variety of toxic gases, depending on what is burned. For instances, plastics when burned can release chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid, both of which are toxic and corrosive, or deadly hydrogen cyanide: combustion of sulfur-bearing organic matter releases sulfur dioxide ( so2) : and so on. A further benefit of incineration can be realized if the heat generated thereby is recovered. For years, European cities have generated electricity using waste-disposal incinerators as the source of heat. The combined benefits of land conservation and energy production have led to extensive adoption of incineration in a number of European nations.

The United States has been slower to adopt his practice, probably beacuse of more abundant supplies of other enrgy sources. Still, growing number of U.S cities and individuakl companies have put the considerable quantity of heat energy released by an incinerator to good use. Considerable public resistance tonew incineratorsexists, however, which is part of the reason that it may take three to five years from inception to opening of doento reduce waste accounted for 12.6% of municipal solid-waste disposal in the United States.

Ocean Dumping
A variant of land-based incineration is shpboard incineration nin the open ocean. Following combustion, unburned materails are simply dumped at sea. This method has bbeen applied to stock-piles of particularly hazardous chemical wastes. A 1981 report of the Environmental Protection Agenmcy described the teachnique as promising for a variety of reasons, making the statement that it has a minimal impact on the environment by removing the destruction site far from populated raes so that emissions are absorbed by the oceans. And noting that offshore incinerators not handicapped by emission comntrol requirements that applyto land-0based units. Could be evry costeffective. The desirability of this method palinly depends on ones point of view. It does not much matter if carbon dioxide is added to the air over land or in the atmosphere. Ocean dumping without prior incineration has also been used for chemical wastes, municipal garbage, and other refuse. The potential for water pollution is obvious,. In some cases, too, shifting currents have brought the waste back to shore rather tahn dispersing it in the oceans as intended. Increasing recognition of the dangers of dumping untreated wastes in the sea led

Reducing SolidWaste Volume

The sheer volume of the solid

waste disposal problem has led to a variety of attempts to reduce it. Advocates this sequence of approaches to municipal wastes: 1. Source reduction 2. Recovery of materials for composing or recycling 3. disposal , whether by combustion or landfill.

 At the disposal stage, another volume-reduction

strategy is compaction, either in individual homes with trash compactors or at large municipal compaction facilities. Less available sites. However, it also means no reuse of any potentially recoverable material, and the slower decay of organic material .

 Organic matter can be turned to good use through

composting, a practice long familiar to gardeners and farmers. Many kinds of plant wastes and animals manures can be handled this way. Partial decomposition of the organic matter by the microorganism produces a crumbly, brown material rich in plant nutrients. Finish composed is a very useful soil additive, improving soil structure and water- holding capacity as well as adding nutrients.

Handling Non-toxic Organic Matter

Onsite disposal, for example, with a home in sink

garbage disposal unit-is not really disposal at all. The practice merely diverts some organic matter to become part of the water pollution problem.
The organic-matter content of the water is increased

and more of a load is placed on municipal sewagetreatment

Recycling
Recycling and reuse are also waste

reduction strategies. Glass is not made from scarce commodities but just as quartz in a weatheringresistant mineral, silica-rich is virtually indestructible in dumps and landfills and along road sides.

 Recycling all glass beverages containers would reduce

over 5 million tons per year the amount of glass contributing to the solid-waste disposal problem.
Imposing deposits on beverages containers can also

provides a financial incentive not to litter. In Oregon, passage of a mandatory deposit law for the beverage containers reduced the idea in 1971, nine other states have followed suit.

 Paper might also be

recycled more extensively. In the United States, about 54% of the paper and paperboard we discard is recycled, and an estimated 35% of paper used has some recycled content.

 Plastics continue to be

something of a disposal problem, though much less of one than they were believed to be a decade or more ago. The same durability that makes them useful also except by high-temperature combustion. Some degradable plastics have been developed to breakdown in the environment after a period of exposure to sunlight, weather, and microbial activity but these plastics are suitable only for applications where they need only to hold together for a short period of time.

 Another difficulty in recycling plastics is similar to the

problem with different steels: A mix of plastics, when reprocessed, is unlikely to have quite the right properties for any of the applications from which the various scrap plastics were derived. Still the blend may be suitable for other uses, such as plastic piping, plastic lumber or a shredded plastic stuffing for upholstery.

 One approach to facilitating

plastic recycling is to mark those plastics that can be more easily recycled with the triangular symbol of three arrows head-totail that is widely used to represent recycling, and identify the basic type of plastic by a number(1,2,3,etc.) A remaining obstacle is that there must exist an identifiable market or demand for a particular plastic in order for its recycling to be economically feasible: so a given municipal waste hauler might be able to collect soda bottles and milk jugs for recycling but not foam packing materials

 A recycled aluminum can is

likely to come back as a new aluminum can, a recycled glass bottle as a refilled or remanufactured bottle. A plastics properties tend to change during recycling, however, and recycled plastic may be less strong then new plastic. So a soda bottle may be recycled, but it will be transformed into something else-such as fiber for carpeting, plastic trash bags, or plastic lumber for park benches.

 These particular interest in finding uses for the plastic-

rich residue from the shedders used to chew up junked cars. Once the metals are extracted from the shredded product, most of the remaining 150 to 200 kilograms( 300 to 400 pounds) of material that will make the whole process more economically practical.
Where recovery of materials from municipal refuse is

desired, source separation is generally necessary. This means that individual homeowners, businesses, and other trash generators must sort that trash into categoriespaper, plastic, glass and so on-prior to collection.

 Recycling may conflict in some measure with other

waste-disposal objectives. For example, recycling combustion materials reduces the energy output of municipal incinerators used to generate power. Paper recycler are already encountering this problem, and as users are found for recycled plastics, and the same difficulty may arise with those materials

There are also international exchanges of material for recycling, though precise data are not always available. One recognized area of growing concern is e-cycling, recycling of electronic waste. The concern relates particularly to toxic elements in electronics: lead in cathode-ray tubes and circuit boards: cadmium in semiconductors: mercury in switches, circuit boards, lamps and batteries: and more.

 Some materials are too

difficult to reuse efficiently, for reasons already outlined, and these will continue to require ultimate disposal. Beyond municipal wastes are toxic by-products of industrial processes that are not themselves useful, or are too toxic for safe handling during extensive processing. These require morespecialized and careful disposal. Also, many of the highly toxic industrial wastes are liquids rather than solid, which may require somewhat different handling from solid wastes.

Toxic Waste Disposal

Toxic waste problems come in many forms, often

liquid ones. A notable example is the problem of used oil. Presently, over 1 billion gallons of used lubricants derived from petroleum are generated in the United States each year; 40% of this waste is poured into the ground or into storm drains, and the fate of another 20% is unknown.

 Another high-volume problem, but a localized one,

is liquid animal waste from stockyards, pig farms, and other facilities where large numbers of animals are concentrated. However, the two major types of liquid wastes are sewage, which is discussed in a subsequent section and the more concentrated highly toxic, liquid waste by products or industrial processes-acid, bases, organic solvents and so on.

 Handling of toxic liquid

wastes has historically tended to follow one of two divergent paths. The dilute and disperse approach, based on the assumption that, if toxic substances are sufficiently diluted, they will be rendered harmless, has been the rationale behind much dumping into oceans and large lakes and rivers.

 The opposite approach the

concentrated and contain alternative. Thoughtless disposal of concentrated wastes followed by inadequate containment has led to disasters like Love Canal, New York City. The disposal sites frequently were not evaluated with respect to their sustainability as toxic-waste disposal sites and over the loner term the waste were not contained.

Secure Landfills
Waste disposal specialist have believed that, in

principle, it is possible to design a secure landfill site for toxic solid and liquid wastes. The waste are put in sealed drums before disposal. Beneath the drums are layers of plastic and/ or compacted clay to contain any unexpected leaks. Well s and piping are installed so that the ground water below and around the site can be checked periodically for any sign of leakage of the waste chemicals.

 Chemical and biological

reactions in the waste and leachate can rupture or decompose plastic, and the stress caused by the weight of wastes and cover can fracture a clay hard to contain.

Deep well disposal

This method has been

practiced since World War II. The rock unit selected to receive the wastes must be relatively porous and permeable and it must be isolated by lowpermeability layers.

Deep well disposal

Sewage treatment

Sewage treatment
Problems arising from organic matter in

water include oxygen depletion and algal bloom. This problems and concern about the spread of disease through biological contamination of drinking-water supplies by pathogenic (disease-causing)organisms provide the motivation for effective sewage disposal.

Septic System
Wastes are first transferred to a settling tank in which solid settle out, to be broken down slowly through bacterial action. The remaining liquid carries a load of dissolve organic matter and of microorganisms- some pathogenicwhose metabolism requires little or no oxygen. The dissolved organic matter represents food for those microorganisms. The liquid is allowed to seep out through porous pipes into the soil of the leaching field or adsorption field.

Prepared by:
Mary Shenallyn L. Villanueva IV-4 BEED
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