Urban Waste Management - Assignment Example

SIMULATION (TRASH MANAGEMENT) Question: Describe how you would conduct a needs assessment process that aims at assessing the current problems relating to the way trash is managed….. Urban waste management, issues, conditions and problems vary from place to place. The more development that comes into an area, the bigger the amount of waste generated. There must be adequate facilities, put in place to handle the waste generated effectively. The government institutions and bureaucracies must also endeavor to ensure that the waste generated is effectively managed. Developing countries are still in the transition towards better waste management but they currently have insufficient collection and improper disposal of wastes. Clear government policies and competent bureaucracies for management of solid wastes are needed urgently especially in countries where there is rapid population growth through urbanization into peri-urban areas. Services and programmes that include proper waste disposal for management of hazardous biological and chemical wastes, minimisation and recycling will be needed. Waste disposal is usually done commonly done by dumping (on land or into water bodies), incineration or long term storage in a secured facility. All these methods have varying degrees of negative environmental impacts with adverse environmental and health risks if wastes are improperly disposed or stored. Waste management in developing countries must emphasize and be linked to the creation of jobs, poverty alleviation and community participation. Too often authorities in poor Third World cities seek to imitate the technology and equipment used in developed countries. This is misguided and linked to corruption through kickbacks from purchases of transport fleet or from contractors. Often does not make economic and social sense for the poor. For example, there is often an informal sector of refuse collectors and scavengers that has developed their livelihoods from collection and sales of materials. They minimise the volume of wastes to be collected for disposal. Adoption of waste management systems from developed countries will reduce access of garbage and displace such informal refuse collectors and scavengers, who end up poorer than before the “development” plan was implemented. Further, households in many developing countries do not sort their garbage (as done in industrialised countries) and so the adopted technology will simply collect to dispose all wastes without recovery of reusables and recyclables. National policies should promote efficiency in the use of resources, emphasizing waste prevention and the productive use of wastes. There is increasing evidence that community-based approaches to waste management can promote a more sustainable development. Grassroots efforts can be more successful than top-down programs created by bureaucrats or experts with little or no community participation. During most of human history, the approach to waste management in many cultures and civilizations was the recovery of materials. Only around the turn of the twentieth century the emphasis shifted from recovery to disposal. During the nineteenth century there were pioneering efforts in England to minimize wastes as a way to improve industrial competitiveness. Soil degradation and decline in soil organic carbon and soil fertility are widespread. The use of recycled organic products can help to counter this and at the same time reduce accumulation of organics in the city. The rural-urban alliance means that separated organic fraction from garbage and their organic carbon and nutrients can be recycled into agricultural products that are ultimately return to cities again. However people who believe that cities are doomed to degradation and diseases and that landfills are "mines" in the future, also believe that the rural-urban alliance is just a trick by cities to dump trash on farmers. Claiming that the urbans are doing the rurals a favor is a new twist on that same old story. Advocates for urban organic wastes need to explicitely demonstrate the purity of their product, the balanced nutrient value of their product, and the intermediate conditions of each stage in the storage/processing of the so-called "fertilizer" wastestream. International organic farming regulatory organizations require this now. Alternatives to landfilling There is a strong movement in many countries to reduce the volume of wastes to be dumped. The increase of composting sites is an indication that organic fraction of garbage can be converted into a useful and commercial product with a higher value. For inert materials, technologies are needed to use wastes as raw materials to produce new products. Development of new materials from recycled materials will also encourage sorting of solid wastes. "Zero Waste" movement also targets industries and waste exchange. 40 % of landfilled wastes in industrialised countries come from building materials and this suggests that such wastes can be avoided by developing long-lasting materials and dwellings to reduce wastes from need to rebuild. Advocates of long-lasting materials and buildings say that any new waste recycling projects is not going to increase the knowledgebase appreciably. Instead funds for research and development should be diverted to redesigning dwellings that can last longer and that w ill facilitate higher levels of wastes-handling efficiencies. Conventional thinking will provide small gains only. Other alternatives and efforts indicate that Onsite treatment and utilisation will reduce need for transport. Waste minimization is a socially desirable goal. Subsidy on products generated from recycled materials will encourage socio-economic changes. centers with technologies that use collected waste materials are needed wastes that have severe risks and excessive problems in disposal should be identified and those which cannot be neutralized may need to be restricted at the point of creation or entry a database on wastes that are available will provide information to possible users of wastes. A change to less waste-generating with the use of less polluting products and cultivating habits with broad and deep educations are encouraged to understand the extent of the interdependent ecological problems. Producer Take-Back Campaigns and "Customer service" marketing strategy will also foster change in lifestyles. WASTE is not just garbage and includes misprioritizing limited financing or limited productivity so that unimportant things get done but important ones NEVER get done. Why dont we tackle and sort those WASTES? The WASTE OF AN ECOSYSTEM is petro-pollution which should have been obsolete and displaced over two decades ago with non-pollution alternatives. Source: Internet Conference and panel discussion on the theme "Urban Waste Management" http://segate.sunet.se/archives/et-w10.html Waste Management in Sydney As the population of Sydney grows and the standard of living improves, the amount of waste produced in Sydney increases dramatically. The management and disposal of these wastes is a complicated and expensive problem. Household wastes In the pie graph to the right, the bin lid represents the composition of household garbage. Much of this material could have been recycled or composted. Many local governments have introduced strategies to reduce the amount of waste they include: - Charging people for the disposal of wastes - Providing separate bins - Reducing the size of bins - Refusing to collect garden waste Landfills 98% of solid wastes produced in Australia end up in a landfill Sites. Currently waste collected in the City of Sydney is transported to landfill sites at Belrose, Eastern Creek, Jacks Gully and Lucas Heights. Space at these sites is filling rapidly. This is making a huge impact on our environment due to the fact that Wetlands and old quarries we the home of most of this waste. Wetlands are now considered too important for use of waste disposals and old quarries are in short supply. Impacts of waste include the reduction of natural resources, soil contamination, energy use and greenhouse gas production, air and water pollution, noise, odour and the creation of pests. Many of these impacts, if left un-addressed, pose a serious risk to environmental and human health. In landfills, the rubbish is spread out in think layers, compacted and covered daily with a fresh layer of earth. A well managed landfill site is shown to the right. Plastic bags are the most environmentally damaging of all solid wastes. Landfill sites are in short supply and alternative sites are difficult to find and often result in community protest. Government Initiative Solid Waste Solid Waste Management Waste management is the collection, transportation, processing or disposal of waste materials, usually ones produced by human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health and communities. Focus in recent decades has been to reduce waste materials effect on the natural world and environment, and to recover resources from them through waste management (Miller, 2005). Municipal solid waste is the most common form of waste often referred to as trash or garbage. It consists of everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. In 2003, U.S. residents, businesses and institutions produced more than 236 million tons of municipal solid waste, which is approximately 4.5 pounds of waste per person per day. This totals to 1,624 pounds of waste per year (Miller, 2005). As more countries develop and population growth rates increase around the world, the amount of waste produced will become a major environmental issue. Landfills, incineration and more traditional forms of waste management will have to give way to the widespread use of environmentally friendly techniques such as recycling, composting and source reduction. The municipal waste management system was established a century ago to protect public health in Americas growing industrial cities. At the dawn of the 20th century the earliest municipal waste managers characterized municipal refuse using three categories: ashes, garbage and rubbish. Ashes were the residue of coal and wood used primarily for space heating and cooking (Spiegleman, 2006). Garbage was the waste from food preparation and rubbish was a miscellaneous category made of various worn out products and packaging. In addition to the wastes collected from households and businesses, municipal waste managers faced a staggering quantity of organic wastes generated by horses that served as the main... Landfill operation in Hawaii. Disposing of waste in a landfill involves burying the waste, and this remains a common practice in most countries. Landfills were often established in abandoned or unused quarries, mining voids or borrow pits. A properly-designed and well-managed landfill can be a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of disposing of waste materials. Older, poorly-designed or poorly-managed landfills can create a number of adverse environmental impacts such as wind-blown litter, attraction of vermin, and generation of liquid leachate. Another common byproduct of landfills is gas (mostly composed of methane and carbon dioxide), which is produced as organic waste breaks down anaerobically. This gas can create odor problems, kill surface vegetation, and is a greenhouse gas. Design characteristics of a modern landfill include methods to contain leachate such as clay or plastic lining material. Deposited waste is normally compacted to increase its density and stability, and covered to prevent attracting vermin (such as mice or rats). Many landfills also have landfill gas extraction systems installed to extract the landfill gas. Gas is pumped out of the landfill using perforated pipes and flared off or burnt in a gas engine to generate electricity. Incineration Spittelau incineration plant in Vienna. Incineration is a disposal method that involves combustion of waste material. 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. Incineration is common in countries such as Japan where land is more scarce, as these facilities generally do not require as much area as landfills. Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) are broad terms for facilities that burn waste in a furnace or boiler to generate heat, steam and/or electricity. Combustion in an incinerator is not always perfect and there have been concerns about micro-pollutants in gaseous emissions from incinerator stacks. Particular concern has focused on some very persistent organics such as dioxins which may be created within the incinerator and which may have serious environmental consequences in the area immediately around the incinerator. On the other hand this method produces heat that can be used as energy. REFERENCES Read More