Waste is something that is rejected as useless. These are items that are either so badly designed that they can neither be repaired, reused, re-sourced through composting, or safely recycled.
Wastes are also created when we dump various items together in a manner that they cannot be easily separated or in a manner that renders them useless even if they are separated. Much of our resources end up as wastes primarily because we do not separate them before discarding. For instance when we throw in paper and toxic wastes with bio wastes the entire garbage becomes toxic. The bio wastes then cannot be composted because the compost would be poisonous. The paper cannot be recycled because it becomes wet and dirty for anyone to pick it up and send it to a recycler.
Wastes typically consists of -
• Bio degradable substances (food wastes, flowers, garden wastes etc)
• Plastics (bags, bottles, toys and other items, containers and so on)
• Glass
• Paper and Cardboard
• Metal Items
• Wood Items
• Toxics such as batteries etc
• Composites that are made up of a combination of two or more of the above item.
The conventional methods of handling garbage is termed waste management. That is this approach sees all garbage generated as useless and then goes on to manage these wastes by devising technologies to collect it, transport it, bury it, dump it or burn it. Landfills, Incineration or burning of wastes, centralized composting and recycling are some of the ways of solid waste management.
Landfills
Landfills are those assigned places or holes in the ground where wastes are dumped. Low lying areas are usually selected for this purpose. In developed countries, landfills are holes in the ground lined with plastic sheets and concrete to prevent pollution of the environment due to the poisons that these wastes would release during decomposition.
The poisons from a landfill leak out from the sides in the form of a black, smelly toxic liquid called “leachate” This liquid eventually escapes into the ground surrounding the landfills and contaminate the nearby and underground water sources.
Landfills also lend to air pollution and attract vermin and other disease causing germs. Landfill fires, a common incident for landfills releases heavy metals and other toxic substances such as dioxins and furans into the atmosphere.
Landfills are a flawed technology and a cancer on the land. Landfills waste resources and compete directly with beneficial resource conserving enterprises such as reuse, recycling, composting. Even so-called ‘state-of-the-art’ landfills merely delay, rather than eliminate, massive pollution to groundwater and are a leading contributor to global warming. Waste can and should be designed out of our industrial system. Waste is not inevitable. Nor are landfills.
Incineration and Open Burning
Conventional waste disposal relies significantly on burning garbage, either in the open (common in India) or in machines. The machines are known as incinerators. Incinerators are wasteful because they burn resources that rightfully ought to be conserved for further use. They are also inherently polluting because incineration involves the combustion of diverse items, they inevitable release poisons such as heavy metals and cancer causing chemicals including dioxins and furans. Advanced pollution control equipment cost a lot of money and merely trap the pollutants concentrating them in fly ash and the bottom ash. Highly contaminated ash then has to be disposed of in specialized landfills, which will also eventually leak.
Centralised Composting
In this method, mixed waste is allowed to sit for days or weeks before entering the compost process. During this time, poisons from the toxic components of the waste stream contaminate the biodegradable substances that will be composted to form soil conditioners. Hence plastics and other gross impurities, which are usually removed in other types of composting, are by this time too dirty to be viable raw materials for any recycler and end up in a landfill.
Recycling
Recycling has some pitfalls. The most important of them is that not all materials can be recycled. Especially toxic substances should not be recycled because when you recycle a hazardous substance, you also recycle the hazard. Take for instance recycling of PVC. So many poisonous substances go into the production of PVC. These poisons are inevitably released during recycling.
Some materials that are recycled ought not to have been produced in the first place. Technologies to recycle without much harm to the environment or human health may exist. However, what is technically possible may not always be efficient or economical.
Perhaps the greatest drawback of recycling is that it does not in anyway discourage the use of inherently, unsustainable material especially when safer and sustainable alternatives exist.
