UNIT – 3

 What Is Solid Waste Management?

Solid waste management is defined as the discipline associated with control of generation,
storage, collection, transport or transfer, processing and disposal of solid waste materials in a
way that best addresses the range of public health, conservation, economic, aesthetic,
engineering, and other environmental considerations.

 Scope of Solid Waste Management

• Solid waste management includes planning, administrative, financial, engineering,

and legal functions.

• Solutions might include complex inter-disciplinary relations among fields such as

public health, city and regional planning, political science, geography, sociology,
economics, communication and conservation, demography, engineering, and material
sciences.

 6 Functional Elements of the Waste Management System

• Waste generation: This encompasses any activities involved in identifying materials

that are no longer usable and are either gathered for systematic disposal or thrown
away.

• Onsite handling, storage, and processing: This relates to activities at the point of
waste generation, which facilitate easier collection. For example, waste bins are
placed at sites that generate sufficient waste.

• Waste collection: A crucial phase of waste management, this includes activities such
as placing waste collection bins, collecting waste from those bins, and accumulating
trash in the location where the collection vehicles are emptied. Although the
collection phase involves transportation, this is typically not the main stage of waste
transportation.

• Waste transfer and transport: These are the activities involved in moving waste from
the local waste collection locations to the regional waste disposal site in large waste
transport vehicles.
 • Waste processing and recovery: This refers to the facilities, equipment, and
techniques employed to recover reusable or recyclable materials from the waste
stream and to improve the effectiveness of other functional elements of waste
management.

• Disposal: The final stage of waste management. It involves the activities aimed at the
systematic disposal of waste materials in locations such as landfills or waste-to-
energy facilities.

 Solid waste can be classified into different types depending on their sources:

a. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

The term municipal solid waste (MSW) is generally used to describe most of the non-
hazardous solid waste from a city, town or village that requires routine collection and
transport to a processing or disposal site, Sources of MSW include private homes,
commercial establishments and institutions, as well as industrial facilities.

However, MSW does not include wastes from industrial processes, construction and
demolition debris, sewage sludge, mining waste or agricultural wastes. MSW is also called as
trash or garbage. In general, domestic waste and MSW are used as synonyms.

Municipal solid waste contains a wide variety of materials. It can contain food waste (like
vegetable and meat material, leftover food, eggshells etc, which is classified as wet garbage
as well as paper, plastic, tetra-pack, plastic cans, newspaper, glass bottles, cardboard boxes,
aluminium foil, meta items, wood pieces, etc., which is classified as dry garbage. The
different types of domestic wastes generated and the time taken for them to degenerate is
illustrated in the table given below.
 Table. Domestic wastes and their degeneration time:

Common domestic wastes Approximate time taken for degeneration

Organic kitchen waste vegetables, 1-2 weeks

fruits

Paper, cardboard paper 15 days-1 month

Cotton clothes 2-5 months

Woolen clothes about a year

Metal cans, tin, aluminium 100-500 years

Plastics 1 million years

b. Hazardous Wastes:
Hazardous wastes are those that can cause harm to human and the environment.

Characteristics of Hazardous Wastes:

Wastes are classified as hazardous if they exhibit any of four primary characterises based on
physical or chemical properties of toxicity, reactivity ignitability and corrosively.

1. Toxic wastes:
Toxic wastes are those that are poisonous in small or trace amounts. Some may have acute or
immediate effect on human or animals. Carcinogenic or mutagenic causing biological
changes in the children of exposed people and animals. Examples: pesticides, heavy metals.

2. Reactive wastes:
Reactive wastes are those that have a tendency to react vigorously with air or water are
unstable to shock or heat, generate toxic gases or explode during routine management.
Examples: Gun powder, nitro glycerin.
3. Ignitable waste:
Are those that burn at relatively low temperatures (< 60 °C) and are capable of spontaneous
combustion during storage transport or disposal. Examples: Gasoline, paint thinners and
alcohol.

4. Corrosive wastes:
Are those that destroy materials and living tissues by chemical reactions? Examples: acids
and base.

5. Infectious wastes:
Included human tissue from surgery, used bandages and hypoderm needles hospital wastes.

c. Industrial Wastes:
These contain more of toxic and require special treatment.

Source of Industrial Wastes:

Food processing industries, metallurgical chemical and pharmaceutical unit’s breweries,
sugar mills, paper and pulp industries, fertilizer and pesticide industries are major ones which
discharge toxic wastes. During processing, scrap materials, tailings, acids etc.

Effects of Industrial Wastes:

Most common observation is that the health of the people living in the neighborhood of
dumping sites is severely affected. The exposure may cause disorders of nervous system,
genetic defects, skin diseases and even caner.

The liquid effluents discharged by the industries contain inorganic and organic pollutants and
they enter into water bodies causing destruction of fish, formation of sediments, and pollution
of ground water and release of foul odours.

Control of Industrial Wastes:

Waste minimization technologies have to be developed. Source reduction recycling and reuse
of materials need to be practiced on a large scale. Hazardous waste should not mix up with
general waste. Source reduction involves altering the design, manufacture or use of products
and materials to reduce the amount and toxicity of materials that get thrown away.
Local communities and voluntary organizations should educate the industrialists as well as
the public about dangers of pollution and the need to keep the environment clean. Land
filling, incineration and composting technologies to be followed. Biogas is obtained from
solid waste treatment of industrial and mining waste is done for the recovery of useful
products.

d. Agricultural Wastes:
Sources of Agricultural Wastes:
The waste generated by agriculture includes waste from crops and live stock. In developing
countries, this waste does not pose a serious problem as most of it is used e.g., dung is used
for manure, straw is used as fodder. Some agro-based industries produce waste e.g., rice
milling, production of tea, tobacco etc. Agricultural wastes are rice husk, degasses, ground
nut shell, maize cobs, straw of cereals etc.

MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS (MFA)

• It is a quantitative procedure for determining the flow of materials and energy through
the economy. It uses input/output methodologies, including both material and
economic information.

• It captures the mass balances in an economy where inputs (extractions + imports)

equal outputs (consumption + exports + accumulation + wastes).

• MFA asks whether the flow of materials is sustainable in terms of the environmental
burden it creates.

• The identification of waste is a major aspect of MFA as the purpose of conducting

such an analysis is to minimize the flow of materials while maximizing human benefit
generated by the flow.

• It allows for the monitoring of wastes typically unaccounted for in traditional

economic analysis, and is thus a useful method to evaluate the efficiency of the use of
material resources.

Applications of Material Flow Analysis (MFA):

• Environmental impact statements

• Remediation of hazardous waste sites

 • Design of air pollution control strategies

• Nutrient management in watersheds

• Planning of soil-monitoring systems

• Sewage sludge management

Uses of Material Flow Analyses

Type I

• Development of environmental policy for hazardous substances

• Evaluation of product environmental impact

Type II

• Providing firm environmental performance data

• Derivation of sustainability indicators

• Development of material flow accounts for use in official statistics

WASTE REDUCTION AND RAW MATERIAL CONSERVATION

• Waste management has various functions; they are: collection, transport, processing
(waste treatment), recycling or disposal of waste materials; usually produced by
human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health or local aesthetics
or amenity.

• A sub-focus of waste management, in recent decades, has been to reduce waste

materials’ effect on the natural world and environment by conserving raw materials
used and to recover resources from wastes, i.e., recycle of wastes.

• Waste management can involve solid, liquid or gaseous substances with different
methods and fields of expertise for each.
  Reduce (Waste Prevention):

Waste prevention, or “source reduction,” means consuming and discarding less, is a

successful method of reducing waste generation. Backyard composting, double sided copying
of papers, purchasing durable, long- lasting environmentally friendly goods; products and
packaging that are free of toxics, redesigning products to use less raw material production
and transport packaging reduction by industries are the normal practices used and have
yielded substantial environmental benefits.

Source reduction prevents emissions of many greenhouse gases, reduces pollutants the need
saves energy, conserves resources, and reduces wastes for new landfills and combustors. It
reduces the generation of waste and is generally preferred method of waste management that
goes a long way toward saving the environment.

 Reuse:

Reuse is the process, which involves reusing items by repairing them, donating them to
charity and community groups, or selling them. Reusing products is an alternative to
recycling because the item does not need to be reprocessed for its use again. Using durable
glassware, steel using cloth napkins or towels, reusing bottles, reusing boxes, purchasing
refillable pens and pencils are suggested.

 Recycling:

The process of recycling, including composting, has diverted several million tons of material
away from disposal. Recycled materials include batteries, recycled at a rate of 93%, paper
and paperboard at 48%, and yard trimmings at 56%. These materials and others may be
recycled through drop off centers, buy-back programs, and deposit systems.

Recycling prevents the emission of many greenhouse gases that affect global climate, water
pollutants, saves energy, supplies valuable raw materials to industry, creates jobs, stimulates
the development of greener technologies, conserves resources for our children’s future, and
reduces the need for new landfills and combustors. For example, by recycling of solid waste
in 1996, the United States prevented, the release of 33 million tons, of carbon into the air
roughly the amount emitted annually by 25 million cars.
Recycling can create valuable resources and it generates a host of environmental, financial,
and social benefits. Materials like glass, metal, plastics, and paper are collected, separated
and sent to processing centers where they are processed into new products.

The advantages of recycling are it conserves resources for future generation, prevents
emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants, saves energy, supplies valuable raw, materials
to industries, stimulates the development of greener technologies, reduces the need for new
landfills and incinerators.