Waste Management

Keywords

Waste, manangement, removal, landfill, recycling, chemical, industrial, domestic, commercial, household waste, fertiliser, farming, restaurant, medical.

Introduction

What is waste? It is the by-product of what we eat (in terms of us going to the toilet), and things like left-over food that we have to deal with and sort out. But how?

Types of Waste

There are many types of waste, including:

• domestic: this is our everyday household waste. It includes what we send down the toilet when we flush, as well as food waste, the things we throw away in the bin, which is collected by the bin men every other week, and anything we could recycle.
• industrial: this is a type of waste that is created by industrial units. It includes stronger items and liquids that are used by companies, but are no longer wanted.
• agricultural: agricultural waste. Doesn't sound right, as it's usually all natural, but there are some things that are not reused in the field (pun intended), including crop residues like husk and straw, farm animal waste, and various chemicals that are used by farmers to control their crops, etc.
• commercial: so you go to a restaurant for a nice meal, and you don't eat everything on the plate. Before that plate even gets to you, there is waste in terms of left-over food that wasn't prepared, but the food you leave on the plate is also waste. Other types of waste in this area include anything that a commercial building uses - even hospitals and medical institutions have waste (think of all that PPE that we used in Covid lockdowns).

Interesting fact: the earliest account of recycling rubbish was in 1031 in Japan. They found a way to recycle paper and sell it on as new in shops.

Biodegradable vs Non-Biodegradable

What do these two terms means? Well, biodegradable means that it can be reduced down to organic matter levels naturally. This includes things like our food waste, newspapers and paper in general, vegetable matter. They all undergo a rotting process during a small length of time.

Compare that with non-biodegradable materials. They include things like plastic bottles, glass, aluminium cans (like a Pepsi or Coke can), iron nails and other materials that do not break down naturally.

We have resources that can help there, and they include:

• Recycling plants: they allow us to recycle plastics and make new things, such as more plastic bottles. CDs can also be shredded down, and turned into roads.
• Compost bins: believe it or not, but you can do your own recycling by starting a compost bin. This is where you can put both green and brown materials in, and let nature do it's thing. Insects and underground critters that decompose organic matter can reduce it down into compost for use as a natural alternative to soil, and which will help improve your soil you already have.
• Landfill: although not strictly a method to reduce carbon emissions, or reduce that amount of waste we have, they do serve a purpose. We should only be using landfill once everything else that can be done (recycling, removal of anything that can be broken down or reused) is done, and there is no other alternative.
• Incinerators: a bio-incinerator allows us to burn organic materials down and reuse them for heating, or as fuels.
• Biomass generators: these, along with the incinerators above, can burn biomass and turn it into fuels.

End Note

There are many ways in which we can reduce the amount of waste we produce. By recycling, using less new materials, buying second hand and even by cutting down on the amount of water and heat we use, we can reduce all the waste produced. But it's not just down to you as a person, it's also down to large companies that don't always do things the right way. But that's another issue that I'm not covering here.