Tag Archives: Sustainable Waste Management

The Relationship Between Waste Management and Sustainability

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Waste management is one of the core themes of sustainability, but achieving sustainable waste management is a challenging and complex task. Despite the fact that an increasing amount of waste has been reused and recycled, landfills still play an important role in the management of wastes.

However, waste degradation in landfill produce leachate and harmful gases viz. carbon dioxide, methane which are considered as greenhouse gases. It has been studied that leachate contribute to 20% emission of greenhouse gases. This can largely risk human health as well as threat to environment. Furthermore, it contains low concentration of gases with heavy aromatic rings, most of them are toxic in nature.

The increasing cost of waste disposal is a cause of major concern in developing nations

Movements of leachate create problem as aquifers need more time for rehabilitation. Leachate can migrate to groundwater or surface water and have potential threat to drinking water. Constructing landfills have adverse effects on aquaculture and habitats by diffusing leachate into surface/groundwater with limited on-site recycling activities.

Various studies also claim that residential areas close to landfill areas have low housing values because people don’t prefer to live close to the area enriched with flies, mosquitoes, bacteria and bad odours.

The lower calorific value of wastes lowers the significance of waste-to-energy technologies, such as incineration/gasification, and make waste-to-energy less viable as solution for waste management solution. The low calorific value is an important outcome of waste collection process.

Waste scavengers often collect in a mixed state with all type of wastes, which include reusable materials, plastic, glass bottles etc. which reduces the calorific value and combustibility of waste. Waste is usually sorted out manually and unfortunately it becomes very difficult to regulate and implement an efficient method. This kind of waste recovery methods is very common in Asian countries e.g. India, Indonesia etc. using improper waste management technique can cause contaminated soil, water and environment.

Water is most easy to contaminate as it dissolves chemicals easily, causing harm to all living organisms including humans. Animal and marine life is most effected with water contamination. It also restricts our use of water for drinking and cooking purposes without cleaning system. The environment is highly harmed because of improper waste management.

Greenhouse gases are generated from decomposition of waste, these gasses are major cause of global warming affecting air precipitation, causing acid rain to severe hailstorms. Moreover humans who live near to garbage dumping area are found to be most significant to risk of health diseases, skin problems, cancer etc.

Olusosun is the largest dumpsite in Nigeria

With proper awareness and teaching methods of efficient waste management we can achieve sustainable solution to waste management. It has been forecasted by Environmental Sanitary Protection Plan that, by 2020 Kamikatsu a city in Japan is going to be 100% free from waste. Although the target of reaching the 100% waste is going to be achieved but the standby waste issue is going to be major hurdle as Kamikatsu have only 34% of land space available.

The lack of availability of standby space for waste is going to be major problem in future because of shortage of space, degraded quality of waste with lower calorific value and formation of leachate. And unfortunately, this issue is not going to be solved very soon.

Why Do We Need Solid Waste Management?

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Some countries have achieved considerable success in solid waste management. But the rest of the world is grappling to deal with its wastes. In these places, improper management of solid waste continues to impact public health of entire communities and cities; pollute local water, air and land resources; contribute to climate change and ocean plastic pollution; hinder climate change adaptation; and accelerate depletion of forests and mines.

Garbage_Bangalore

Compared to solid waste management, we can consider that the world has achieved significant success in providing other basic necessities like food, drinking water, energy and economic opportunities. Managing solid wastes properly can help improve the above services further.

Composting of organic waste can help nurture crops and result in a better agricultural yield. Reducing landfilling and building sanitary landfills will reduce ground and surface water pollution which can help provide cleaner drinking water. Energy recovery from non-recyclable wastes can satiate significant portion of a city’s energy requirement.

Inclusive waste management where informal waste recyclers are involved can provide an enormous economic opportunity to the marginalized urban poor. Additionally, a good solid waste management plan with cost recovery mechanisms can free tax payers money for other issues. In the case of India, sustainable solid waste management in 2011 would have provided

  • 9.6 million tons of compost that could have resulted in a better agricultural yield
  • energy equivalent to 58 million barrels of oil from non-recyclable wastes
  • 6.7 million tons of secondary raw materials to industries in the form of recyclable materials and livelihood to the urban poor

Solid waste management until now has only been a social responsibility of the corporate world or one of the services to be provided by the municipality and a non-priority for national governments. However, in Mumbai, the improperly managed wastes generate 22,000 tons of toxic pollutants like particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrous and sulfur oxides in addition to 10,000 grams of carcinogenic dioxins and furans every year. These numbers are only for the city of Mumbai. This is the case in cities all across the developing world. There are numerous examples where groundwater is polluted by heavy metals and organic contaminants due to solid waste landfills.

Solid waste management expenditure of above $ 1 billion per year competes with education, poverty, security and other sustainable initiatives in New York City. Fossil fuels for above 500,000 truck trips covering hundreds of miles are required to transport NYC’s waste to landfills outside the city and state. Similarly, New Delhi spends more than half of its entire municipal budget on solid waste management, while it is desperate for investments and maintenance of roads, buildings, and other infrastructure.

Solid waste management is not just a corporate social responsibility or a non-priority service anymore. Improper waste management is a public health and environmental crisis, economic loss, operational inefficiency and political and public awareness failure. Integrated solid waste management can be a nation building exercise for healthier and wealthier communities. Therefore, it needs global attention to arrive at solutions which span across such a wide range of issues.

Recommended Reading: The Problems with Solid Waste Recycling Plants

A Guide to Sustainable Waste Management for Businesses

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There are many reasons to adopt sustainability as your main guiding policy in conducting business. With environmental problems becoming more prevalent worldwide, consumers seem to show a strong preference for businesses that adhere to environmental ethics. A sustainable business strategy can thus give you an edge over competitors. But business sustainability is tightly connected to waste management because any business activity generates waste that can harm the environment.

In this article, you’ll discover a detailed guide to sustainable waste management for businesses that want to build an eco-friendly identity.

waste-management-in-companies

Identify Wasteful Activities

Whether you deliver products or services, analyze your business practices and determine what activities produce the largest amounts of waste. Most importantly, determine whether these waste-generating activities can be avoided or reduced. For example, paper consumption in offices is often wasteful and can be easily reduced by avoiding unnecessary printing and copying and working predominantly with electronic files.

So, identify all wasteful activities in your company. Then implement a series of rules to avoid these activities or reduce their recurrence. Much better than implementing a sustainable waste management system is not to generate waste at all.

Reuse, Recycle or Donate

Pay attention to the waste generated in your company and determine which items or components can be reused, recycled, or donated. In many cases, what you consider waste can find an application elsewhere.  Good waste management involves foremost an assessment of whether an item has lost all functional and practical purposes or is fit for other uses inside your company or elsewhere.

Always consider reusing items that haven’t lost their properties or features. Instruct employees to recycle. Add bins in the office for materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, or aluminum. Never send electronics, office equipment, furniture, or tools to the landfill. Either send them to a recycling facility or donate them to a charity.

Create a Disposal Plan

It’s almost impossible to avoid all waste since even raw materials and supplies can turn into waste due to being contaminated or damaged. This is why you need a waste disposal plan that it’s either dangerous to keep on your premises or cannot be recycled. For example, old and unused fuels can become contaminated and require removal from a specialized service.

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To maintain a clean, healthy, and safe environment for your employees and customers, create a disposal plan for each type of waste. Ideally, only biodegradable waste should go to the landfill.

Conclusion

Although a business can find it difficult not to generate waste, it’s important to develop a waste management system that takes into consideration environmental concerns. Businesses need raw materials, supplies, tools, electronics, and various equipment to function properly. They also need energy, electricity, and water. And because businesses consume so many tangible and intangible resources, governments and customers expect them to show a sense of responsibility for the environment.

By adopting a sustainable waste management system, you demonstrate an ethical, future-oriented business approach. Perform a waste audit and use the tips above to set waste-minimization goals for your business.