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JunHao

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Solid-waste management | Definition, Methods, Importance, & Facts

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Solid-waste management, the collecting, treating, and disposing of solid material that is discarded because it has served its purpose or is no longer useful. Improper disposal of municipal solid waste can create unsanitary conditions, pollution, and outbreaks of disease.

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JunHao

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Solid Waste Management provides waste collection and recycling services to unincorporated Miami-Dade County and local municipalities.

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SERGIO MORAES/REUTERS

Solid waste - the stuff we send down our chutes, discard at work and put on the curb every week - is a striking by-product of civilization. The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in rubbish every month. When waste management works well, we give it little thought: out of sight and, usually, quickly out of mind. Discarded materials are collected, some are recycled or composted, and most are landfilled or incinerated. But the global view is troubling.

In the past century, as the world's population has grown and become more urban and affluent, waste production has risen tenfold. By 2025 it will double again. Rubbish is being generated faster than other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases. Plastic clogs the world's oceans and rivers, causing flooding in developing-world cities. Solid-waste management is one of the greatest costs to municipal budgets.

The waste problem is acute in emerging cities. Landfills such as Laogang in Shanghai, China; Sudokwon in Seoul; the now-full Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Bordo Poniente in Mexico City vie for the title of the world's largest. Each typically receives more than 10,000 tonnes of waste per day. Rapidly developing cities such as Shenzhen in China are adding to the world's 2,000-plus inventory of waste incinerators. With the largest able to process more than 5,000 tonnes per day, concerns over ash disposal, air pollution and costs are rising too.

As city dwellers become richer, the amount of waste they produce reaches a limit. Wealthy societies tend to curb their waste. So as living standards around the world rise and urban populations stabilize, global solid-waste generation will peak.

Just when is difficult to predict. But by extending current socio-economic trends to 2100, we project that 'peak waste' will not occur this century. Unless we reduce population growth and material consumption rates, the planet will have to bear an increasing waste burden.

Urban problem

Solid waste is mostly an urban phenomenon. In rural communities there are fewer packaged products, less food waste and less manufacturing. A city resident generates twice as much waste as their rural counterpart of the same affluence. If we account for the fact that urban citizens are usually richer, they generate four times as much.

As urbanization increases, global solid-waste generation is accelerating. In 1900, the world had 220 million urban residents (13% of the population). They produced fewer than 300,000 tonnes of rubbish (such as broken household items, ash, food waste and packaging) per day. By 2000, the 2.9 billion people living in cities (49% of the world's population) were creating more than 3 million tonnes of solid waste per day. By 2025 it will be twice that - enough to fill a line of rubbish trucks 5,000 kilometres long every day.

Together, the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are the largest waste generators, producing around 1.75 million tonnes per day. This volume is expected to increase until 2050, owing to urban population growth, and then to slowly decline, as advances in material science and technology make products smaller, lighter and more resource efficient.

Some countries generate more waste than others. Japan issues about one-third less rubbish per person than the United States, despite having roughly the same gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. This is because of higher-density living, higher prices for a larger share of imports and cultural norms. Waste quantities worldwide can also vary seasonally, by up to 30%, as horticultural and food wastes fluctuate. For example, household waste volumes double in the week after Christmas in Canada.

Waste reduction and dematerialization efforts in OECD countries are countered by trends in east Asia, particularly in China. China's solid-waste generation is expected to increase from 520,550 tonnes per day in 2005 to 1.4 million tonnes per day in 2025. East Asia is now the world's fastest growing region for waste, a distinction that is likely to shift to south Asia (mainly India) in 2025, and then to sub-Saharan Africa around 2050.

As a country becomes richer, the composition of its waste changes. With more money comes more packaging, imports, electronic waste and broken toys and appliances. The wealth of a country can readily be measured, for example, by how many mobile phones it discards. Solid waste can thus be used as a proxy for the environmental impact of urbanization. Most of a material's impact is through production and use. Less than 5% stems from waste management, which includes emissions from collection trucks, landfills and incinerators.

Peak waste

The rate at which solid-waste generation will rise depends on expected urban population and living standards growth and human responses. In 2012, two of us (D.H. and P.B.-T.) authored a World Bank report, What a Waste, which estimated that global solid-waste generation would rise from more than 3.5 million tonnes per day in 2010 to more than 6 million tonnes per day in 2025. These values are relatively robust, because urban populations and per capita GDP can be well forecast for several decades.

Extending those projections to 2100 for a range of published population and GDP scenarios shows that global 'peak waste' will not happen this century if current trends continue (see 'When will waste peak?'). Although OECD countries will peak by 2050 and Asia-Pacific countries by 2075, waste will continue to rise in the fast-growing cities of sub-Saharan Africa. The urbanization trajectory of Africa will be the main determinant of the date and intensity of global peak waste.

Using 'business-as-usual' projections, we predict that, by 2100, solid-waste generation rates will exceed 11 million tonnes per day - more than three times today's rate. With lower populations, denser, more resource-efficient cities and less consumption (along with higher affluence), the peak could come forward to 2075 and reduce in intensity by more than 25%. This would save around 2.6 million tonnes per day.

Convert and divert

How can today's situation be improved? Much can be done locally to reduce waste. Some countries and cities are leading the way. San Francisco in California has a goal of 'zero waste' (100% waste diversion by reduction and recycling) by 2020; already more than 55% of its waste is recycled or reused. The Japanese city of Kawasaki has improved its industrial processes to divert 565,000 tonnes of potential waste per year - more than all the municipal waste the city now handles. The exchange and reuse of materials connects steel, cement, chemical and paper firms into an industrial ecosystem.

"Waste will continue to rise in the fast-growing cities of sub-Saharan Africa."

North America and Europe have tried disposal fees, and found that as fees increase, waste generation decreases. Another tactic is to steer people to buy less with their increased wealth, and to spend more on experiential activities that require fewer resources.

But greater attention to consumption and improvement in waste management is needed in rapidly urbanizing regions in developing countries, especially in Africa. Through increased education, equality and targeted economic development, as in the sustainability scenario we evaluated (SSP1), the global population could stabilize below 8 billion by 2075, and urban populations shortly thereafter. Such a path reflects a move towards a society with greater urban density and less overall material consumption. Also needed is a widespread application of 'industrial ecology' - designing industrial and urban systems to conserve materials. This begins with studies of the urban metabolism - material and energy flows in cities.

Reducing food and horticultural waste is important - these waste components are expected to remain large. Construction and demolition also contribute a large fraction by mass to the waste stream; therefore, building strategies that maximize the use of existing materials in new construction would yield significant results.

The planet is already straining from the impacts of today's waste, and we are on a path to more than triple quantities. Through a move towards stable or declining populations, denser and better-managed cities consuming fewer resources, and greater equity and use of technology, we can bring peak waste forward and down. The environmental, economic and social benefits would be enormous.

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Environment: Waste production must peak this century

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SERGIO MORAES/REUTERS Solid waste - the stuff we send down our chutes, discard at work and put on the curb every week - is a striking by-product of civilization. The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in rubbish every month.

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Recommended Conferences

7th World Convention on Waste Recycling and Reuse
May 16-17, 2018 Tokyo, Japan

8th World Congress and Expo on RECYCLING
June 25-26, 2018 Berlin, Germany

10th World Congress and Expo on Recycling
July 26-27, 2018 Amsterdam, Netherlands

9th World Convention on Recycling and Waste Management
October 22-23, 2018; Osaka, Japan

9th International Conference on Recycling : Reduce ,Reuse and Recycle
December 5-6, 2018 Vancouver, Canada

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Solid Waste Management | List of High Impact Articles | PPts | Journals | Videos

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Recommended Conferences 7th World Convention on Waste Recycling and Reuse May 16-17, 2018 Tokyo, Japan 8th World Congress and Expo on RECYCLING June 25-26, 2018 Berlin, Germany 10th World Congress and Expo on Recycling July 26-27, 2018 Amsterdam, Netherlands 9th World Convention on Recycling and Waste Management October 22-23, 2018; Osaka, Japan 9th International Conference on Recycling : Reduce ,Reuse and Recycle December 5-6, 2018 Vancouver, Canada

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Europe generates large amounts of waste: food and garden waste, construction and demolition waste, mining waste, industrial waste, sludge, old televisions, old cars, batteries, plastic bags, paper, sanitary waste, old clothes and old furniture... the list goes on.

The amount of waste we generate is closely linked to our consumption and production patterns. The sheer number of products entering the market poses yet another challenge. Demographic changes, like an increase in the number of one-person households, also affect the amount of waste we generate (e.g. packaging goods in smaller units).

The large spectrum of waste types and complex waste-treatment paths (including illegal ones) makes it difficult to get a complete overview of the waste generated and its whereabouts. There are data, albeit of varying quality, for all types of waste.

How much waste do we generate?

The EU Data Centre on Waste compiles waste data at European level. According to data for 2010 for 29 European countries (i.e. EU‑28 and Norway), around 60 % of the waste generated consisted of mineral waste and soil, largely from construction and demolition activities and mining. For metal, paper and cardboard, wood, chemical and medical waste and animal and vegetal wastes, each waste type ranged from 2 % to 4 % of the total.

Around 10 % of the total waste generated in Europe consists of what is known as 'municipal waste' - waste generated mainly by households, and to a lesser extent by small businesses, and by public buildings such as schools and hospitals.

In 2012, 481 kg of municipal solid waste was generated per person in the 33 member countries of the European Environment Agency (EEA). There is a slight downward trend from 2007 onwards, which can be explained partly by the economic crisis affecting Europe since 2008.

On the right track: recycling more; landfilling less

The slight dip observed in municipal waste generated in the EU might have helped reduce the environmental impacts of waste, to some extent. However, while waste quantities are important, waste management also plays a key role.

Overall in the EU, an increasing amount of waste is recycled and a decreasing amount is sent to landfills. For municipal waste, the share of recycled or composted waste in the EU-27 increased from 31 % in 2004 to 41 % in 2012.

Despite these achievements, large discrepancies still exist between countries. For example, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland each send less than 2 % of their municipal waste to landfills, while Croatia, Latvia and Malta each landfill more than 90 %. Most of the countries with low landfilling rates have high recycling and incineration rates, both above 30 % of their total municipal waste.

EU legislation sets ambitious targets

The shift in waste management is closely linked to EU waste legislation. The key piece of legislation in this area is the Waste Framework Directive (WFD). It outlines a waste management hierarchy: starting with prevention, followed by preparing for re-use, recycling, recovery and ending with disposal. It aims to prevent waste generation as much as possible, to use waste that is generated as a resource and to minimise the amount of waste sent to landfill.

The WFD along with other EU waste directives (on landfilling, end-of-life vehicles, e-waste, batteries, packaging waste, etc.) includes specific targets. For instance, by 2020, each EU country has to recycle half of its municipal waste; by 2016, 45 % of batteries need to be collected; by 2020, 70 % of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste (by weight) has to be recycled or recovered.

EU countries can adopt different approaches in order to reach their waste targets. Some approaches seem to work better than others. For example, if designed well, landfill taxes appear to be an effective way of reducing landfilled waste. Extended producer responsibility, where the producer has to take back the product at the end of its life, also seems effective.

Air pollution, climate change, soil and water contamination...

Poor waste management contributes to climate change and air pollution, and directly affects many ecosystems and species.

Landfills, considered the last resort in the waste hierarchy, release methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change. Methane is formed by microorganisms present in landfills from biodegradable waste, such as food, paper and garden waste. Depending on the way they are built, landfills might also contaminate soil and water.

After waste is collected, it is transported and treated. The transport process releases carbon dioxide - the most prevalent greenhouse gas - and air pollutants, including particulate matter, into the atmosphere.

Part of the waste might be incinerated or recycled. Energy from waste can be used to produce heat or electricity, which might then replace the energy produced using coal or other fuels. Energy recovery of waste can thus help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Recycling can help even more to lower greenhouse gas emissions and other emissions. When recycled materials replace new materials, fewer new materials need to be extracted or produced in the first place.

Waste affects ecosystems and our health

Some ecosystems, like the marine and coastal ones, can be severely affected by poor management of waste, or by littering. Marine litter is a growing concern, and not only for aesthetic reasons: entanglement and ingestion constitute severe threats to many marine species.

Waste impacts the environment indirectly as well. Whatever is not recycled or recovered from waste represents a loss of raw material and other inputs used in the chain, i.e. in the production, transport and consumption phases of the product. Environmental impacts in the life-cycle chain are significantly larger than those in the waste management phases alone.

Directly or indirectly, waste affects our health and well-being in many ways: methane gases contribute to climate change, air pollutants are released into the atmosphere, freshwater sources are contaminated, crops are grown in contaminated soil and fish ingest toxic chemicals, subsequently ending up on our dinner plates...

Illegal activities such as illegal dumping, burning or exports also play a part, but it is difficult to estimate the full extent of such activities, or of their impacts.

Economic loss and management costs

Waste also represents an economic loss and burden to our society. Labour and the other inputs (land, energy, etc.) used in its extraction, production, dissemination and consumption phases are also lost when the 'leftovers' are discarded.

Moreover, waste management costs money. Creating an infrastructure for collecting, sorting and recycling is costly, but once in place, recycling can generate revenues and create jobs.

There is also a global dimension to waste, linked to our exports and imports. What we consume and produce in Europe could generate waste elsewhere. And in some instances, it actually becomes a good traded across borders, both legally and illegally.

Waste as a resource

What if we could use waste as a resource and thereby scale down the demand for extraction of new resources? Extracting fewer materials and using existing resources would help avert some of the impacts created along the chain. In this context, unused waste also represents a potential loss.

Turning waste into a resource by 2020 is one of the key objectives of the EU's Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe. The roadmap also highlights the need to ensure high-quality recycling, eliminate landfilling, limit energy recovery to non-recyclable materials, and stop illegal shipments of waste.

And it is possible to achieve these things. In many countries, kitchen and gardening waste constitutes the biggest fraction of municipal solid waste. This type of waste, when collected separately, can be turned into an energy source or fertiliser. Anaerobic digestion is a waste treatment method that involves submitting bio-waste to a biological decomposition process similar to the one in landfills, but under controlled conditions. Anaerobic digestion produces biogas and residual material, which in turn can be used as fertiliser, like compost.

An EEA study from 2011 looked at the potential gains from better management of municipal waste. Its findings are striking. Improved management of municipal waste between 1995 and 2008 resulted in significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, mainly attributable to lower methane emissions from landfill and emissions avoided through recycling. If, by 2020, all countries fully meet the Landfill Directive's landfill diversion targets, they could cut an additional 62 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions from the life cycle - which would be a significant contribution to the EU's climate change mitigation efforts.

Tackling waste starts with prevention

The potential gains are immense, and they can facilitate the EU's move towards a circular economy, where nothing is wasted. Moving up the waste hierarchy offers environmental gains, even for countries with high recycling and recovery rates.

Unfortunately, our current production and consumption systems do not offer many incentives for preventing and reducing waste. From product design and packaging to choice of materials, the entire value chain needs to be redesigned first with waste prevention in mind, and then the 'leftovers' of one process can be made into an input for another.

Moving up the waste hierarchy requires a joint effort by all the parties concerned: consumers, producers, policymakers, local authorities, waste treatment facilities, etc. Consumers willing to sort their household waste can only recycle if the infrastructure for collecting their sorted waste is in place. The opposite also holds true; municipalities can recycle an increasing share only if households sort their waste.

Ultimately, whether waste will constitute a problem or a resource all depends on how we manage it.

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Waste is not only an environmental problem, but also an economic loss. On average Europeans produce 481 kilogrammes of municipal waste per year. An increasing share of this is recycled or composted, and less is sent to landfill.

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Garbage on Perhentian Beach by Colocho @ Wikimedia Commons

Malaysians produce an average of 30,000 tons of waste every day. Only 5 percent of it is recycled.

These two statistics were recently revealed by the national Ministry of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, and they're causing enormous problems for Malaysia. The country's buildup of solid waste is resulting in tremendous land and air pollution for the environment, health problems for communities and bottlenecks to economic growth. Taken together, the problem of poor waste management in Malaysia is one of the nation's biggest issues to date.

For years, local and national governments have been trying to curb the flow of garbage onto sidewalks, into landfills, over hillsides and through rivers, but Malaysia's turbulent pace of change has made that process extremely difficult.

Thanks to population increase, consumption and disposal rates are escalating faster than Malaysia's utilities can handle. Over the 10 years from 2003 to 2013, the generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Malaysia increased more than 91 percent. Urban development is largely responsible, the country's city-dwellers (at 65 percent of the total population) being the biggest contributors to waste. Combine this with a metropolitan culture that loves to buy and toss - and an infamously poor public understanding of resource conservation and recycling - and Malaysia has quite a bit of garbage to deal with.

As a result, most of it is going into landfills. In 2013, about 42 percent of all MSW in Malaysia was incinerated. Two percent was recycled, leaving the remaining 56 percent to be dumped.
Open-Air Landfills and Illegal Dumping
The vast majority of landfills in Malaysia are open-air pits. This quick and dirty method is cheap, but fantastically rough on the environment. Among the probmels inherent to open-are landfills are surface and groundwater contamination through leaching, soil contamination through direct contact, air pollution through garbage burning (intentional or not), disease spread through birds, insects and rodents, uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases and of course, a very unpleasant odor.

As harmful as open-air landfills can be, they are much preferable to uncontrolled dumping, another big issue for waste management in Malaysia. Only about 66 percent of rural area populations are covered by garbage services, so a lot of trash ends up strewn over the countryside. Giant piles of illegally dumped garbage in the Cameron Islands have been spilling into rivers for years, rendering some of them unsuitable for any use at all - even after treatment. These piles have recently begun to smolder from within, melting down hillsides and oozing toxic waste into the soil and water that local communities depend upon for farming, fishing, and sometimes drinking water.

Dump site in the Cameron Highlands via The Star
A Throwaway Culture
A big reason for the waste problem in Malaysia is that its people are facing a profound lack of public awareness and environmental education. The ignorance isn't for lack of trying - since about 1988, years of awareness programs, public forums, and (quite spendy) corporate responsibility initiatives have failed to make a difference due to poor public response. There are pockets of strong support for recycling and inspired individuals campaigning for sustainability, but it would appear the predominant take on conservation and recycling in Malaysia is apathetic.

Trash in a Kuala Lumpur river by Kounosu via Wikimedia Commons

One example of this is a 2001 campaign in which the Penang State government tried to encourage residents to recycle at least one percent of the waste they created each day. Recycling bins were provided, but were misused, and the ones utilized were found to contain 40-60 percent non-recyclable items.

The possibilities for recycling in Malaysia are huge, but at present they aren't being taken advantage of. Over half of Malaysian trash is recyclable (and the rest is compostable), but landfills cater to about 95 percent of it. Of these landfills, 85 percent have reached full capacity and are expected to be shut down in the next few years. To make matters worse, building new landfills in Malaysia is becoming increasingly difficult as available land dwindles and communities refuse permits. If things don't change, Malaysia will be staring down a problem that could negate decades of progress towards sustainable development.
A New Policy for Waste Management in Malaysia
Malaysian authority has been left with one option - mandatory recycling with fines for noncompliance. Programs that handed out recycling bins and hoped for the best have been started and stopped since 2007 but, due to public ignorance and disinterest, have met with utter failure. Despite this fact, the government has rallied once more. This time, it appears to be quite serious about recycling in Malaysia

The most recent iteration of mandatory recycling in Malaysia has just been put into full effect. Called the Mandatory Waste Separation Program, the legal Act focuses on getting Malaysians to separate recyclables from garbage - the collectors will do the rest.

The rules are simple: sort your garbage into different bags, and you won't be fined. Paper goes in a blue bag, plastic in a white, and glass, aluminum and electronics in green. Leftover household waste is to be bagged and put into bins provided by the garbage companies. If those rules aren't followed, a fine of RM1,000 ($230) will be cited. The fine will be mandated until January 1, 2016, and the recycling has been mandatory since September 1.

According to Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan, the public has been exhaustively briefed on the program.

"I'm sure that with the various campaigns being held, the public will be well informed that the process to separate household solid waste is easy and uncomplicated," he said in July.

Rahman announced during the same event that the separation program could reduce the amount of solid waste sent to landfills by 40 percent. A recovery like this is something Malaysia needs.

The hope is that, short of educational programs, the public will react to fines. The fact that there has been poor public uptake on water conservation education programs as well supports the idea that monetary penalty may be the ticket to inspiring sustainability in the public. Reports of the waste separation program's success are still forthcoming. Soon, the country's very future will depend on positive reaction to programs like this.

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Waste Management in Malaysia: In the Dumps - Clean Malaysia

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Malaysians produce an average of 30,000 tons of waste every day. Only 5 percent of it is recycled. These two statistics were recently revealed by the national Ministry of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, and they're causing enormous problems for Malaysia. The country's buildup of solid waste is resulting...