Steven Akdemir
Prof. Martha Kein
March 29, 2016
Research Report
Wasted: Solid Waste and its Mark in
America
Garbage
is typically a topic a person does not enjoy thinking about; it is trash after
all! But solid waste is worth more of our thought than we actually give it. In
Dr. Stephen Burnley’s text, Solid Wastes
Management, Burnley defines waste as “substances or objects which are
disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of
by the provisions of national law” (Burnley 2). He also breaks down waste into
several categories: inert, hazardous, household, healthcare, industrial,
commercial, radioactive, and biodegradable waste (Burnley 3-4). While inert and
biodegradable wastes are harmless to the environment that they are put in (inert
waste includes waste such as rocks that might leave a construction site, and
biodegradable waste includes objects that can be broken down by microbial
action), every other type of waste on the list has the potential to do harm.
Out of eight items on that list, six of them include substances that can harm
our environment; therefore it is in our best interest to understand the types
of waste Americans produce, how it affects us, and explore methods to treat
solid waste as efficiently as possible.
Waste
exists because humans create it. Thousands of years ago, people ancestors did
not have to deal with the same waste dilemma that people are now. Unlike us,
they did not have grocery stores to go to for food and new technologies to
invest in everyday. For example, if they wanted food, our Nomadic ancestors
would hunt for food and make use of every part of the animal they worked to
get, or get the most use out of the bow or spear they made for hunting as they
could (Burnley 10). Nowadays, finding food is as simple as driving to Shop
Rite, or going to Best Buy to buy an oven to prepare the recently acquired food.
The simplicity that it takes for us to provide dinner for family now makes
taking it for granted almost natural. How many times have you seen your mother
throwing out leftovers because finishing them off took too much time? These are
the usual sources of household waste:
food, old technologies, and papers/packaging that accompany them (Burnley 4).
Though household wastes do not usually include substances that are harmful by
themselves, they do add up to 32 million tons of trash a year in America and,
as a result, take up a considerable amount of landfill space (Burnley 8). The
other types of waste (hazardous, healthcare, radioactive, industrial, and
commercial) are a little different, since they include wastes that can be
hazardous before taking up landfill space. Hazardous
waste is used to categorize any waste that is a toxic substance and can
cause harm to the environment or the public’s health (Burnley 3). Radioactive waste is a sub-category under this, because it refers to waste that
undergoes radioactive decay, such as items that the military, hospitals, or
nuclear power stations might throw out (Burnley 4). Just from the number of
different types of waste in which Burnley breaks down solid waste is enough to
give the reader a hint of the sheer amount of garbage Americans produce per
year. Aside from some special instances that require special care, nearly all
of this trash is put into landfills, but how does exactly does this affect the
regular American?
The
extent of waste process that the normal American sees usually does not go far
beyond putting the trash bin on the curb, and knowing that the garbage trucks
will dump it into a landfill somewhere. Dr. Giovanis Eleftherios breaks down
the effects of this in his 2015 report, Relationship
between recycling and air pollution: Waste management in the state of
Massachusetts. In the “Literature Review” of his report, Eleftherios points
out that the quality of the environment (especially the air) is affected
negatively with the amount of waste that people dump, and cannot retain balance
again unless a town or governing body can achieve a recycling rate of 100%
(Eleftherios 2015). For any type of government to achieve this would be a
ridiculous task. The different factors that could stop any town or city from
recycling all of their waste are innumerable: some households could simply
forget to recycle their waste, they could mix up waste and recycling bins,
people coming around to pick up the bins of waste could miss a few, a
manufacturing factory or some other commercial building may purposely skimp out
on proper waste disposal/recycling in the interest of profit, the list could go
on. But just how badly can solid waste affect the normal American? According to
George J. Kupchik and Gerald J. Franz’s study of “Solid Waste, Air Pollution and
Health”, nearly 10% of all negative health affects from air quality is the
result of poor waste treatment (Kupchik & Franz). So, since people cannot
recycling all of the trash they create, the quality of our air suffers. With
poorer air quality comes a monetary cost as well. Eleftherios mentions that air
quality of an area increases with its income per capita (Eleftherios 2015).
Ridding the air everyone breathes of its pollutants is a difficult task, so
methods to do this successfully are expected to cost some money. The
Pay-As-You-Throw system is a good example of this, which will be broken down later
on. So far, Burnley and Eleftherios’ findings do a good job of making the
significance of the waste produced apparent: since people are not recycling
100% of the trash produced, both air quality and people’s pockets are
suffering, so exploring potential solutions is a necessity.
The
significance of the trash produced is not a recent realization; there have
already been many attempts to improve this situation across the map. In
Massachusetts, studies by Eleftherios have shown a very clear correlation
between air quality and areas that use the Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) program. The
PAYT chargers the consumer for the amount of trash that will be thrown out/recycled
each time, rather than paying one flat rate for waste disposal as a part of
one’s taxes (Eleftherios 2015). This provides a much simpler way to separate
wastes and recyclables and makes the consumer more aware of what he or she is
doing with his or her waste, but also requires them to pay money each time they
want to get rid of their trash instead of including it in the taxes and
forgetting about it. This provides a solution for areas that need better air
quality and that have residents who are willing to pay out of their pocket each
time they want to dispose of their waste.
Rather
than dispose of the waste more efficiently, people have tried using excessive
amounts of waste as a resource, instead. Jordan Howell covers in, Alternative Waste Solutions: Learning from
the Hawai’i Experience, the “resource recovery” method of dealing with
waste (Howell 1). Honolulu’s Department of environmental services state that
combustible waste (over 600,00 tons) is separated from non-combustible waste
(which is goes straight to a landfill), and is incinerated to produce methane,
which is trapped and converted into electricity which is used to power roughly
10% of the island of Oahu (“How the City Manages Our Waste”). This method is
very efficient, since it reduces the amount of waste going into the landfills
and gives the island energy at the same time. However, incinerating the
combustible waste does release methane and other gases that pollute the air,
which would defeat the purpose of the whole system if the benefits to it were
not so great.
These
two methods are successful examples of what efficiency in waste treatment can
achieve. Since they are done on opposite sides of the US, it is clear that
versatility and open-mindedness is a requirement when it comes to dealing with
a situation such as this, since it is present in every state between
Massachusetts and Hawai’i, as well. It all comes down to understanding what
type of waste is the biggest problem in the area, and one key word: recycling. In both examples, recycling
is the driving factor behind each method. In Hawai’i, combustible waste was
recycled into methane gas, which provided energy for one tenth of the island of
Oahu. In Massachusetts, the PAYT method simply made waste separation/recycling
an easier process for waste companies to work with, and eventually create new
products. Therefore, the key to treating waste efficiently and improving the
quality of our environment and our pockets is being able to identify the types
of waste and its dangers, and the most effective ways to recycle them.
As
mankind continues to advance as a species, we will continue to create great
things that require our whole focus, thereby forgetting about the footprint we
leave behind. Trash may not be a delightful thought, but its derivatives are
even less so. Understanding the different types of waste and what they can do
to us should drive us to consider our footprint a little more heavily, and do
the world and everyone in it a favor by treating trash a little more seriously
than just trash.
Bibliography
"How
the City Manages Our Waste.” City & County of Honolulu, Department of
Environmental Services. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.opala.org/solid_waste/archive/How_our_City_manages_our_waste.html>.
Burnley, S. (2014). Solid Wastes
Management. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Eleftherios Giovanis, Relationship
between recycling rate and air pollution: Waste management in the state of
Massachusetts, Waste Management, Volume 40, June 2015, Pages 192-203, ISSN
0956-053X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2015.03.006.
Howell, J. (2015). Alternative Waste
Solutions for the Pacific Region: Learning from the Hawai'i Experience.
AsiaPacific Issues. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/38699
Kupchik,
George J., and Gerald J. Franz. "Solid Waste, Air Pollution and
Health." Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association 26.2
(1976): 116-18. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
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