Steven Akdemir
Prof. Martha Kein
March 29, 2016
Research Report
Wasted: Solid Waste and its Mark in
America
Garbage
is something a person typically won’t think 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 we produce, how it
affects us, and explore methods to treat solid waste as efficiently as
possible.
Waste
exists because we create it. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors did not have
to deal with the same waste dilemma that we currently are. 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 food we just acquired. 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 we dumps, and cannot retain balance
again unless we 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. So, since we are not recycling all of
the trash we 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 we
breathe 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 soon. So far, Burnley and
Eleftherios’ findings do a good job of making the significance of the waste we
produce apparent: since we are not recycling 100% of the trash we produce, both
our air quality and our pockets are suffering, so exploring potential solutions
is a necessity.
The
significance of the trash we produce 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 600,000 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
we continue 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
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