Solid Waste

SOLID & HAZARDOUS WASTE

Kaplan University

HS415

SOLID WASTE

​Solid waste consist of multiple trash items that has been thrown away in any way such as the normal way, by trash pick up or buy land pollution. Solid waste or trash consist of the numerous forms, such as food scraps, cigarettes buds, old clothes and shoes, broken appliances, broken down vehicles, utensils, most of all, paper or paper products that’s thrown in the garbage.  Off hand, about 400 million tons of garbage is collected.  Per year, roughly 53.4% of paper goods are recycled but it could get better.  In the US alone, 100.2 billion plastic bags are used each year.  Out of 400 million tons of garbage, 36% of it is either paper or cardboard trash.  The rest of garbage not mentioned, are recyclable aluminum items and other types of metals.  It is said that each day that 60 thousand garbage trucks are used and filled to the brim collecting garbage around the US.

The Disposing of Solid Waste

​Landfills are palaces where junk and trash is buried under dirt as a process to fill in unused but usable land.  Landfills consist of not only physical waste, but also chemical and biological waste. These areas are created away from human population large or small. Landfills are the most convenient, cheapest way to dispose the gigantic amount of garbage. There are also other forms of disposing such as burning trash. Due to the danger it brings regarding controlling how the fire grows and how it spreads, burning trash openly isn’t practiced today, but industrial burning of trash does help bring down the number of landfills and the gasification fumes are being converted from waste to energy as an alternate form of energy use. Another form of disposing trash is composting.  The process is waiting for the organic solid waste like food and animal waste to decompose to environmental microorganisms like fertilizer and use it agricultural use.  The last form of disposing garbage, which is eco-friendly to the environment, is recycling.  Reusing things like paper products, metals, glass materials, and cardboards are recyclable and have the ability to be turned into other usable household items. This is also a landfill space reducer. The worst kind of disposal of trash is water dumping. This is extremely costly and dangerous to our water supply, causing harmful water pollution.

Hazardous Waste

​The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, RCRA handles one of the most dangerous threats to public health and the environment, hazardous waste.  They manage how it’s stored, it’s treated and used, and most importantly, how it’s disposed. There are four characteristics of hazardous waste. The first is ignitable waste, which is flammable trash. The second is corrosive garbage, items that rust up and/or decompose.  The third is reactive materials, things that can explode. The forth is toxic trash, products that are poisonous.

Ignitability

​Trash items that have the ability to set on fire or spark a fire are flammable waste.  These materials include liquids that have a flash point below 60 °C like alcohol, solid items that can cause a fire like matches, flammable gases like air/helium cans. Also, fuels and gas-like items are highly flammable. This is a physical form of waste and it’s labeled under the DOT 001 classification and waste code 40 CFR&261.21.

Reactivity

​This type of waste is extremely instable and highly spontaneous.  These items are often considered volcanic like waste because we can’t predict when and how violent the reaction will be after an explosion happens.  Nitrogen and Oxygen, nox and sox like gasses explode when touching water exposed to abnormal conditions. They’re very gaseous and toxic.  Explosives and sulfide waste are good examples. The fumes and vapors make them extremely harmful to human health and the environment.  Sporadic explosions happen or toxic vapors forms when the waste is introduced to a certain amount of water.  According to the EPA, there is no official method for handling the mixture of reactive waste.   They are supposed to use what they’ve learned from other’s experience or by their own experience. Reactive waste is labeled under the DOT 003 classification and waste code 40 CFR&261.23. 

Corrosively

​Corrosive wastes are material that rusts up, leaking the dangerous liquid inside it or turning into harmful liquid. Corrosive items are physical liquids with a pH level that less or equal to two to 12.5.  If the liquid can corrode metal or if the metal can decompose on it’s own, it’s corrosive.  If a non-liquid, when mixed with an equal weight of water, corrodes steel at a rate greater than 6.35 mm per year, it is considered corrosive. Such examples of corrosive waste are car batteries, any acidic items, and/or rust removers. Corrosive waste is labeled under the DOT 002 classification and the waste code 40 CFR&261.22.

Toxicity

​Toxic wastes are mainly items that are poisonous.  These materials has the same effect as Reactive and Corrosive wastes because it has the same dangerous effects such as gaseous vapors that can cause long term harm to the people and the environment.  Anything that’s has toxic levels to it or has the characteristics of toxins is classified under the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure, also know as TCLP.   Toxic waste comes from land, air and water forms of pollution. There are lab methods that test the hazardous chemicals to see of they contains any of the 60 contaminants on the list they created.  The process is when use a generator to form a liquid from the chemical itself and mix it with ground water and record the reaction it makes.  This procedure provides the level of toxicity the chemical has.  The TCLP also allows the waste handlers knowledge on how to store, treat and dispose the toxins.  Such examples are gas chambers, alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, gunpowder, pesticides, industrial fumes, acid rain.  Toxic wastes are labeled under no DOT classification due to the numerous materials that has toxic levels in them, but they are coded under 40 CFR&261.24. 

Human Health Effects to Environmental Exposure

​Because humans interact with the environment on a daily basis, the quality of life is indeed important. We breathe in air, so when the air is contaminated, human allergies may arise causing asthma attacks, strokes, and limited ability to breath.  Environmental air exposure could change the climate and the way we live.  We need water for everyday life, especially for medical reasons.   We need it scrub the arms before surgery, to clean the medical utensils being used and that was used before.  On the daily, if we don’t have water to drink, an outbreak of dehydration among humans will spread and other harmful health conditions that water can treat will arise. Environmental water pollution means we can’t feed ourselves, nor we can’t clean ourselves. The land will dry up causing famine and droughts that will cause animals to suffer as well.  An environmental land event brings a whole other level that we don’t have control over.  Land pollution due to waste has the ability to make sink holes, that takes months or years to recover from. Sulfuric acid rain from active volcanoes causes everything it touches to melt away.  Climate shifts from water pollutions can cause a chain reaction in our weather that we can’t control that will destroy us if we don’t make effort to clean our Earth.  Environmental exposure is dangerous but its manageable if do our part.  Recycle more; stop smoking, and proper procedures in disposing both nonhazardous and hazardous waste.

Reference:

What A Waste: Solid Waste Management in Asia. Hoornweg, Daniel with Laura Thomas. 1999. Working Paper Series Nr. 1. Urban Development Sector Unit. East Asia and Pacific Region. Page 5.

Solid Waste Landfills: Decision-Makers Guide Summary. Thurgood, Maggie. 1999(?) World Bank, World Health Organization, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and Swiss Center for Development Cooperation in Technology and Management.

 Resources Conservation and Recovery Act”. US EPA.

Chaudhary R., Rachana M., 2006. Factors affecting hazardous waste solidification/stabilization: A Review. In: Journal of Hazardous Materials B137 pp.267–276

National Center for Environmental Health

World Health Organization. Preventing disease through healthy environments. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO; 2006.

2U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. Our Nation’s air: Status and trends through 2008. Washington, DC: EPA; 2010.