Solid, Hazardous, and Toxic Waste

RHHSEnvironmental Sciences

Mr. Bhatiapp.529-548

Solid Waste

• What constitutes as Solid Waste?

• Any unwanted or discarded material that is not liquid or a gas.

Which piece of the pie?

Mining and oil

Agriculture

Industry

Municipal

SewageMining and oilAnd gas production75%

Agriculture13%

Industry9.5%

Sewage 1%

Municipal 1.5%

Waste Stream

• Paper, 38%

• Yard Waste, 17%

• Metals, 8%

• Plastics, 8%

• Glass, 7%

• Food, 7%

• Miscellaneous, 14%

Municipal Solid Waste

• This waste is produced from homes and businesses in or near urban areas.

• Municipal waste is called garbage.

• Over 200 BILLION TONS a year!

• United States leads the other five countries:

• Australia, Canada, Switzerland, France, and Norway

Waste Stream• Waste stream is a term to describe the

entire life cycle of the garbage we all produce.

• This includes garbage and yard wastes to industrial, commercial, and construction waste.

• THE CYCLE:• Starts from putting the trash and recycling

for pickup to landfilling, energy production and the reuse of recycled materials.

Lets Follow the Journey!

• Recycle

• Materials you recycle go to the Recycling Facility

• Disposal

• Materials you place in the trash go to Waste-To-Energy (energy recovery) Facility

Recycling Facility

• Collection trucks unload the garbage onto a “tipping floor”.

• From the tipping floor, recyclables are placed on conveyor belts where they are sorted by machines or hand.

• Sorted out into Paper, Plastic, glass, and metal.

Are we REALLY gettingrid of the trash?

• Collecting and dumping processes mix and crush everything together.

Making separation an expensive and sometimes impossible task.

Value of recyclable materials are lost due to incinerators.

• Hazardous materials in the waste gets mixed in as well.

Waste Disposal Methods

• Open Dumps

• Ocean Dumping

• Landfills

• Exporting Wastes

• Incineration (energy recovery)

Open Dumps

• Least desirable but most commonly used

• Waste is left in giant piles, exposed to wind and rain.

• Mostly present in under developed countries.

• Illegal dumping sites still exists in developed countries.

Ocean Dumping

• Every year, about 55 million pounds of packaging, bottles, cans, and plastic containers are dumped at sea.

• Many cities in the US dump municipal waste sewage sludge in the ocean.

• New York City was the last to stop offshore sewage sludge disposal in 1992.

Landfills• Preferable than compared to open dumps

and ocean dumping.• This is more of a regulated and controlled

method for waste disposal.• Landfill operators are required to compact

the refuse and cover it everyday with a layer of dirt.

• Benefit: Methane recoveryMethane or natural gas is a natural

product of decomposing garbage. It is a great “Greenhouse Gas”.

Landfills (continued)

• Since 1995, all landfills in the US are required to control hazardous substances as oil, chemical compounds toxic metals and rainwater that seeps through piles of dirt.

• The US spends $10 Billion per year to dispose trash. It may cost $100 Billion a decade from now!

Exporting Wastes

• Taking hazardous wastes from your country and exporting it to another place.

• Most industrialized nations in the world have agreed to stop shipping hazardous and toxic wastes to less developed countries.

• However… this still continues!

Exporting wastes (continues)

• In 1999, over 3,000 tons of incinerated waste was shipped from a plastic factory in Taiwan and was unloaded and dumped in a field near a small village in Cambodia.

• US trying to take advantage of Indian Reservations for dumping sites.

• Recycling the toxic waste into asphalt and fertilizer.

Incinerators• This is also known as energy recovery or

waste-to-energy

Incinerators

• Landfills are still the preferred method of dumping waste.

• However, they are running out of room and the expenses are rising.

• The newest method is burning waste.• This is also known as energy recovery or

waste-to-energyHeat is derived from incinerator and turned

into a useful source.

Incinerators (continued)

• Burning garbage helps produce steam used directly to heat buildings and generate electricity.

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Japan UnitedStates

Recycled

Incinerated

Landfilled

• Well over 1,000 waste-to-energy plants in Brazil, Japan, and western Europe, generate much needed energy while also reducing the amount that needs to be landfilled

Types of Incinerators• There are two types of Incinerators:

• Refuse-derived fuel:Waste is sorted to remove unburnable or

recyclable before combustion.

• Mass burnThe waste is not sorted out, instead

everything smaller than sofas and refrigerators are placed into the furnace.

Pros and Cons Incinerators

• Refuse-derived fuel is better for the environment since there is removal of recyclable materials, however; it is more costly having to sort things out.

• Mass burn saves the cost in having not to sort things, however; it causes more air pollution and corrosion of burner gates and chimneys.

• In either case, there is a residual ash and unburnable residues that need to be disposed of properly.

Incinerator Cost and Safety

• Cost wise, incinerators may be more beneficial in the long run compared to landfill rates that are sure to rise.

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found high levels of toxic materials in the ash recovered from incinerators.

For or Against?

• Believers for incinerators say that if the incinerators are run properly, and equipped with appropriate pollution-control devices, these are safe to the public.

• Opponents counter this by stating incinerators will effect the air pollution and the better way to deal with waste is to recycle and source reduce.

Debate between the class

• Each student has an index card that list if the individual is FOR or AGAINST having an incinerator built in their town.

• You can use the information from the textbook, internet, the videos, power point, and your own personal opinion.

Exit Pass

• What two ways of disposing wastes in an incinerator?

Shrinking the Waste Stream

• Recycling

• Composting

• Energy from waste

• Demanufacturing

• Reuse

• Producing less waste

Recycling

• Recycling: Reprocessing of discarded materials into new useful products

• Example: aluminum cans and glass bottles melted down to be formed into new cans and bottles.

• Turning old materials into entirely new products.

• Old tires shredded and turned into rubberized road surfacing.

Recycling (continue)

• About two thirds of aluminum cans are recycled. Ex: about half of the cans on grocery shelves will be made into another can within two months.

• Recycling helps save money, energy, raw materials and land space while reducing pollution.

• It also reduces energy consumption and air pollution.

Composting

• Composting: Biological degradation or break down of organic matter under aerobic (oxygen rich conditions).

• This process makes a nutrient rich soil that aids water retention, slow soil erosion, and improves crop yields.

Energy from waste

• Every year we throw away the energy equivalent of 80 million barrels of oil in organic wastes in the US.

• In a landfill the biodegradable materials are decomposed by microorganisms generating methane gas. This contributes to global warming if allowed to escape into the atmosphere.

• By drilling in landfills and collecting the methane gas, we are able to capture this vital form of energy. Ex: fuel cells, gas and heat from animal manure.

Demanufacturing

• Disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer products such as TV sets, personal computers, washing machines and air conditioners.

• EPA estimates that Americans dispose of 54 million household appliances every year. Many of these products carry valuable materials and also toxins that must be kept out of the environment

Reuse• Better than recycling or composting is cleaning

and reusing materials in their present form. Thus saving the cost and energy into remaking them into something else. Example: auto parts are sold from junk yards, used materials from old renovating houses.

• Reusing your containers is a GREAT IDEA!Tell that to the big companies since they don’t

do this because it costs them more money.

Producing less waste• Unnecessary wastes: this is created by excess

packaging for food and consumer products.• This packaging is primarily for marketing

purposes and has little to do with protecting the product from damages.

• Paper, plastic, glass, and metal packaging material make up 50% of our domestic trash by volume.

• What are some ways we can fix this issue of excess packaging?

• Photodegradable plastics: breakdown when exposed to ultraviolet radiation.

• Biodegradable plastics: incorporate such materials such as corn starch that can be decomposed by microorganisms.

• These two types of plastics don’t decompose completely. They may leave small particles that release toxic chemicals into the environment.

The three R’s

• Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

• Recycle is the last “R” !

• We should pay close attention to reducing and reusing first before recycling.

• What do you, family, and friends do on daily basis that shows reducing or reusing?

Hazardous Waste

• Hazardous waste is defined as : any discarded soil or liquid material that

1. Contains one or more of the toxic compounds, including solvents, pesticides, and paint strippers

2. Catches fire easily3. Reactive or unstable enough to explode

or release toxic fumes4. Capable of corroding metal

Hazardous waste disposal

• Most hazardous waste is: Recycled, converted into non-hazardous forms, stored or otherwise disposed of.

• There are otherwise disposed of by the generators: chemical companies, petroleum refiners, and other large industrial facilities.

• This way it doesn’t become a public problem.

Federal Legislation

• Up until 1975, an estimated 5 million tons of chemicals was improperly disposed of.

• There are two important federal laws that regulate hazardous waste management and disposal in the US.

Resource Conservationand Recovery Act

• RCRA:Created in 1976. This group performs an

intense program that requires extreme testing and management of toxic and hazardous substance.

A complex set of rules requires handlers of these materials to record everything from creation to the disposal.

Superfund Act

• The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act was passed in 1980.

• It was modified in 1984 and now called Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act (SARA).

• They aimed at rapid containment cleanup or remediation of abandoned toxic waste sites.

SARA (continued)

• SARA allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action incase there is a threat of a toxic leak.

• SARA established the right for citizens to gain access to information about their present community.

• Toxic Release Inventory: requires 20,000 manufacturing facilities to report annually on releases of more than 300 toxic materials.

Superfund sites

• EPA estimates that there are at least 36,000 seriously contaminated sites in the US.

• The General Accountability Office (GAO) says that the number of contaminated sites is more than 400,000 when all are identified.

• Superfund is an organization designed to:1. Provide an immediate response to emergency

situations that leads to extreme hazards.2. Clean up or take care of abandoned or inactive

sites

National Priority List

• For the NPL to have the site considered it has to be especially hazardous for human health and the environment.

• Top 10 substances of greatest concern:

• Lead, trichloroethylene, toluene, benzene, PCBs, chloroform, phenol, arsenic, cadmium, and chromium.

Characteristics of toxic sites

• Old industrial facilities and regions of the country with high concentrations of aging factories is where there are high hazardous waste sites.

• Studies show that minorities are often over-represented in the neighborhoods with the most toxic release inventory sites.

CLEAN UP!• Brownfields: large areas of contaminated

properties that have been abandoned or are not being used up to their potential because of real or suspected pollution.

• No one wanted a brownfield for fear of the cost it would take to cleanup. Even if it was cleaned, no one wanted it.

• Owners of contaminated land complain that the EPA is unreasonable.Example: case of Columbia, Mississippi.

Options for Hazardous Waste Management

• What can we do with toxic wastes?

• How can we reduce the waste generated from these toxic materials we find at home?

Producing Less Waste

• Support companies who use less energy and fewer raw materials to produce their products.

• Recycling and reusing materials helps eliminate hazardous waste and pollution.

• Double Savings Effect!The generator doesn’t have to pay for disposing of wastes, instead it gives or exchanges the waste to another company so it can use it as raw materials.

Converting less hazardous substances

1. Physical treatments – Helps isolate the substances.

• Example: Charcoal or resin filters absorb toxins

• Example: Distillation separates toxic components from many solutions

Converting less hazardous substances (continue)

2. Incineration waste must be heated over 1000 degrees Celsius for a period of time to complete destruction.

3. Chemical processing: helps transform material so they become non-toxic

4. Bioremediation- Treatment that uses microorganisms to absorb and detoxify a variety of toxic compounds

Store Permanently

• Retrievable Storage- Placing waste storage containers in a secure building, salt mine, or bedrock cavern.

• Secure landfills- created for disposing of many hazardous wastes.