Waste management

Overview

Waste management is the process of reducing the negative effects of waste on the environment and society, including human health and wellbeing. It follows a hierarchy of preferred practices for reducing waste and its negative impacts:

The waste management pyramid represents best practices to avoid or eliminate waste, reabsorb waste into productive reuse where possible, and properly handle what remains. Taken together, it provides a strategy for businesses to optimize and promote responsible management of the wastes they create, with a goal of keeping valuable resources out of landfills and in productive use.

Resources

Managing and Reducing Wastes: A Guide for Commercial Buildings

Business risks

Businesses produce waste of all kinds. Some of it is in significant volumes and some is hazardous. Our ecosystems can only absorb certain kinds of waste, in limited amounts.

As the burden of waste becomes more critical, treatment and disposal become increasingly subject to regulation and related costs. And as natural resources dwindle and become increasingly more expensive to source, businesses must to find ways to recover those resources from products and manufacturing processes for reuse and innovate better alternatives, or risk sourcing crises.

To preserve ecosystems and reduce landfill burdens and improper disposal of waste that cannot be processed by ecosystems, businesses have a social and environmental responsibility to manage their waste in the most preferred and sustainable ways possible.

What can businesses do?

When businesses optimize waste management through reuse and recycling, they demonstrate a desire to protect, preserve, and sustain people and our limited and precious natural resources. The best way to do that is to understand and implement the waste management hierarchy.

Source Reduction and Reuse: This aspect of waste management seeks to prevent waste creation altogether. There are many ways to do this. For example:

would-be waste materials from manufacturing can sometimes be salvaged for use in other manufacturing processes or reincorporate back into the same process,
bulk buying and product redesign can reduce packaging waste, and
design that considers standard measures fosters using the full measure of materials creating no cut waste.

Recycling/Composting: One way to eliminate waste is to process materials and products that have reached the end of their useful life back into raw materials that can be put back into further productive use. Recycling and composting are the prime examples of this.

Energy Recovery: Sometimes waste cannot be processed into reuse through recycling, but it has energy embedded in it. Energy recovery is the process of extracting, rather than wasting, energy from products and materials before disposing of them. There are several methods of doing this, such as incineration or recovery of methane gas that is created by anaerobic digestion of landfill waste. The process itself is referred to as waste-to-energy. It can be used to create various forms of usable energy such as heat, steam, electricity, or fuel.

Treatment/Disposal: This is the end of the line, the graveyard for waste that cannot be recycled or reused in any way. Even though this is the least preferred way to manage waste, landfills are highly regulated for how they are designed, operated, closed, capped, and used for surface recreational activities. Hazardous wastes are highly regulated for special disposition to avoid landfill disposal that has in the past lead to significant environmental contamination. Following these regulations best protects people and the environment from harm.

Non-hazardous

Non-hazardous solid waste can be sent to a landfill, but often has alternative and more environmentally preferred means of disposal if separated into discrete waste streams. This waste can be put to innovative and productive uses by being repurposed as a by-product for use by another company, recycled, converted into energy, or composted. Companies that demonstrate environmental stewardship by separating and diverting waste streams from landfills often realize economic benefits through the sale of by-products and disposal cost savings.

[Sustrana addresses gaseous waste under Air Pollution (air-borne waste issues) and non-hazardous liquid waste under Water Management (wastewater and stormwater issues).]

Resources

Hazardous

Hazardous waste (both liquid and solid) must be separated from overall waste and is often specifically regulated because of its threat to the environment and public health. Disposal methods include storage, specialty recycling, or stabilization and solidification. Recyclable hazardous waste includes flammable materials and products with hazardous constituents, such as lead acid batteries, mercury-containing lamps/bulbs, and electronics. Other hazardous waste can be recycled through the stabilization and solidification process and used as a by-product for incorporation into new products. Illegal disposal of hazardous waste can result in reputational harm and liability for fines and clean up costs.

[Sustrana addresses gaseous waste under Air Pollution (air-borne waste issues) and non-hazardous liquid waste under Water Management (wastewater and stormwater issues).]

Resources

Waste basics

Humans create a lot of waste. Waste is unpleasant to have around and it takes up a lot of space! As the planet gets more crowded, and waste proliferates, the options for disposing of waste in landfills are decreasing. Our systems for absorbing or containing waste – both natural and manmade – are under increasing strain.

We transport much of our waste to landfills. Much of that sits in the landfill where it doesn’t decompose because of the conditions. As it sits, it can pollute the surrounding environment. Toxic chemicals from landfills can leach into underground streams and aquifers, contaminating our drinking water supply.

Sometimes we burn our waste in waste-to-energy plants, but without careful sorting of the waste stream that goes into these facilities, this can result in toxic fumes that pollute our air.

All of these negative environmental impacts compromise the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil in which we grow food.

Here are some quick facts:

In 1950, the average American disposed of 2.7 pounds of trash per person per day. Today, that figure has nearly doubled to 4.5 pounds of trash per person per day.
Every year Americans create 250 million tons of waste that is sent to landfills (30% world’s landfill waste).
Every year Americans throw away (that is, they don’t recycle) about 28 billion bottles and jars.
At least 95% of food waste that could be composted ends up in landfills.
There are 3,000 active landfills and over 10,000 retired landfills in the United States, taking up space.

The other major aspect of waste that impacts our future sustainability are the lost opportunities to re-use materials. Much of the waste we create can be used again. This is an opportunity to redirect waste to a productive use. By doing so, we reduce the need to source virgin non-renewable resources.

And, last but not least, it’s pretty clear that more people means more waste. As our world population grows, it also means there will be fewer and fewer places to put waste far enough away from people to avoid its unpleasantness and its negative impacts!

As a society, we’ve grown accustomed to the take, make, waste mentality of industrialization, and we have many conveniences and great products to show for it. But now it’s time to focus on how to preserve those gains without creating big new problems. And waste looms large as a social problem.

We need new strategies and new attitudes. That’s where waste management comes in.

Waste management