According to Wikipedia, Waste Management or Waste Disposal is the act or process involved in managing waste from its origination to its disposal. This includes among other things, the collection, transportation, treatment, and disposal of waste through a municipal agency.
The waste management industry refers to a wide variety of activities that involve the management and collection of waste on a municipal level, including the collection, transportation, processing, and disposal of waste by a commercial enterprise.
In the United States, most waste management in America occurs at the local, community, or municipal level. The average American generates about two million tons of waste each year. The amount of waste that is generated daily is staggering when you consider the fact that a family of four creates more waste than that of the entire world’s population.
One of the primary contributors to the tremendous waste problem in the United States is the country’s dependence upon energy produced through fossil fuels. The sheer volume of energy consumed by all American families and businesses supports the need for innovative solutions and wise waste management practices. For more on this, feel free to explore around this website.
In the past, waste management in America has been hindered by regulations that have not been flexible enough to keep up with today’s developments in the field of waste disposal technology. For example, the Energy Efficiency Act of 1995 made it mandatory for all new appliances to be designed and built to achieve an Energy Star rating.
The act also required that all new construction for commercial buildings be certified as “green,” by the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Both of these initiatives were instrumental in the growth of green technology and recycling programs.
The idea of recycling trash and garbage is not a new one. However, the methods that have been developed for recycling trash and garbage have changed radically over the years. As defined by NREL, “green” is any item manufactured with or from resources that are renewable, meaning they can be replenished or renewed.
In comparison to “natural” or “regular” resources, renewable resources are much more abundant and usable. With natural resources, for example, we are limited by the fact that they are ultimately depleted. With renewable resources such as the sun, wind, and water, we are forever guaranteed of renewed supply.
The growth of advanced technology for waste disposal and recycling has led to improvements in the efficiency of trash and garbage collection. Some cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and others throughout the United States have gone so far as to require that local municipalities and agencies submit plans for reducing the volume of trash and garbage that is disposed of in their locations.
These plans generally call for the integration of new technologies including energy-efficient vehicles, reusable bags, automatic trash compactors, and other innovations that have the potential to reduce the volume of solid waste that is disposed of each day.
Some cities and municipalities have also adopted systems that provide for the collection and storage of reusable beverage containers, paper bags, and plastic containers so that they may be reused when they are removed from the location where they were initially collected.
Advanced systems for waste disposal generally rely on three basic technologies: gasification, super-heating, and plasma gasification. These three technologies each have various means of creating high levels of waste disposal by means of a different method.
A gasification system uses combustible gases in order to convert organic waste material (e.g. vegetable oil) into carbon dioxide, water, and steam. A super-heated system heats liquids to extremely high temperatures, in which case they are often sent through piping called hot water jacks.
This process eliminates solid waste and allows for the transportation of water in various forms. The third type of waste management system known as plasma gasification uses ultraviolet (UV) light to kill bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
The resulting product is highly volatile and highly flammable. This method is used to treat sewage in both New York and New Amsterdam. All of these methods are viable options for waste disposal in both locations, but New York and Amsterdam are better served by utilizing all of the available resources to solve their problems.
Cities like Chicago are wise to follow Europe’s lead and implement better methods for waste management. By making the aforementioned changes to their waste disposal processes, cities like Chicago can improve their overall quality of life while also ensuring that their surroundings remain as clean and healthy as possible.
The better waste management techniques that all countries should strive to implement are often simply overlooked due to a lack of funding or focus.