Sources and Types of Waste

Sources and Types of Waste

• Natural resource usage generates waste
• Waste classification is by its source or type
• Domestic waste includes food scraps, packaging, and broken items from households.
• Industrial waste is produced by factories and industries and includes chemicals, metals, and manufacturing by-products.
• Agricultural waste comes from farming, like animal manure, crop residues, and empty chemical containers (pesticides, herbicides).
• Electronic waste consists of old computers, mobile phones, and televisions.
• Electronic waste contains toxic materials like lead and mercury.
• Discarded edible food, often from over-purchasing or spoilage, becomes food waste
• Biohazardous waste includes dangerous items from hospitals/labs, such as medical equipment and blood samples.
• Solid domestic waste (SDW) is non-liquid waste from homes
• SDW contains diverse materials, making management and recycling difficult

Common Components of Solid Domestic Waste in the UK (2020)

• Paper waste includes newspapers, magazines, and packaging
• Cardboard waste includes packaging boxes and containers
• Glass waste includes bottles and jars
• Metal waste includes aluminum and tin cans
• Plastic waste includes bottles, food containers, and plastic bags
• Organic waste includes food scraps, garden clippings, and biodegradable materials
• Packaging waste includes plastic wrap, Styrofoam, and boxes
• Construction debris includes waste from home repairs or renovations, like bricks and wood
• Clothing waste includes old or unwanted clothes and textiles

Solid Domestic Waste (SDW) Volume and Composition

• Waste volume and composition changes across time and between societies.
• Wealthier societies tend to generate more waste because of High consumption levels, single-use products, excessive packaging, convenience culture and fast fashion
• High-income countries (e.g., the U.S.) generate more waste per person than lower-income countries (e.g., India).
• Lower-income countries may produce less waste but often have less capacity to manage it.

Factors Influencing Waste Volume and Composition

• Government policies impact waste production via recycling laws, waste taxes, bans, and landfill regulations
• Countries with strong waste management have lower levels of unmanaged waste.
• The European Union's ban on single-use plastics has reduced plastic waste.
• Environmental awareness can lead to increased recycling/composting and waste reduction
• Popular tourist destinations experience more waste during peak seasons
• Large quantities of crop waste are produced following harvest seasons.
• Natural disasters can increase waste generation; for instance, hurricanes generate construction and debris waste during rebuilding.
• Technological advances reduce waste by creating biodegradable plastics and more efficient recycling methods.
• Rapid technological advancements can increase electronic waste generation as consumers want to update devices.
• Renewable energy sources can produce electronic waste (e.g., damaged solar panels, wind turbine blades).
• Designing products for short-term use increases waste (e.g., disposable electronics).

Environmental and Social Impacts of Waste

• Waste production, treatment, and disposal have severe environmental consequences locally and globally.

Pollution

• Burning waste in open landfills causes air pollution by releasing gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change.
• Decomposing organic waste produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
• Improper waste disposal causes water pollution, with chemicals and hazardous materials leaching into water sources, harming aquatic life and contaminating drinking water.
• Soil pollution results from hazardous waste, chemicals, and heavy metals seeping from landfills into the soil.
• Soil pollutants contaminate soils, harm plant growth, and enter food chains.

Habitat Destruction

• Landfills and waste dumps occupy large land areas, leading to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss.
• The Agbogbloshie e-waste dump in Ghana has polluted water sources and destroyed natural land areas.

Social Impacts

• Improper waste management practices particularly affect low-income communities and countries

Health Risks

• Exposure to waste (especially e-waste and biohazardous materials) can lead to respiratory diseases, skin infections, and cancers
• Low-income countries receiving waste from high-income nations often lack facilities for safe handling/treatment, resulting in dangerous conditions.

Environmental injustice

• Environmental injustice arises from waste exports, where high-income countries send waste to low-income countries lacking the capacity to manage it safely.
• The Basel Convention of 1992, by the UNEP, is meant to regulate hazardous waste movement, prevent exports to low-income nations, and protect human health/the environment.
• Illegal waste exporting and dumping still occurs despite the Basel Convention.
• Landfills/waste processing plants can decrease the quality of life due to bad smells, noise, and potential contamination of local resources
• Communities near waste sites often face lower property values, reduced economic opportunities, and poor health outcomes.

Ecosystems and Pollution

• Pollution happens when harmful substances are added to the environment faster than ecosystems' ability to process/transform them into harmless forms.
• Ecosystems can naturally absorb/manage certain waste amounts with photosynthesis and nutrient cycling.
• Pollution builds up when the waste surpasses ecosystem's capacity, causing harm.

Ability of Ecosystems to Absorb Waste

• Ecosystems serve as natural filters by absorbing and transforming pollutants into less harmful substances.
• Forests absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, which converts it into oxygen, reducing the amount of CO2.
• Wetlands like salt marshes/mangroves absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants from water, trapping those substances for plant growth.
• Grasslands/farmlands take up nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil as nutrients, which can reduce agricultural runoff.

Ecosystem Services

• Ecosystems manage pollution through the following services:
  • Carbon sequestration involves plants absorbing CO2 and storing it in their tissues, which reduces greenhouse gases.
  • Water filtration involves wetlands and forests filtering pollutants from water before it enters rivers, lakes, or oceans, improving water quality.
  • Salt marshes absorb pollutants along coastlines, reducing the flow of substances into the ocean

Limits to Ecosystem Absorption

• Overloading ecosystems occurs when adding pollutants exceeds processing capacity, leading to pollution.
• Deforestation limits the trees' ability to manage rising CO2 levels
• Adding excess nitrogen/phosphorus via runoff overloads wetlands and leads to water pollution/eutrophication.

Biodegradability

• Biodegradability refers to how quickly natural processes break down a substance into harmless components.
  • Biodegradable materials, such as paper and food waste, decompose quickly due to bacteria/organisms.
  • Non-biodegradable materials, like plastic and synthetic chemicals, do not break down easily and can remain in the environment for hundreds/thousands of years.
• Half-lives measures how long it takes for half of a substance to decay or break down.
  • Long half-lives mean pollutants remain dangerous for extended periods (e.g., pesticides like DDT or radioactive waste), persisting in ecosystems for years/decades.
  • DDT with a half-life of 15 years can stay in soil/water for decades, impacting wildlife, food chains, and whole ecosystems.
  • Organic waste has short half-lives and decomposes quickly, reducing its environmental impact.

Waste Disposal Methods

• Waste disposal involves both minimising and managing the environmental impact of waste
• Each disposal method has advantages and disadvantages that should be factored in.

Landfill Sites

• Landfills involve burying waste in designated areas in large holes dug into the ground. -Advantages: - Centralized waste management provides a single location for managing large waste volumes. - Flexibility entails handling broad range of materials like non-recyclables. - Lower operational costs is inexpensive compared to other methods for disposal
  • Reduced environmental impact: Liners and leachate collection systems can minimise the environmental impact.
  • Gas capture involves methane capture that can be used as an energy source.
• Disadvantages include:
  • Methane generation producing methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
  • Land requirements needing significant land, which can be difficult to find. |- Risk of Contamination is potential for groundwater and soil pollution from leachate.
  • Long-term monitoring involves management after closure.
  • Environmental Injustice causes noise and odour pollution in less affluent urban outskirts, disproportionately impacting residents' lives.

Incineration

• Incineration involves burning waste materials at high temperatures to reduce their volume
  • Advantages:
    • Reduction of Reduction volume drastically
    • Less reliance reducing amount of waste sent to landfill sites.
    • Safe handling can process hazardous materials safely. -Disadvantages:
    • Emitting harmsful gases and pollutants: including greenhouse gases. -High operational costs: Expensive tech and maintenance.
    • Disposal: production of Requires careful disposal -Public concern: because of health and environments concerns.

Waste-to-energy (WtE)

• Waste-to-energy plants incinerate or burn to generate electricity or heat.
  • Advantages:
    • Energy recovery: converts waste into usable energy reduced reliance on fossil fuels. -Reduces reduces the amount of land fill usage. -Reduction in volume significantly reduces the waste of amount.

Disadvantages:

• Pollution risks: Can release harmful emissions unless controlled properly.
• High capital expensive
• Limited Not efficiently conversion to energy
• Not perfect solution: still generation of waste

Exporting Waste

• Sending waste materials to countries for treatments, recycling or disposal
• Advantages:
  • Responsibilities challenge countries can waste to others.
  • Reduces eases of the burden for management systems.
  • Access to advanced specialized, option for treatments.

Recycling

• Recycling involves converting waste materials into new, usable products
• Advantages:
• Resource conservation saves materials.
• Saving energy by utilising production materials.
• Cost effective
• Reductions helps recyclable materials out of facilities.
• Disadvantages:
  • Sorting and collecting can be very energy.
  • Limitation availability to between or regions. -Contamination of recyclables efficiencies processes
    • Limited there can be limited markets of products

Composting

Composting is the processed of breaking down products and nutrients.

• Advantages:
• Environmentally production -Reductions from materials kept lowering of
• Disadvantages:
• Limitation handling materials
• Requires for break downs
• Uncomfortable potential ordours.

Waste Management Strategies

• Waste management strategies aim to minimise the impact of waste on the environment and humans
• They can be divided into preventative and restorative strategies

Preventative Strategies

• Preventative strategies focus on reducing waste generation. – Are more sustainable than strategies.
• Changing: preventing from effectively from.
• Limited ammount of pollution from releasing.
• The affect stratetegies
• cleaning

Hierarchy of waste management strategies

• Strategies as strategies.
• Priority of disposal for incinerations

Sustainable Waste Management

• Focuses on:
• Environmental social impacts of waste

##Strategies for Promoting Sustainable Waste Management

• To promote social and economic
• Tax:
  • Governments can impose and product that.
• Example plastic plastic has been since 2015.

Incentives

• To include:
• Benefits can encourage behaviours such
• Benefits can encourage behaviours such.

Social policies

• The way waste is manages also has some level

• They are produce of waste products

Waste is managed And reducing your waste as output.

• Education important
• Regulations can follows of and reductions is.

Circulation

And economic which waste is of or is.

Circulation of Economic

Example Circulations Of Economy

• Manufacturing
• Usage
• Collusion
• Recyclable

Examiner Tips and Tricks

• Make sure to understand the difference between economical and sustainable.