12a - Municipal Solid Waste

Solid and Hazardous Waste
Lecture 12
GNS301 - General Science and Environment
Kwara State University

The University for Community Development
Outline
• Introduction
• Municipal solid waste
• Hazardous and toxic waste
2
Introduction
3
“There is no ‘waste’ in nature and no ‘away’ to which things can be thrown.”
- Barry Commoner
4
Waste in Natural Systems
• According to the Law of
Conservation of Mass,
“Matter cannot be created
or destroyed, it only
changes form.”
• Any waste produced
within an ecosystem,
cycles back through
the system.
• What happens to waste
generated by humans?
5
The Waste Stream
• The total sum of human-generated waste is referred to as
the waste stream. This includes:
• Municipal solid waste - non-liquid waste that comes from
homes, institutions, and small businesses.
• Industrial solid waste includes waste from production of
consumer goods, mining, agriculture, and petroleum extraction
and refining.
• Hazardous waste refers to solid or liquid waste that is toxic,
chemically reactive, flammable, or corrosive.
• Wastewater, used water from sinks, showers, washing
machines, toilets, etc.
6
Municipal Solid Waste
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Municipal Solid Waste
• According to the EPA, the U.S. produced
258 million tons of municipal solid waste in
2014.
• Increase from about 88 million tons in 1960.
• Material that can be broken down by
naturally occurring decomposers is called
biodegradable.
• Food scraps, yard trimmings, etc.
• Material that is synthetic or not able to be
broken down is called non-degradable.
• Plastics, glass.
• What are our options in dealing with
municipal solid waste?
8
1. Open Dumps
• Open dumps are
piles of municipal
garbage left in
empty lots,
pastures, and other
exposed places.
• Open dumps carry
the greatest
environmental and
human health risks,
due to potential
contamination of
water, soil, and air. An open dump in Lagos, Nigeria
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2. Sanitary Landfills
• Sanitary landfills
bury waste in the
ground or pile it in
large mounds
engineered to
prevent it from
contaminating the
environment.
• Liners and
collection systems
prevent liquid
leachate from
10 escaping into the
• When full, landfills are covered with clay and topsoil, and
can be reclaimed for other uses.
Freshkills Park, New York City

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Formerly the Freshkills Landfill.
Philadelphia’s Trash Problem
• Through the 1950s, Philadelphia
relied mostly on landfills to deal
with municipal solid waste.
• Local landfills eventually
reached capacity. Surrounding
areas rejected plans for new
landfills.
• Waste was exported to other
states, but this was expensive.
• The city began building
incinerators as an alternative to
deal with the waste.
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3. Incineration
• Incineration is the burning of
municipal solid waste in large
furnaces.
• Incineration has the
advantage of reducing the
volume of solid waste by
about 70%.
• The remaining ash must still be
buried in a landfill.
• Incinerators are expensive to
construct and usually have
higher tipping fees than
landfills and generate air
pollution.
13
• Philadephia began using
incineration to reduce waste
volume, but leftover ash still
needed to be disposed.
• Incinerators produce large,
heavy particles of bottom
ash, and lighter particles of
fly ash.
• These often contain high
concentrations of heavy metals
and other toxins.
• The city contracted with a
private company to haul the
14 ash away on a barge called
The Voyage of the Khian Sea
• The barge was to be dumped on a man-made island
owned by the company on the Bahamas, but it was turned
away.
• Also turned away by the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama,
and Puerto Rico.
• The ship’s cargo was renamed from
“incinerator ash” to “general cargo”
to “bulk construction material,”
and eventually “topsoil fertilizer.”
• The Haitian government was
persuaded by the crew to
accept 4,000 tons of the ash.
15
The Voyage of the Khian Sea
• The Khian sea made
its way across the
Atlantic, towards
southeast Asia.
• The name and
registration country
of the ship was
changed twice.
• Unsuccessfully
attempted to unload
the cargo in
Morocco, Yugoslavia,
Sri Lanka, and
Singapore.
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4. Waste-to-Energy
• Modern incinerators are
much more efficient.
• Recyclable materials are
recovered.
• The energy released by the
incinerators is
converted to electricity, a
process called
waste-to-energy.
• Cities may also take some
waste and
pelletize it and addd it to
coal-fired power plants.
17
• Modern incinerators must collect all of their fly ash and
other pollutants through the use of electrostatic
precipitators and scrubbers to comply with the regulations
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on atmospheric emissions
5. Shrinking the Waste Stream
a) Recycling is the reprocessing
of discarded materials into
new, useful products, and it
carries many benefits:
• Less expensive than producing
new raw materials.
• Reduces space needed for
landfills.
• Lowers demand for raw
resources.
• Reduces energy consumption and
air pollution.
• Drawbacks include the high Waste Management recycling plant,
Denver, Colorado.
costs of sorting the material.
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Rates of recycling vary widely for different materials.
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b) Composting is
the biological
degradation of
organic material
under aerobic
conditions.
• Only works for
biodegradable
materials.
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c) Waste reduction is the
cheapest and most
effective way to reduce
waste is to not produce it
at all.
• Excess packaging of food and

consumer products is one of
our greatest sources of
unnecessary waste.
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6. Integrated waste management
• Integrated waste
management arranges all
of the strategies of dealing
with MSW in order from top-
to-bottom.
• This is known as the waste
management hierarchy
• By utilizing the top methods
first, the amount of material
that must be incinerated or
buried is minimized.
• Cities achieve may this

model by having separate
collection routes for
recycling and food waste.
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Solid and Hazardous Waste

Kwara State University

Freshkills Park, New York City

• Excess packaging of food and

• Cities achieve may this

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