Waste

Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch may love trash, but humanity is coming close to drowning in its own waste. Humans seem to be "wasters" to such an extent that archaeologists often focus on the garbage dumps of prehistoric sites to learn how ancient peoples lived. However, scientists are beginning to experiment with better management of human waste in hopes it can solve some of the world's environmental dilemmas.
Waste management is more than having the local garbage truck pick up a week's worth of potato peels, paper towels and chicken bones. The management of waste materials include the collection, transportation, processing, disposal or recycling of waste, along with monitoring these materials. Waste management refers typically to the products of human activity, and aims to prevent disease, protect the natural environment and improve the aesthetics of human communities.



Human waste includes liquid, gaseous, solid or radioactive substances. Each type of waste involves different management methods and encompasses different types of expertise, especially to reclaim resources from waste. What's more, management practices differ between urban and rural areas, between residential and industrial producers and between developed and developing nations. In cities, local governments are responsible for waste management for homes and public institutions such as schools, while businesses and industries must carry out their own waste disposal.

Anyone who's seen pictures of landfills or garbage scows can understand the challenge of waste management. Many municipalities today encourage or even mandate recycling as part of their waste management programs in an effort to reduce the amount of waste for disposal. Some turn human bodily waste into fertilizer via anaerobic digestion by bacteria in treatment plants. One of the most intriguing techniques today is to convert liquid and solid wastes into a synthetic gas through plasma arc waste disposal. A gasifier vessel uses electrically charged gas (plasma) to turn wastes into more gas, which is then used to run electricity generators instead of coal, oil or other fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, landfills – burying garbage – remain the top method of waste disposal in the United States and an often-used, inexpensive method in other countries as well. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the United States generated 250 million tons of waste in 2008. About 54 percent of this trash ended up in landfills, which in turn are using up land at an annual rate of nearly 3,500 acres. In fact, some states have used up all their landfills and must send their waste elsewhere.

The environmental problems of landfills, besides using up land, can be many. They can attract mice, rats, roaches and other vermin that feed on the garbage and carry disease elsewhere. Paper and other litter can be blown out of the landfill. Most of all, landfills can be smelly things to have around, as the decomposition of organic matter produces methane and carbon dioxide gases. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that increases global warming.

"Recycling" is the popular term for collecting and reusing the elements in common containers such as aluminum beverage cans, steel food and aerosol cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles and jars, paperboard cartons, newspapers, magazines, and corrugated fiberboard boxes. Another form of recycling is biological reprocessing, known to gardeners everywhere as composting, that allows organic matter to decompose naturally, producing mulch and fertilizer and also produces methane gas that can be used for generating heat and electricity.

These are but a few of the ways that waste management is seeking to reduce, reuse and recycle human products to create energy and cut back on resource depletion.