1. Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste

2. Outline
Solid Waste
Waste Disposal Methods
Shrinking the Waste Stream
Recycling
Hazardous and Toxic Wastes
Federal Legislation
RCRA
CERCLA
Management Options

3. SOLID WASTE
According to EPA, U.S. produces 11 billion tons of solid waste annually.
About half is agricultural waste.
More than one-third is mining related.
Industrial Waste million metric tons.
Hazardous/Toxic - 60 million metric tons.
Municipal Waste million metric tons.
Two-thirds of a ton per person.
Waste Stream

4. U.S. Domestic Waste

5. WASTE DISPOSAL METHODS
Open Dumps
Open, unregulated dumps are still the predominant method of waste disposal in developing countries.
Most developed countries forbid open dumping.
Estimated 200 million liters of motor oil are poured into the sewers or soak into the ground each year in the U.S..
Five times volume of Exxon Valdez.

6. Waste Disposal Methods
Landfills
Sanitary Landfills
Refuse compacted and covered everyday with a layer of dirt.
Dirt takes up as much as 20% of landfill space.
Since 1994, all operating landfills in the U.S. have been required to control hazardous substances.

7. Sanitary Landfill

8. Landfills
Historically, landfills have been a convenient, inexpensive waste-disposal option.
Increasing land and shipping fees, and demanding construction and maintenance requirements are increasing costs.
Suitable landfill sites are become scarce.
Increasingly, communities are rejecting new landfills.
Old landfills are quickly reaching capacity and closing.

9. Waste Disposal Methods
Exporting Waste
Although most industrialized nations have agreed to stop shipping hazardous and toxic waste to less-developed countries, the practice still continues.
Garbage imperialism also operates in wealthier countries.
Indian reservations increasingly being approached to store wastes on reservations.

10. Waste Disposal Methods
Incineration and Resource Recovery
Energy Recovery - Heat derived from incinerated refuse is a useful resource.
Steam used for heating buildings or generating electricity.

11. Incinerator Types
Refuse-Derived Fuel - Refuse is sorted to remove recyclable and unburnable materials.
Higher energy content than raw trash.
Mass Burn - Everything smaller than major furniture and appliances loaded into furnace.
Creates air pollution problems.
Reduces disposal volume by 80-90%.
Residual ash usually contains toxic material.

12. Mass-Burn Incinerator

13. Incinerator Cost and Safety
Initial construction costs are usually between $100 and $300 million for a typical municipal facility.
Tipping fess are often much higher than tipping fees at landfills.
EPA has found alarmingly high toxin levels in incinerator ash.
Concentrated in fly ash.
Pollution control methods are not guaranteed to be 100% effective.

14. SHRINKING THE WASTE STREAM
Recycling
Recycling is the reprocessing of discarded materials into new, useful products.
Currently, about two-thirds of all aluminum cans are recycled.
Half of all aluminum cans on grocery shelves will be made into another can within two months.

15. Recycling
Potential Problems
Market prices fluctuate wildly.
Contamination
Most of 24 billion plastic soft drink bottles sold annually in the U.S. are PET, which can be melted and remanufactured into many items.
But a single PVC bottle can ruin an entire truckload of PET if melted together.

16. U.S. Recycling Rates

17. Recycling
Benefits
Saves money, raw materials, and land.
Encourages individual responsibility.
Reduces pressure on disposal systems.
Japan recycles about half of all household and commercial wastes.
Lowers demand for raw resources.
Reduces energy consumption and air pollution.

18. Recycling
Benefits Example
Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves 4 tons of bauxite, 700 kg of coke and pitch, and keeps 35 kg of aluminum fluoride out of the air.
Producing aluminum from scrap instead of bauxite ore cuts energy use by 95%.
Yet still throw away more than a million tons of aluminum annually.

19. Shrinking the Waste Stream
Composting
Biological degradation of organic material under aerobic conditions.
Demanufacturing
Disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer products.
Reuse
Reusable glass container makes an average of 15 round-trips between factory and customer before it has to be recycled.

20. Shrinking the Waste Stream
Producing Less Waste
Excess packaging of food and consumer products is one of our greatest sources of unnecessary waste.
Paper, plastic, glass, and metal packaging material make up 50% of domestic trash by volume.
Increase use of photodegradable and biodegradable plastics.

21. HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC WASTES
EPA estimates U.S. industries generate 265 million metric tons of officially classified hazardous wastes annually.
At least 40 million metric tons of toxic and hazardous wastes are released into the environment each year.

22. Hazardous Waste
Legally, hazardous waste is any discarded liquid or solid that contains substances known to be:
Fatal to humans or laboratory animals in low doses.
Toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic to humans or other life-forms.
Ignitable with a flash point less than 60o C.
Explosive or highly reactive.

23. Hazardous Waste Disposal
Federal Legislation
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
Comprehensive program requiring rigorous testing and management of toxic and hazardous substances.
Cradle to grave accounting.

24. Federal Legislation
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).
Modified in 1984 by Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act.
Aimed at rapid containment, cleanup, or remediation of abandoned toxic waste sites.
Toxic Release Inventory - Requires 20,000 manufacturing facilities to report annually on releases of more than 300 toxic materials.

25. Cradle to Grave

26. CERCLA
Government does not have to prove anyone violated a law, or what role they played in a superfund site.
Liability under CERCLA is “strict, joint, and several”, meaning anyone associated with a site can be held responsible for the entire clean-up cost.

27. Superfund Sites
EPA estimates 36,000 seriously contaminated sites in the U.S..
By 1997, 1,400 sites had been placed on the National Priority List for cleanup with with Superfund financing.
Superfund is a revolving pool designed to:
Provide immediate response to emergency situations posing imminent hazards.
Clean-up abandoned or inactive sites.

28. Superfund Sites
Total costs for hazardous waste cleanup in the U.S. are estimated between $370 billion and $1.7 trillion.
For years, most of the funding has gone to legal fees, but this situation has improved over past several years.
Studies of Superfund sites reveal minorities tend to be over-represented in these neighborhoods.

30. How Clean is Clean ?
Brownfields - Contaminated properties that have been abandoned or are not being used up to potential because of pollution concerns.
Up to one-third of all commercial industrial sites in urban core of many big cities fall into this category.
In many cases, property owners complain that unreasonably high purity levels are demanded in remediation programs.

31. Hazardous Waste Management Options
Produce Less Waste
Avoid creating wastes in the first place.
Recycle and Reuse
Convert to Less Hazardous Substances
Physical Treatment (Isolation)
Incineration
Chemical Processing (Transformation)
Bioremediation (Microorganisms)

32. Hazardous Waste Management Options
Store Permanently
Retrievable Storage
Can be inspected and periodically retrieved.
Secure Landfills
Modern, complex landfills with multiple liners and other impervious layers and monitoring systems.

33. Toxic Waste Secure Landfill

34. Summary
Solid Waste
Waste Disposal Methods
Shrinking the Waste Stream
Recycling
Hazardous and Toxic Wastes
Federal Legislation
RCRA
CERCLA
Management Options

36. Living in a high waste society
It means people throw away:
Enough aluminum to rebuild the country’s entire commercial airline fleet every 3 months.
Enough tires each year to encircle the planet almost 3 times.
About 18 billion disposable diapers per year, which if linked end-to-end would reach to the moon and back 7 times.
About 2 billion disposable razors, 10 million computers, and 8 million TV sets each year.
About 2.5 million nonreturnable plastic bottles each hour
Some 14 billion catalogs and 38 billion pieces of junk mail.