Chapter 23 -- Solid, Toxic, and Hazardous Waste
	After studying this chapter, you should be able to: identify the major components of the waste stream and describe how wastes have been--and are being--disposed of in North America and around the world. explain how incinerators work, as well as the advantages and disadvantages they offer. summarize the benefits, problems, and potential of recycling and reusing wastes. analyze some alternatives for reducing the waste we generate. understand what hazardous and toxic wastes are and how we dispose of them. evaluate the options for hazardous waste management. outline some ways we can destroy or permanently store hazardous wastes.

Solid Waste

• We all produce wastes in almost everything we do.

• The United States produces 11 billion tons of solid waste each year.

• Industrial waste amounts to some 400 million metric tons per year in the United States.

• Municipal waste amounts to about 180 million metric tons per year in the United States.

The Waste Stream

The waste stream is a term that describes the steady flow of varied wastes that we all produce. Many materials in the waste stream would be valuable resources if they were not mixed with other garbage. A problem with refuse mixing is that hazardous materials in the waste stream get dispersed through thousands of tons of miscellaneous garbage.

Waste Disposal Methods

• Modern waste management stresses the three R's: reduction, reuse, and recycle.

Open Dumps

• Open, unregulated dumps are still the predominant method of waste disposal in most developing countries.

• Most developed countries forbid open dumping, but illegal dumping is still a problem.

• Illegal dumping is also partly responsible for large amounts of toxic chemicals showing up in the drinking water.

Ocean Dumping

• Every year, millions of tons of trash and waste are dumped in the ocean.

• Until recently, many cities in the United States dumped municipal refuse, industrial waste, and sewage into the ocean. Federal legislation now prohibits this dumping.

• Some argue that the deep ocean is the most remote, stable, and innocuous place to dump our wastes. Others argue that we know too little about the values of these remote places or the rare species living there to smother them with sludge and debris.

Landfills

• Landfills are areas where solid waste disposal is regulated and controlled. Operators are required to compact and cover waste with a layer of dirt each day.
• This method helps control pollution but the dirt fill takes up as much as 20% of the landfill space.

• Modern municipal solid waste landfills have many safeguards to prevent leakage and contamination of the surrounding area.

• Rising land prices and shipping costs are making landfills an expensive waste disposal option.

• Suitable sites for landfills are also becoming scarce.

Exporting Waste

• Most industrialized nations have agreed to stop shipping hazardous waste to less developed countries. The practice still continues, illegally and with dangerous consequences, in some areas.

Incineration and Resource Recovery

• Energy recovery is a term referring to the burning of waste to produce heat which is converted into energy and power.

• In some municipal incinerators, refuse is sorted into burnable, unburnable, and recyclable before it is burned. The burnable waste is called refuse-derived fuel because the burnable fraction has a higher energy content than the raw trash.

• Mass burning refers to an approach where everything smaller than sofas and refrigerators are dumped into a giant furnace and as much as possible is burned.

• The cost effectiveness of garbage incinerators is the subject of heated debates. Environmental safety and use-fees are all subjects of contention.

Shrinking the Waste Stream

• Having less waste to discard is obviously better than struggling with disposal methods. Here we will discuss various methods for reducing the amount of waste we produce.

Recycling

• Recycling has two meanings. It can mean reusing something as is or reprocessing something into useful products.

• Recycling is a better alternative to either dumping or burning. It saves money, energy, raw materials, and land space and reduces pollution.

• There are also problems associated with recycling. The wild fluctuation in the market prices for recyclable commodities is one. Also, contamination of products in recycled containers can occur.

• Public policy has also created incentive for recycling. Some communities have active recycling campaigns and deposit fees on recyclable items.

Composting

Composting is a process in which organic yard waste is broken down by bacteria into a nutrient rich soil amendment. Compost piles are an easy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly way of disposing of organic wastes.

Energy from Waste

• Organic wastes can be broken down by bacteria to produce methane. This gas can then be harnessed as a fuel source.

Demanufacturing

• Demanufacturing is the disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer products, such as TV sets, PCs, and air conditioners.

• This allows for the recapturing of valuable materials and toxic materials before they are released into the environment.

Reuse

• Reusing waste is the best method of waste disposal. Cleaning and reusing materials in their present form saves both energy and costs.

Producing Less Waste

• Excess packaging of food and consumer products is one of our greatest sources of unnecessary waste. Much of that packaging has to do with marketing and little to do with product protection.

• Less volume of waste can be produced by using degradeable materials. Photodegradable plastics break down under UV light. Biodegradable plastics can be decomposed by microorganisms.

Hazardous and Toxic Wastes

• The U.S. EPA estimates that 256 million tons of officially classified hazardous wastes are produced in the U.S. each year. This does not include toxic and hazardous waste produced by industries not monitored by the EPA.

• The biggest sources of hazardous wastes in the United States are the chemical and petroleum industries.

What Is Hazardous Waste?

• A hazardous waste is any discarded material, liquid or solid, that contains substances known to be:
  1. fatal to humans or lab animals in low doses,
  2. toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic to humans or other life-forms,
  3. ignitable with a flash point less than 60^oC,
  4. corrosive, or
  5. explosive or highly reactive.

Hazardous Waste Disposal

• Most hazardous waste is recycled, converted to nonhazardous forms, stored, or disposed of so that it doesn't become a public problem. However, the hazardous waste that does enter the environment is one of our most serious environmental problems.

• An estimated 5 billion metric tons of highly poisonous chemicals were improperly disposed of in the United States between 1950 and 1975 when more stringent regulations were put into effect.

• Two important federal laws regulate hazardous waste management in the United States. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA, 1976) requires management of toxic and hazardous substances. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, 1980) is aimed at rapid containment, cleanup, or remediation of abandoned toxic waste sites.

• Under CERCLA, the government does not have to prove anyone violated a low or what role they played in a superfund site. Liability is "strict, joint, and several", meaning that anyone associated with the site can be held accountable for the entire cost of cleaning it up.

Superfund Sites

• The EPA estimates there are at least 36,000 seriously contaminated sites in the United States.

• Superfund is a revolving pool designed to (1) provide an immediate response to emergency situations that pose imminent hazzards, and (2) to clean up or remediate abandoned or inactive sites.

• Total costs for hazardous waste cleanup in the United States are estimated to be between $370 billion and $1.7 trillion.

• What qualifies a site for superfund? These sites are considered to be especially hazardous to human health and environmental quality because they are known to be leaking or have a potential for leaking supertoxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic, or mutagenic materials.

• Toxic materials are known to have contaminated groundwater at 75% of superfund sites.

• Where are these sites and how did they get this way? Old industrial facilities are highly likely to have been sources of toxic waste. Regions with high concentrations of aging factories (such as the Great Lakes or the Gulf Coast) have large numbers of superfund sites. Mining districts and old dumps are also likely candidates.

• Among the biggest problems associated with cleaning up hazardous waste sites are questions of liability and the degree of purity required. Just how clean is clean and who pays for it?

• In many cities, large areas of contaminated properties known as brownfields have been abandoned or are unused because of the potential of suspected or real pollution.

Options for Hazardous Waste Management

• The safest and least expensive way to avoid hazardous waste problems is to avoid creating the wastes in the first place. The 3M Company has reformulated products and redesigned manufacturing processes to eliminate tons of waste and pollution from their factories. They found that not only were these new processes safer and more environmentally friendly, but also they were often cheaper.

• Recycling and reusing materials also eliminates hazardous wastes and pollution.

• Several processes are also available to make hazardous substances less toxic. Physical treatments tie up or isolate substances. Incineration is applicable to mixtures of wastes. A permanent solution to many problems, it is not necessarily cheap nor clean. Chemical processing can transform materials so they become nontoxic.

• Bioremediation taps the great capacity of microorganisms to absorb, accumulate, and detoxify a variety of toxic compounds.

• Permanent retrievable storage means placing waste storage containers in a secure building, salt mine, or bedrock cavern where they can be inspected periodically or retrieved.

• Secure landfills are specially designed landfills made for disposing of toxic wastes.

Summary

• Volumes of solid waste is produced in industrial societies, and how to dispose of it is an increasing problem.
• Solid wastes are domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and mining wastes that are primarily non-toxic.
• There are many methods of solid waste disposal, including landfills and incineration, each of which has associated problems.
• Hazardous and toxic wastes, when released into the environment, cause many health problems including cancer and birth defects.
• Disposal practices for hazardous wastes have often been unsatisfactory. Government legislation and alternative disposal practices are creating safer, more effective ways of dealing with this increasingly serious problem.

Questions for Review

1. What are solid wastes and hazardous wastes? What is the difference between them?
2. How much solid and hazardous waste do we produce each year in the United States? How do we dispose of the waste?
3. Why are landfill sites becoming limited around most major urban centers in the United States? What steps are being taken to solve this problem?
4. Describe some concerns about waste incineration.
5. List some benefits and drawbacks of recycling wastes. What are the major types of materials recycled from municipal waste and how are they used?
6. What is composting, and how does it fit into solid waste disposal?
7. Describe some ways that we can reduce the waste stream to avoid or reduce disposal problems.
8. List ten toxic substances in your home and how you would dispose of them.
9. What are brownfields and why do cities want to redevelop them?
10. What societal problems are associated with waste disposal? Why do people object to waste handling in their neighborhoods?

Questions for Critical Thinking

1. A toxic waste disposal site has been proposed for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Many tribal members oppose this plan, but some favor it because of the jobs and income it will bring to an area with 70 percent unemployment. If local people choose immediate survival over long-term health, should we object or intervene?
2. There is often a tension between getting your personal life in order and working for larger structural changes in society. Evaluate the trade-offs between spending time and energy sorting recyclables at home compared to working in the public arena on a bill to ban excess packaging.
3. Should industry officials be held responsible for dumping chemicals that were legal when they did it but are now known to be extremely dangerous? At what point can we argue that they should have known about the hazards involved?
4. Look at the discussion of recycling or incineration presented in this chapter. List the premises (implicit or explicit) that underlie the presentation as well as the conclusions (stated or not) that seem to be drawn from them. Do the conclusions necessarily follow from these premises?
5. Suppose that your brother or sister has decided to buy a house next to a toxic waste dump because it costs $20,000 less than a comparable house elsewhere. What do you say to him or her?
6. Is there an overall conceptual framework or point of view in this chapter? If you were presenting a discussion of solid or hazardous waste to your class, what would be your conceptual framework?
7. Is there a fundamental difference between incinerating municipal, medical, or toxic industrial waste? Would you oppose an incinerator for one type of waste in your neighborhood but not others? Why, or why not?