Hazardous waste is waste that must be handled properly to avoid damaging human health or the environment. Waste can be hazardous because it is toxic, reacts violently with other chemicals, or is corrosive, among other traits. As of 2022, humanity produces 300-500 million metric tons of hazardous waste annually. Some common examples are electronics, batteries, and paints. An important aspect of managing hazardous waste is safe disposal. Hazardous waste can be stored in hazardous waste landfills, burned, or recycled into something new. Managing hazardous waste is important to achieve worldwide sustainability. Hazardous waste is regulated on national scale by national governments as well as on an international scale by the United Nations (UN) and international treaties.
Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment, and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process and waste-related laws, technologies, and economic mechanisms.
A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was simply left in piles or thrown into pits.
Toxic waste is any unwanted material in all forms that can cause harm. Mostly generated by industry, consumer products like televisions, computers, and phones contain toxic chemicals that can pollute the air and contaminate soil and water. Disposing of such waste is a major public health issue.
Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, United States, infamous as the location of a 0.28 km2 (0.11 sq mi) landfill that became the site of an environmental disaster discovered in 1977. Decades of dumping toxic chemicals killed residents and harmed the health of hundreds, often profoundly. The area was cleaned up over 21 years in a Superfund operation.
Zero waste, or waste minimization, is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid sending trash to landfills, incinerators, oceans, or any other part of the environment. Currently 9% of global plastic is recycled. In a zero waste system, all materials are reused until the optimum level of consumption is reached.
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) refers to a series of processes designed to convert waste materials into usable forms of energy, typically electricity or heat. As a form of energy recovery, WtE plays a crucial role in both waste management and sustainable energy production by reducing the volume of waste in landfills and providing an alternative energy source.
Green waste, also known as "biological waste", is any organic waste that can be composted. It is most usually composed of refuse from gardens such as grass clippings or leaves, and domestic or industrial kitchen wastes. Green waste does not include things such as dried leaves, pine straw, or hay. Such materials are rich in carbon and considered "brown wastes," while green wastes contain high concentrations of nitrogen. Green waste can be used to increase the efficiency of many composting operations and can be added to soil to sustain local nutrient cycling.
Reworld, formerly Covanta, is a private energy-from-waste and industrial waste management services company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. Most of its revenue comes from operating incineration facilities that serve a secondary purpose as power plants that burn trash as fuel. Reworld charges a fee for waste disposal and sells the electricity and metal slag produced from waste incineration.
The Lipari Landill is an inactive landfill on a 6-acre (2.4 ha) former gravel pit in Mantua Township, New Jersey. It was used from 1958 to 1971 as a dump site for household and industrial wastes. Toxic organic compounds and heavy metals dumped at the site have percolated into the ground water and leached into lakes and streams in the surrounding area. The site has been identified as the worst toxic dump in the United States and was ranked at the top of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund eligibility list.
Products made from a variety of materials can be recycled using a number of processes.
Solid waste policy in the United States is aimed at developing and implementing proper mechanisms to effectively manage solid waste. For solid waste policy to be effective, inputs should come from stakeholders, including citizens, businesses, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, universities, and other research organizations. These inputs form the basis of policy frameworks that influence solid waste management decisions. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates household, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial solid and hazardous wastes under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Effective solid waste management is a cooperative effort involving federal, state, regional, and local entities. Thus, the RCRA's Solid Waste program section D encourages the environmental departments of each state to develop comprehensive plans to manage nonhazardous industrial and municipal solid waste. Each state will have different methods on how to educate and control the flow of waste
The Danish Carbon Fund's (DCF) Lahore Composting Facility project is the first of its kind in Pakistan. It is bringing composting technology to a country where the common practice is by open dumping of waste, as there are no landfills. This project is the first public-private partnership project in Pakistan on a large scale in the area of Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSW).
The global waste trade is the international trade of waste between countries for further treatment, disposal, or recycling. Toxic or hazardous wastes are often imported by developing countries from developed countries.
Edgemere Landfill is a former municipal landfill located in Edgemere on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, New York City. It is located on a man-made peninsula on the Jamaica Bay shoreline, at the eastern end of the Rockaway peninsula. A portion of the site is open to the public as Rockaway Community Park. The entire site is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Waste management in South Korea involves waste generation reduction and ensuring maximum recycling of the waste. This includes the appropriate treatment, transport, and disposal of the collected waste. South Korea's Waste Management Law was established in 1986, replacing the Environmental Protection Law (1963) and the Filth and Cleaning Law (1973). This new law aimed to reduce general waste under the waste hierarchy in South Korea. This Waste Management Law imposed a volume-based waste fee system, effective for waste produced by both household and industrial activities.
New York City's waste management system is a refuse removal system primarily run by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). The department maintains the waste collection infrastructure and hires public and private contractors who remove the city's waste. For the city's population of more than eight million, The DSNY collects approximately eleven thousand tons a day of garbage, including compostable material and recycling.
Reworld Hempstead is a waste-to-energy plant in Uniondale, New York operated by Reworld. It is the tallest structure in Nassau County, and the fourth largest power generation facility on Long Island by net energy generated.
