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.
Industrial waste is the waste produced by industrial activity which includes any material that is rendered useless during a manufacturing process such as that of factories, mills, and mining operations. Types of industrial waste include dirt and gravel, masonry and concrete, scrap metal, oil, solvents, chemicals, scrap lumber, even vegetable matter from restaurants. Industrial waste may be solid, semi-solid or liquid in form. It may be hazardous waste or non-hazardous waste. Industrial waste may pollute the nearby soil or adjacent water bodies, and can contaminate groundwater, lakes, streams, rivers or coastal waters. Industrial waste is often mixed into municipal waste, making accurate assessments difficult. An estimate for the US goes as high as 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste produced annually, as of 2017. Most countries have enacted legislation to deal with the problem of industrial waste, but strictness and compliance regimes vary. Enforcement is always an issue.
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.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.
Illegal dumping, also called fly dumping or fly tipping (UK), is the dumping of waste illegally instead of using an authorised method such as curbside collection or using an authorised rubbish dump. It is the illegal deposit of any waste onto land, including waste dumped or tipped on a site with no licence to accept waste.
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.'
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is an agency of the government of the state of California which protects public health and the environment from hazardous waste. DTSC is part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, with one thousand employees, and is headquartered in Sacramento. As of 2023, DTSC has regional offices in Berkeley, Chatsworth, Clovis, Commerce, Cypress, El Centro and San Diego and environmental chemistry laboratories in Berkeley and Pasadena. Meredith Williams has served as the director of DTSC since 2019.
Cruise ships carrying several thousand passengers and crew have been compared to “floating cities,” and the volume of wastes that they produce is comparably large, consisting of sewage; wastewater from sinks, showers, and galleys (graywater); hazardous wastes; solid waste; oily bilge water; ballast water; and air pollution. The waste streams generated by cruise ships are governed by a number of international protocols and U.S. domestic laws, regulations, and standards, but there is no single law or rule. Some cruise ship waste streams appear to be well regulated, such as solid wastes and bilge water. But there is overlap of some areas, and there are gaps in others.
In the United States, several federal agencies and laws have some jurisdiction over pollution from ships in U.S. waters. States and local government agencies also have responsibilities for ship-related pollution in some situations.
Under United States environmental policy, hazardous waste is a waste that has the potential to:
Waste are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste product may become a by-product, joint product or resource through an invention that raises a waste product's value above zero.
Municipal solid waste (MSW) – more commonly known as trash or garbage – consists of everyday items people use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps and papers. In 2018, Americans generated about 265.3 million tonnes of waste. In the United States, landfills are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the states' environmental agencies. Municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLF) are required to be designed to protect the environment from contaminants that may be present in the solid waste stream.
An ash pond, also called a coal ash basin or surface impoundment, is an engineered structure used at coal-fired power stations for the disposal of two types of coal combustion products: bottom ash and fly ash. The pond is used as a landfill to prevent the release of ash into the atmosphere. Although the use of ash ponds in combination with air pollution controls decreases the amount of airborne pollutants, the structures pose serious health risks for the surrounding environment.
A fluorescent lamp crusher is a device that crushes and stores spent fluorescent lamps prior to processing at a recycling facility, while controlling the release of mercury vapor emissions. Also known as drum-top crushing, this lamp disposal method is designed to reduce the storage, labor, and shipping costs of recycling lamps over other methods, as well as decrease the likelihood of mercury release during transport to a recycling facility. Fluorescent lamp crushers are designed for use primarily in commercial and institutional facility management contexts.
Electronic waste or e-waste in the United States refers to electronic products that have reached the end of their operable lives, and the United States is beginning to address its waste problems with regulations at a state and federal level. Used electronics are the quickest-growing source of waste and can have serious health impacts. The United States is the world leader in producing the most e-waste, followed closely by China; both countries domestically recycle and export e-waste. Only recently has the United States begun to make an effort to start regulating where e-waste goes and how it is disposed of. There is also an economic factor that has an effect on where and how e-waste is disposed of. Electronics are the primary users of precious and special metals, retrieving those metals from electronics can be viewed as important as raw metals may become more scarce
Waste management laws govern the transport, treatment, storage, and disposal of all manner of waste, including municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, and nuclear waste, among many other types. Waste laws are generally designed to minimize or eliminate the uncontrolled dispersal of waste materials into the environment in a manner that may cause ecological or biological harm, and include laws designed to reduce the generation of waste and promote or mandate waste recycling. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing waste types and mandating transport, treatment, storage, and disposal practices.
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.
The Solid Waste Disposal Act (SWDA) is an act passed by the United States Congress in 1965. The United States Environmental Protection Agency described the Act as "the first federal effort to improve waste disposal technology". After the Second Industrial Revolution, expanding industrial and commercial activity across the nation, accompanied by increasing consumer demand for goods and services, led to an increase in solid waste generation by all sectors of the economy. The act established a framework for states to better control solid waste disposal and set minimum safety requirements for landfills. In 1976 Congress determined that the provisions of SWDA were insufficient to properly manage the nation's waste and enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Congress passed additional major amendments to SWDA in the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA).
Water in Arkansas is an important issue encompassing the conservation, protection, management, distribution and use of the water resource in the state. Arkansas contains a mixture of groundwater and surface water, with a variety of state and federal agencies responsible for the regulation of the water resource. In accordance with agency rules, state, and federal law, the state's water treatment facilities utilize engineering, chemistry, science and technology to treat raw water from the environment to potable water standards and distribute it through water mains to homes, farms, business and industrial customers. Following use, wastewater is collected in collection and conveyance systems, decentralized sewer systems or septic tanks and treated in accordance with regulations at publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) before being discharged to the environment.
Taiwan has one of the most efficient recycling programs globally, with a 55% collection rate from households and businesses and a 77% collection rate from industrial waste in 2019. Taiwan’s high recycling rates are unattainable in most countries due to Taiwanese geographical advantages along with efficient waste processing technologies and systems.
