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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.
Chemical waste is any excess, unused, or unwanted chemical. Chemical waste may be classified as hazardous waste, non-hazardous waste, universal waste, or household hazardous waste, each of which is regulated separately by national governments and the United Nations. Hazardous waste is material that displays one or more of the following four characteristics: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, and toxicity. This information, along with chemical disposal requirements, is typically available on a chemical's Safety Data Sheet (SDS). Radioactive and biohazardous wastes require additional or different methods of handling and disposal, and are often regulated differently than standard hazardous wastes.
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.
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas. The flue gases must be cleaned of gaseous and particulate pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. In some cases, the heat that is generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.
Environmental remediation is the cleanup of hazardous substances dealing with the removal, treatment and containment of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment. Remediation may be required by regulations before development of land revitalization projects. Developers who agree to voluntary cleanup may be offered incentives under state or municipal programs like New York State's Brownfield Cleanup Program. If remediation is done by removal the waste materials are simply transported off-site for disposal at another location. The waste material can also be contained by physical barriers like slurry walls. The use of slurry walls is well-established in the construction industry. The application of (low) pressure grouting, used to mitigate soil liquefaction risks in San Francisco and other earthquake zones, has achieved mixed results in field tests to create barriers, and site-specific results depend upon many variable conditions that can greatly impact outcomes.
Industrial wastewater treatment describes the processes used for treating wastewater that is produced by industries as an undesirable by-product. After treatment, the treated industrial wastewater may be reused or released to a sanitary sewer or to a surface water in the environment. Some industrial facilities generate wastewater that can be treated in sewage treatment plants. Most industrial processes, such as petroleum refineries, chemical and petrochemical plants have their own specialized facilities to treat their wastewaters so that the pollutant concentrations in the treated wastewater comply with the regulations regarding disposal of wastewaters into sewers or into rivers, lakes or oceans. This applies to industries that generate wastewater with high concentrations of organic matter, toxic pollutants or nutrients such as ammonia. Some industries install a pre-treatment system to remove some pollutants, and then discharge the partially treated wastewater to the municipal sewer system.
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.'
A thermal power station, also known as a thermal power plant, is a type of power station in which the heat energy generated from various fuel sources is converted to electrical energy. The heat from the source is converted into mechanical energy using a thermodynamic power cycle. The most common cycle involves a working fluid heated and boiled under high pressure in a pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam. This high pressure-steam is then directed to a turbine, where it rotates the turbine's blades. The rotating turbine is mechanically connected to an electric generator which converts rotary motion into electricity. Fuels such as natural gas or oil can also be burnt directly in gas turbines, skipping the steam generation step. These plants can be of the open cycle or the more efficient combined cycle type.
Pellet fuels are a type of solid fuel made from compressed organic material. Pellets can be made from any one of five general categories of biomass: industrial waste and co-products, food waste, agricultural residues, energy crops, and untreated lumber. Wood pellets are the most common type of pellet fuel and are generally made from compacted sawdust and related industrial wastes from the milling of lumber, manufacture of wood products and furniture, and construction. Other industrial waste sources include empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shells, coconut shells, and tree tops and branches discarded during logging operations. So-called "black pellets" are made of biomass, refined to resemble hard coal and were developed to be used in existing coal-fired power plants. Pellets are categorized by their heating value, moisture and ash content, and dimensions. They can be used as fuels for power generation, commercial or residential heating, and cooking.
Vegetable oil can be used as an alternative fuel in diesel engines and in heating oil burners. When vegetable oil is used directly as a fuel, in either modified or unmodified equipment, it is referred to as straight vegetable oil (SVO) or pure plant oil (PPO). Conventional diesel engines can be modified to help ensure that the viscosity of the vegetable oil is low enough to allow proper atomization of the fuel. This prevents incomplete combustion, which would damage the engine by causing a build-up of carbon. Straight vegetable oil can also be blended with conventional diesel or processed into biodiesel, HVO or bioliquids for use under a wider range of conditions.
Bottom ash is part of the non-combustible residue of combustion in a power plant, boiler, furnace, or incinerator. In an industrial context, it has traditionally referred to coal combustion and comprises traces of combustibles embedded in forming clinkers and sticking to hot side walls of a coal-burning furnace during its operation. The portion of the ash that escapes up the chimney or stack is referred to as fly ash. The clinkers fall by themselves into the bottom hopper of a coal-burning furnace and are cooled. The above portion of the ash is also referred to as bottom ash.
GeoMelt is a process by which dangerous, contaminated material is mixed with clean soil, a blend of industrial minerals, and/or glass frit and melted to create an extremely hard and leach-resistant glass product. Vitrification immobilizes nearly all of the inorganic contaminants present in the initial mixture by incorporation into the glass matrix. Organic wastes in the melt are destroyed by pyrolysis, and gaseous contaminants released during the melting process are treated separately.
There is no national law in the United States that mandates recycling. State and local governments often introduce their own recycling requirements. In 2014, the recycling/composting rate for municipal solid waste in the U.S. was 34.6%. A number of U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have passed laws that establish deposits or refund values on beverage containers while other jurisdictions rely on recycling goals or landfill bans of recyclable materials.
Household hazardous waste (HHW) was a term coined by Dave Galvin from Seattle, Washington in 1982 as part of the fulfillment of a US EPA grant. This new term was reflective of the recent passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 in the US. This act and subsequent regulations strengthened the environmental protection requirements for landfills, in Subpart D, and created a "cradle to grave" management system for hazardous wastes, in Subpart C. From RCRA 1976 the US EPA promulgated rules in 1980 which explicitly excluded any wastes from household origins from regulation as a hazardous waste at the federal level. Most US states adopted parallel regulations to RCRA 1976 but were allowed to be more stringent. California took advantage of this allowance and chose to not exempt household origin wastes from their state hazardous waste laws. HHW products exhibit many of the same dangerous characteristics as fully regulated hazardous waste which are their potential for reactivity, ignitability, corrosivity, toxicity, or persistence. Examples include drain cleaners, oil paint, motor oil, antifreeze, fuel, poisons, pesticides, herbicides and rodenticides, fluorescent lamps, lamp ballasts containing PCBs, some smoke detectors, and in some states, consumer electronics. Except for California, most states exclude HHW from their hazardous waste regulations and regulate the management of HHW largely under their solid waste regulatory schemes.
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.
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.
Automotive oil recycling involves the recycling of used oils and the creation of new products from the recycled oils, and includes the recycling of motor oil and hydraulic oil. Oil recycling also benefits the environment: increased opportunities for consumers to recycle oil lessens the likelihood of used oil being dumped on lands and in waterways. For example, one gallon of motor oil dumped into waterways has the potential to pollute one million gallons of water.
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).
References
- 1 2 "Managing Used Oil: Advice for Small Businesses | Common Wastes & Materials | US EPA". epa.gov. 2012. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
waste
- ↑ "Used Oil Management Program | Common Wastes & Materials | US EPA". epa.gov. 2011. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
- ↑ "State of Maine (www.maine.gov)". Archived from the original on 2010-10-21. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ↑ US EPA, OLEM (2016-01-14). "Reference Table for the Question "What is Used Oil?"". www.epa.gov. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
- ↑ "Identification and Listing of Hazardous Waste: Used Oil Final Rule and Correction Notices Issued" (PDF). U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Guidance. 1993. Retrieved 2007-04-05.
