Waste Management

Garden compost. Tessin, Switzerland.
© WWF-Canon / Paul Forster

Why should managing waste be such a big deal? After all, isn’t waste just rubbish we can’t use anymore? Aren't we doing a good thing by throwing it away?

Wrong. With an increasing global population, the amount of waste being generated and the resources consumed in getting rid of it are fast approaching disatrous dimensions.

Waste includes solid refuse produced by animals (including humans), food scraps, glass, aluminium cans, plastics, paper, liquid domestic waste.

This list does not even include the massive industrial waste generated from manufacturing processes in factories, such as chemicals, oils, and any other kind of organic and inorganic material in solid, liquid or gaseous form.

Waste management is all about how we can reduce waste. It means using less material to get a job done and using methods that create less waste as well as looking at ways we can reuse and recycle products. Disposal should be the very last resort.

Why is waste a problem?
When the pressure on the Earth's natural resources were not so great and we were not aware of possible ecological consequences of certain activities, waste disposal was not a major problem. The oceans and other water bodies formed a convenient repository for generated waste. Land was not at the premium it is now, so there were plenty of landfill sites. And since global climate change was not a big issue, incinerators took care of what other disposal methods could not.

Now we know better. Waste essentially causes 3 problems:

When we dispose of something, it can no longer be used and ceases to be a resource
Resources are wasted, including time, money, raw materials and energy, in getting rid of the waste
Finally, we put pressure on the environment to cope with whatever we have thrown away both through the use of precious land and the risk of pollution and contamination.

What can be done? – The 3 Rs!
'Reduce, Reuse and Recycle' are the 3 pillars of waste management.

Reduce
Reducing waste means adopting better consumption habits so that less is thrown away. It means manufacturers having to come up with technologies to design more durable and efficient products that minimise premature disposal. Waste reduction results in not just ecological, but economic advantages.

Reuse
Reusing refers to using products repeatedly for the same or different purposes. For example, using old clothes as rags; unwanted CDs as coasters; jars and bottles for storage; both sides of paper in offices; and so on. Sometimes items may need to be cleaned or repaired for reuse.

Recycle
Recycling refers to treating waste in a manner so that materials can be recovered and used again. Recycled products may be the same as the original or different. Recycling of paper is an example of the former, as is recycling glass bottles and aluminium cans. Recycling sewage to make electricity is an example of the latter.

Recycling also reduces demand for raw materials as it can recover original resources. However, one drawback is that sometimes recycling processes themselves are expensive in both financial and ecological terms.

Resources