2. Contents:
What is solid waste?
Municipal solid waste
Hazardous waste.
Measures to avoid waste.
Treatment of waste.
Case studies.
3. SOLID WASTE
Solid waste refers to the range of garbage
arising from animal and human activities, that
are discarded as useless & unwanted.
All non-hazardous solid waste from a
community that requires collection and
transport to a disposal site is Municipal Solid
Waste(MSW).
5. Characteristics of Municipal
Solid Waste:
Solid wastes are grouped or classified in several
different ways.
The term Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is
generally used to describe most of the non-
hazardous solid waste from a city, town or village
that requires routine collection and transport to a
processsing or disposal site.
MSW does not include wastes of industrial
processes, construction and demolition debris,
sewage sludge, mining wastes or agricultural
wastes.
8. Hazardous Wastes
Hazardous wastes are those that can cause
harm to human and the environment.
Characteristics of hazardous wastes:
Wastes are classified as hazardous if
they exhibit any of four primary characteristics
based on physical or chemical properties of
toxicity, reactivity, ignitability and corrosivity.
9. Types of Hazardous waste:
Toxic wastes
Toxic wastes are those that are poisonous in
small or trace amounts. Some may have acute or
immediate effect on human or animals. Carcinogenic
or mutagenic causing biological changes in the
children of exposed people and animals. Eg:
pesticides, heavy metals.
Reactive wastes:
Reactive wastes are those that have a tendency
to react vigorously with air or water are unstable to
shock or heat, generate toxic gases or explode during
routine management. Eg: Gun powder,
nitroglycerine.
10. Ignitable waste: are those that burn at relatively
low temperatures (<60o C) and are capable of
spontaneous combustion during storage
transport or disposal.
Eg: Gasoline,paint thinners and alcohol.
Corrosive wastes: are those that destroy
materials and living tissues by chemical
reactions. Eg: acids and base
Infectious wastes: included human tissue from
surgery, used bandages and hypoderm needles
hospital wastes.
11. Effects of Hazardous waste:
Health Effects:
1. Somatic Effects ( Effect is primarily suffered by the
individual exposed. Eg. Cancer).
2. Genetic Effects ( Effect is suffered by the offspring of
the individual exposed.)
3. Teratogenic Effects ( Birth defects, Parental death)
Environmental Effects:
Chernobyl Disaster.
15. Waste production can be minimized by
adopting the 3 R’s principle: Reduce,
Reuse,
Recycle
Reduce the amount and toxicity of
garbage and trash that you discard.
Reuse containers and try to repair
things that are broken.
Recycle products wherever possible, which includes
buying recycled products i.e.
recycled paper books, paper bags etc.
16. Control measures of urban and
industrial
wastes:
An integrated waste management
strategy includes three main
components:
1. Source reduction
2. Recycling
3. Disposal
17. Source reduction:
It is one of the fundamental
ways to reduce waste. This can be done by
using less material when making a product,
reuse of products on site, designing products
or packaging to reduce their quantity. On an
individual level we can reduce the use of
unnecessary items
while shopping, buy items with minimal
packaging, and also avoid asking for plastic
carry bags.
18. Recycling:
Recycling is reusing some components of
the waste that may have some economic value.
Recycling has readily visible benefits such as
conservation of resources reduction in energy
used during manufacture and reducing pollution
levels.
19. Recycling:
Mining of new aluminium is expensive and hence
recycled aluminium has a strong market and plays
a significant role in the aluminium industry.
Paper recycling can also help preserve forests as it
takes about 17 trees to make one ton of paper.
Crushed glass (Cullet) reduces the energy required
to manufacture new glass by 50 percent. Cullet
lowers the temperature requirement of the
glassmaking process thus conserving energy and
reducing air pollution.
20. Ways to Dispose waste:
(a) Incineration:
In this process, the garbage is burnt in very
high temperature i.e. 900-1300°C in a furnace
so that the volume reduces to 1/10.
The ashes are collected and used as lawful
material in building construction.
The heat produced during incineration is also
used for electricity generation.
21. It is destructive distillation under
anaerobic condition. In this
process, some of the solid wastes
are subjected to combustion at
temperature 1650°C, in the
absence of oxygen. A wide variety
of hydrocarbons with gases like
CO2 or CO are formed as
triproducts.
(b) Pyrolysis:
22. (c) Sanitary landfill:
These are natural landscapes away of human
habitation which are depressions or trench like
areas.
The wastes are dumped in them layer after
layer, compressed and compacted and
covered with earth.
The surface so obtained by land fill can be
used for sports field, animal grazing fields or
even housing purpose
23. Biogas production:
• Animal wastes, food processing wastes and
other organic matter are decomposed
anaerobically to produce a gas called
biogas.
• It contains methane and CO. The methane
can provides gas for domestic use.
• The by product of this technology is slurry,
settled out the bottom of the digester. This
can be used as manure.
24. A biogas system:
Construction of an
other biogas digester.
Later the dome is
invisible as it gets
covered with soil. The
methane can leave the
dome only via a cable
which leads the gas
directly into the
kitchen.
27. The Yamuna river, often called Delhi’s lifeline, is gasping
for life. The 22-km stretch along the national capital has
virtually no aquatic life - thanks to over 20 drains that
pour untreated sewage and other waste into the river.
(Ref. The Hindu August 24,2016)
The Yamuna River
28. Wazirabad is the point where Yamuna enters the
city. At this point, its dissolved oxygen (DO) content
is 7.5 mg/l. At its point of exit from city limits, the
DO level is only 1.3 mg/l.
Data collected over a 10-year period by the
Central Water Commission through its 371
monitoring stations across the country shows that
Yamuna has the highest level of Biochemical
Oxygen Demand (BOD) concentration when it
passes through Delhi
29. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster:
• This disaster that occurred on April 26, 1986 in Ukraine, (i.e.
former USSR) at the Chernobyl power plant reactor,
designed to produce 1000 MW of electrical energy.
• It resulted in the release of Sr-90, Ce-134, Ce-137, 1-131 etc.
which polluted the whole region. The explosion occurred due to
faulty shutting down of the plant.
• Combustion of the graphite rods inside the rector resulted in fire
and the temperature of the reactor went up to 2000°C.
• The radioactive debris, gases and plume drifted over the entire
northern hemisphere affecting mostly Sweden, Norway,
Poland, and Denmark etc.
30. • More than 2000 people died
• in the disaster and many children were affected with
congenital abnormalities.
• The disaster damaged agricultural crops, plants and
caused cancer, lung, eye and blood disorders.
• Many European countries like
Denmark and Sweden had
banned the import of milk and
milk containing products.
This was because the milk was
contaminated by I-131, which
had entered the cows through
grazing on pastures and plants,
contaminated with the same.
Editor's Notes
Refuse Derived Fuel
Composting: Decomposition of organic waste.
Cogent Environmental Science (ISSN: 2331-1843) is published by Cogent OA, part of Taylor & Francis Group.