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Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste

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Title: Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste


1
Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste
2
Outline
  • Solid Waste
  • Waste Disposal Methods
  • Shrinking the Waste Stream
  • Recycling
  • Hazardous and Toxic Wastes
  • Federal Legislation
  • RCRA
  • CERCLA
  • Management Options

3
SOLID WASTE
  • According to EPA, U.S. produces 11 billion tons
    of solid waste annually.
  • About half is agricultural waste.
  • More than one-third is mining related.
  • Industrial Waste - 400 million metric tons.
  • Hazardous/Toxic - 60 million metric tons.
  • Municipal Waste - 200 million metric tons.
  • Two-thirds of a ton per person.
  • Waste Stream

4
U.S. Domestic Waste
5
WASTE DISPOSAL METHODS
  • Open Dumps
  • Open, unregulated dumps are still the predominant
    method of waste disposal in developing countries.
  • Most developed countries forbid open dumping.
  • Estimated 200 million liters of motor oil are
    poured into the sewers or soak into the ground
    each year in the U.S..
  • Five times volume of Exxon Valdez.

6
Waste Disposal Methods
  • Landfills
  • Sanitary Landfills
  • Refuse compacted and covered everyday with a
    layer of dirt.
  • Dirt takes up as much as 20 of landfill space.
  • Since 1994, all operating landfills in the U.S.
    have been required to control hazardous
    substances.

7
Sanitary Landfill
8
Landfills
  • Historically, landfills have been a convenient,
    inexpensive waste-disposal option.
  • Increasing land and shipping fees, and demanding
    construction and maintenance requirements are
    increasing costs.
  • Suitable landfill sites are become scarce.
  • Increasingly, communities are rejecting new
    landfills.
  • Old landfills are quickly reaching capacity and
    closing.

9
Waste Disposal Methods
  • Exporting Waste
  • Although most industrialized nations have agreed
    to stop shipping hazardous and toxic waste to
    less-developed countries, the practice still
    continues.
  • Garbage imperialism also operates in wealthier
    countries.
  • Indian reservations increasingly being approached
    to store wastes on reservations.

10
Waste Disposal Methods
  • Incineration and Resource Recovery
  • Energy Recovery - Heat derived from incinerated
    refuse is a useful resource.
  • Steam used for heating buildings or generating
    electricity.

11
Incinerator Types
  • Refuse-Derived Fuel - Refuse is sorted to remove
    recyclable and unburnable materials.
  • Higher energy content than raw trash.
  • Mass Burn - Everything smaller than major
    furniture and appliances loaded into furnace.
  • Creates air pollution problems.
  • Reduces disposal volume by 80-90.
  • Residual ash usually contains toxic material.

12
Mass-Burn Incinerator
13
Incinerator Cost and Safety
  • Initial construction costs are usually between
    100 and 300 million for a typical municipal
    facility.
  • Tipping fess are often much higher than tipping
    fees at landfills.
  • EPA has found alarmingly high toxin levels in
    incinerator ash.
  • Concentrated in fly ash.
  • Pollution control methods are not guaranteed to
    be 100 effective.

14
SHRINKING THE WASTE STREAM
  • Recycling
  • Recycling is the reprocessing of discarded
    materials into new, useful products.
  • Currently, about two-thirds of all aluminum cans
    are recycled.
  • Half of all aluminum cans on grocery shelves will
    be made into another can within two months.

15
Recycling
  • Potential Problems
  • Market prices fluctuate wildly.
  • Contamination
  • Most of 24 billion plastic soft drink bottles
    sold annually in the U.S. are PET, which can be
    melted and remanufactured into many items.
  • But a single PVC bottle can ruin an entire
    truckload of PET if melted together.

16
U.S. Recycling Rates
17
Recycling
  • Benefits
  • Saves money, raw materials, and land.
  • Encourages individual responsibility.
  • Reduces pressure on disposal systems.
  • Japan recycles about half of all household and
    commercial wastes.
  • Lowers demand for raw resources.
  • Reduces energy consumption and air pollution.

18
Recycling
  • Benefits Example
  • Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves 4 tons of
    bauxite, 700 kg of coke and pitch, and keeps 35
    kg of aluminum fluoride out of the air.
  • Producing aluminum from scrap instead of bauxite
    ore cuts energy use by 95.
  • Yet still throw away more than a million tons of
    aluminum annually.

19
Shrinking the Waste Stream
  • Composting
  • Biological degradation of organic material under
    aerobic conditions.
  • Demanufacturing
  • Disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer
    products.
  • Reuse
  • Reusable glass container makes an average of 15
    round-trips between factory and customer before
    it has to be recycled.

20
Shrinking the Waste Stream
  • Producing Less Waste
  • Excess packaging of food and consumer products is
    one of our greatest sources of unnecessary waste.
  • Paper, plastic, glass, and metal packaging
    material make up 50 of domestic trash by volume.
  • Increase use of photodegradable and biodegradable
    plastics.

21
HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC WASTES
  • EPA estimates U.S. industries generate 265
    million metric tons of officially classified
    hazardous wastes annually.
  • At least 40 million metric tons of toxic and
    hazardous wastes are released into the
    environment each year.

22
Hazardous Waste
  • Legally, hazardous waste is any discarded liquid
    or solid that contains substances known to be
  • Fatal to humans or laboratory animals in low
    doses.
  • Toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic to
    humans or other life-forms.
  • Ignitable with a flash point less than 60o C.
  • Explosive or highly reactive.

23
Hazardous Waste Disposal
  • Federal Legislation
  • Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) -
    1976.
  • Comprehensive program requiring rigorous testing
    and management of toxic and hazardous substances.
  • Cradle to grave accounting.

24
Federal Legislation
  • Comprehensive Environmental Response,
    Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).
  • Modified in 1984 by Superfund Amendments and
    Reauthorization Act.
  • Aimed at rapid containment, cleanup, or
    remediation of abandoned toxic waste sites.
  • Toxic Release Inventory - Requires 20,000
    manufacturing facilities to report annually on
    releases of more than 300 toxic materials.

25
Cradle to Grave
26
CERCLA
  • Government does not have to prove anyone violated
    a law, or what role they played in a superfund
    site.
  • Liability under CERCLA is strict, joint, and
    several, meaning anyone associated with a site
    can be held responsible for the entire clean-up
    cost.

27
Superfund Sites
  • EPA estimates 36,000 seriously contaminated sites
    in the U.S..
  • By 1997, 1,400 sites had been placed on the
    National Priority List for cleanup with with
    Superfund financing.
  • Superfund is a revolving pool designed to
  • Provide immediate response to emergency
    situations posing imminent hazards.
  • Clean-up abandoned or inactive sites.

28
Superfund Sites
  • Total costs for hazardous waste cleanup in the
    U.S. are estimated between 370 billion and 1.7
    trillion.
  • For years, most of the funding has gone to legal
    fees, but this situation has improved over past
    several years.
  • Studies of Superfund sites reveal minorities tend
    to be over-represented in these neighborhoods.

29
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30
How Clean is Clean ?
  • Brownfields - Contaminated properties that have
    been abandoned or are not being used up to
    potential because of pollution concerns.
  • Up to one-third of all commercial industrial
    sites in urban core of many big cities fall into
    this category.
  • In many cases, property owners complain that
    unreasonably high purity levels are demanded in
    remediation programs.

31
Hazardous Waste Management Options
  • Produce Less Waste
  • Avoid creating wastes in the first place.
  • Recycle and Reuse
  • Convert to Less Hazardous Substances
  • Physical Treatment (Isolation)
  • Incineration
  • Chemical Processing (Transformation)
  • Bioremediation (Microorganisms)

32
Hazardous Waste Management Options
  • Store Permanently
  • Retrievable Storage
  • Can be inspected and periodically retrieved.
  • Secure Landfills
  • Modern, complex landfills with multiple liners
    and other impervious layers and monitoring
    systems.

33
Toxic Waste Secure Landfill
34
Summary
  • Solid Waste
  • Waste Disposal Methods
  • Shrinking the Waste Stream
  • Recycling
  • Hazardous and Toxic Wastes
  • Federal Legislation
  • RCRA
  • CERCLA
  • Management Options

35
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36
Living in a high waste society
  • It means people throw away
  • Enough aluminum to rebuild the countrys entire
    commercial airline fleet every 3 months.
  • Enough tires each year to encircle the planet
    almost 3 times.
  • About 18 billion disposable diapers per year,
    which if linked end-to-end would reach to the
    moon and back 7 times.
  • About 2 billion disposable razors, 10 million
    computers, and 8 million TV sets each year.
  • About 2.5 million nonreturnable plastic bottles
    each hour
  • Some 14 billion catalogs and 38 billion pieces of
    junk mail.
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