MUNICIPAL WASTE MANAGEMENT

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EFFECTIVE MUNICIPAL WASTE MANAGEMENT IS ESSENTIAL FOR HEALTHY OCEANS

Dealing with Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is part of our International Public Infrastructure (IPI), an infrastructure that is sadly missing in several areas to include land waste management and the interface between land and sea, rivers and beaches, etc. We are also missing a replacement energy infrastructure for the change over from fossil fuels to electricity for transport, by way of example.

MSW is commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain. It is waste 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 little 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 municipal solid waste industry has four components: recycling, composting, disposal, and waste-to-energy via incineration. There is no single approach that can be applied to the management of all waste streams.

In the USA the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal government agency, developed a hierarchy ranking strategy for municipal solid waste.

The Waste Management Hierarchy is made up of four levels ordered from most preferred to least preferred methods based on their environmental soundness: Source reduction and reuse; recycling or composting; energy recovery; treatment and disposal.

They did not include collection, where they already had a system for collection on land. They did not give a moments thought to collection from rivers, coastlines or at sea. And that is why we have Marine Litter and floating garbage islands the size of Texas or France.

SOURCE REDUCTION & REUSE

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RECYCLING & COMPOSTING

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ENERGY RECOVERY

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TREATMENT & DISPOSAL

Collection

The functional element of collection includes not only the gathering of solid waste and recyclable materials, but also the transport of these materials, after collection, to the location where the collection vehicle is emptied. This location may be a materials processing facility, a transfer station or a landfill disposal site.

Waste handling and separation, storage and processing at the source

Waste handling and separation involves activities associated with waste management until the waste is placed in storage containers for collection. Handling also encompasses the movement of loaded containers to the point of collection. Separating different types of waste components is an important step in the handling and storage of solid waste at the source of collection.

Segregation and processing and transformation of solid wastes

The types of means and facilities that are now used for the recovery of waste materials that have been separated at the source include curbside ('kerbside' in the UK) collection, drop-off and buy-back centers. The separation and processing of wastes that have been separated at the source and the separation of commingled wastes usually occur at a materials recovery facility, transfer stations, combustion facilities and treatment plants.

Transfer and transport

This element involves two main steps. First, the waste is transferred from a smaller collection vehicle to larger transport equipment. The waste is then transported, usually over long distances, to a processing or disposal site.

Disposal

Today, the disposal of wastes by land filling or land spreading is the ultimate fate of all solid wastes, whether they are residential wastes collected and transported directly to a landfill site, residual materials from materials recovery facilities (MRFs), residue from the combustion of solid waste, compost, or other substances from various solid waste processing facilities. A modern sanitary landfill is not a dump; it is an engineered facility used for disposing of solid wastes on land without creating nuisances or hazards to public health or safety, such as the problems of insects and the contamination of ground water.

Reusing

In the recent years environmental organizations, such as Freegle or Freecycle Network, have been gaining popularity for their online reuse networks. These networks provide a worldwide online registry of unwanted items that would otherwise be thrown away, for individuals and nonprofits to reuse or recycle. Therefore, this free Internet-based service reduces landfill pollution and promotes the gift economy

Landfills

Landfills are created by land dumping. Land dumping methods vary, most commonly it involves the mass dumping of waste into a designated area, usually a hole or sidehill. After the waste is dumped, it is then compacted by large machines. When the dumping cell is full, it is then "sealed" with a plastic sheet and covered in several feet of dirt. This is the primary method of dumping in the United States because of the low cost and abundance of unused land in North America.

Landfills are regulated in the US by the Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces standards provided in the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, such as requiring liners and groundwater monitoring. This is because landfills pose the threat of pollution and can intoxicate ground water.

The signs of pollution are effectively masked by disposal companies and it is often hard to see any evidence. Usually landfills are surrounded by large walls or fences hiding the mounds of debris. Large amounts of chemical odor eliminating agent are sprayed in the air surrounding landfills to hide the evidence of the rotting waste inside the plant.

Energy generation

Municipal solid waste can be used to generate energy. Several technologies have been developed that make the processing of MSW for energy generation cleaner and more economical than ever before, including landfill gas capture, combustion, pyrolysis, gasification, and plasma arc gasification.

While older waste incineration plants emitted a lot of pollutants, recent regulatory changes and new technologies have significantly reduced this concern. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations in 1995 and 2000 under the Clean Air Act have succeeded in reducing emissions of dioxins from waste-to-energy facilities by more than 99 percent below 1990 levels, while mercury emissions have been reduced by over 90 percent. The EPA noted these improvements in 2003, citing waste-to-energy as a power source "with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity".

COMPOSITION

The composition of municipal solid waste varies greatly from municipality to municipality, and it changes significantly with time. In municipalities which have a well developed waste recycling system, the waste stream mainly consists of intractable wastes such as plastic film and non-recyclable packaging materials.

At the start of the 20th century, the majority of domestic waste (53%) in the UK consisted of coal ash from open fires. In developed areas without significant recycling activity it predominantly includes food wastes, market wastes, yard wastes, plastic containers and product packaging materials, and other miscellaneous solid wastes from residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial sources.

Most definitions of municipal solid waste do not include industrial wastes, agricultural wastes, medical waste, radioactive waste or sewage sludge. Waste collection is performed by the municipality within a given area. The term residual waste relates to waste left from household sources containing materials that have not been separated out or sent for processing.

EU POLICIES & TARGETS

Waste policies and targets set at the EU level include minimum requirements for managing certain waste types. The most relevant targets for municipal waste are the Landfill Directive’s (EC, 1999) landfill diversion targets for biodegradable municipal waste; the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive’s (EC, 1994) recycling targets; and the Waste Framework Directive’s (EC, 2008) target on recycling and preparing for reuse (more precisely, the target applies to specific types of household and similar waste). Countries can choose between four different methods to monitor their progress towards the last target (EC, 2011).

A recycling rate is defined as material from municipal waste recycled divided by municipal waste generated.

In 2015, the European Commission proposed new targets for municipal waste of 60 % recycling and preparing for reuse by 2025 and 65 % by 2030. These are based on only one calculation method — roughly the one used in this briefing — with the option of time derogations for some countries (EC, 2015). In addition, new targets to reduce municipal waste disposed of in landfill and revised targets for packaging waste have been proposed.

PAY AS YOU THROW - PAYT

Many countries use ‘pay-as-you-throw’ schemes (i.e. fees based on the weight or volume of the waste as an economic incentive for households to recycle their waste). Their level of implementation varies greatly by country and within countries. However, all countries with recycling rates above 45 % employ a similar system of sorts, while most countries with recycling rates below 20 % do not use them, indicating that pay-as-you-throw schemes are an effective instrument that drives recycling up.

Pay As You Throw should be extended to waste that flows down rivers into the open sea. And waste that is found in the territorial limits of the country concerned.

MENACE FROM LAND MISMANAGEMENT

Marine litter is a menace, the by product of poor waste management from humand on land.

DO WE HAVE ALTERNATIVES ? - Not as far as we know. That would involve planning ahead. If our leaders planned ahead for Planet A and Ocean A we would not need an Ocean B, or a Planet B.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT CARING

Man made flotsam accumulates in 5 swirling ocean garbage patches called gyres. The largest gyre is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California.

If left untreated, the plastic in these gyres will impact our ecosystems, health and economies. This is a major problem now recognized by Governments. Solving the crises demands a combination of tackling the source and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean.

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