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Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste

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Outline

• Solid Waste• Waste Disposal Methods• Shrinking the Waste Stream

Recycling• Hazardous and Toxic Wastes

Federal Legislation- RCRA- CERCLA

Management Options

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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

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U.S. Domestic Waste

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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.

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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.

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Sanitary Landfill

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mass-Burn Incinerator

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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.

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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.

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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.

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U.S. Recycling Rates

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Cradle to Grave

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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Toxic Waste Secure Landfill

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Summary

• Solid Waste• Waste Disposal Methods• Shrinking the Waste Stream

Recycling• Hazardous and Toxic Wastes

Federal Legislation- RCRA- CERCLA

Management Options

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Living in a high waste society

It means people throw away:• Enough aluminum to rebuild the country’s 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.