This article throws light upon the four important aspects of solid waste management. The aspects are: 1. Public Health Aspect 2. Legal Aspect 3. Environmental Aspect 4. Integrated Management of Solid Waste.
Solid Waste Management: Aspect # 1.
Public Health Aspects:
Solid waste may consists of:
(i) Human pathogens — handkerchiefs, diapers, contaminated food and surgical dressings
(ii) Animal pathogens — waste from pets
(iii) Soil pathogens — garden waste’
Suitable conditions must exist for a person to be at risk from solid waste.
These are:
(i) There should be an infectious dose of the pathogens.
(ii) The pathogens should have a transmission route to the person, i.e. aerosol, fecal-oral route, hand to mouth etc.
(iii) The person must not have immunity to the pathogen.
The pathogens should be checked, from invading the human host by the following methods:
i. Good hygiene and dietary habits must be followed.
ii. Those involved regularly with solid waste must be vaccinated for pathogenic diseases.
iii. Specific waste storage and handling techniques must be introduced. The wastes most amenable to disease transmission must be separated at source. Less manual handling and more automated storage, collection and sorting is desirable.
Solid Waste Management: Aspect # 2.
Legal Aspects of Solid Waste Management:
The Directive of Environmental Assessment and the proposed Directive on Landfill are important directives on solid waste in the Urban Centres.
Strict waste acceptance criteria and procedures are set out for:
(i) Waste acceptance
(ii) Chemical, physical and biological waste properties
(iii) Suitability of wastes
(iv) Waste loading rates
(v) Water, leachate and gas control
(vi) Water balance and groundwater protection.
The objectives of waste directives are:
(i) To promote clean technologies
(ii) To use landfill only as a last resort
(iii) To reduce overall packing quantities for land-filling and thereby reduce the volumes of municipal solid waste.
Solid Waste Management: Aspect # 3.
Environmental Aspects of Solid Waste Management:
Although landfill is the most common route of solid waste disposal, it is undesirable and alternatives must be pursued:
(i) Landfill site and dump sites, if not properly operated, cause soil and groundwater contamination.
(ii) Landfill causes litter, scavengers, fires, rat infestations and a terrible odour.
(iii) Land-filling in moist climates produces enormous quantities of leachate which are toxic.
(iv) Land-filling in dry climate causes localized air pollution problems.
Solid Waste Management: Aspect # 4.
Integrated Solid Waste Management:
The following figure shows the hierarchy in waste management policy:
The priorities in a waste management policy are:
(i) To reduce the amount of waste
(ii) To manufacture products with minimal waste
(iii) To promote good practice of waste monitoring
(iv) To identify areas for improvement by regular “waste audits” by various producers and consumers
(v) To reuse, reprocess and remanufacture products.