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
(No Transcript)
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
(No Transcript)
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.