Waste management systems and environmental impact

Government

Waste Management

Waste management is a phenomenon that is an issue in almost every city that there is today. Waste is fact of living and the more people that are living in or near cities the more waste that there tends to be. How to deal with this waste is often a function of the city manager. This person as part of their job is responsible for figuring out not only how to deal with all the waste but how to deal with it in the best possible way. It has to be dealt with efficiently and cost effectively, but with the future of the environment at the forefront of any planning.

Most local governments and urban agencies have, time and again, identified solid waste as a major problem that has attained magnitude that requires extreme measures. There are three key trends with respect to solid waste that must be looked at. These include 1) an increase in volume of waste that is produced by urban residents, 2) the change in the quality or make-up of waste that is generated and 3) the disposal techniques of waste collected, by land-fill and incineration. It is dangerous to take on a broad way of thinking in developing a working structure for solid waste management (SWM). This covers the social, economic, technology, political and administrative scope. The social aspect of SWM involves waste minimization; the economic facet of SWM involves waste recycling; the technology dimension of SWM involves waste removal; and the political and administrative dimensions cuts across all the three issues of minimization, recycling and disposal (Srinivas, n.d.).

But SWM is not an isolated phenomenon that can be easily compartmentalized and solved with innovative technology or engineering. It is predominately an urban issue that is closely connected, directly or indirectly, to a number of issues such as urban lifestyles, resource consumption patterns, jobs and income levels, and other socio-economic and cultural concerns. All these issues have to be brought together on a familiar platform in order to make sure that a long-term solution to urban waste is developed. There is an entire culture of waste management that needs to be put in place. This includes the micro-level of household and neighborhood to the macro levels of city, state and nation. The general assumption is that SWM should be done at the city-level, and as a result, solutions tried out have been essentially end-of-pipe ('End-of-pipe' refers to finding solutions to a problem at the final stage of its cycle of causes and effects. In regards to urban waste, it means centering on waste disposal rather than waste recycling or waste minimization. But this advance essentially misses the forest for the trees, in trying to piece-meal and ad hoc solutions to waste problems, instead of taking a long-term holistic approach. In actuality there are numerous critical measures the have to taken at each of the levels of household, neighborhood, city and nation. The action that needs to be taken can have social, technology, economic, political or administrative proportions (Srinivas, n.d.).

It is significant that the right decision be made and carried out at the right level. Therefore, actions at the household level are mainly social, technology and economic in nature. The comparable actions that should be taken at the state and national level are mostly economic, political and administrative in character. The means that link the dimensions of decision-making like social, technology, economic, political and administrative with the levels of decision-making including household, neighborhood, city, and nation helps in categorizing the decisions, action and related activities to be undertaken (Srinivas, n.d.).

Speedy urbanization has made solid waste management a serious problem. The insight of the people has always been that it is an accountability of the local government bodies. Local authorities are bound to keep their area clean. Many cities, corporations and industries have been working on several innovative and participatory methods in order to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. There are more than 522 towns and cities, which are centers of rapid economic development and population growth that generate thousand of tons of waste from domestic, industrial, commercial, health care facilities and agricultural sources that must be managed every day. Low collection reporting, unavailable transport services, and lack of appropriate treatment, recycling and disposal facilities are responsible for unsatisfactory waste management, leading to water, land and air pollution, and for putting people and the environment at risk (National 3R Strategy for Waste Management, 2009).

A modification in thinking about the definition of waste is necessary for a transition to more resource efficient societies. Waste is conventionally thought of as having no value. In addition, waste is widely assumed to be predictable. This leads top economic and management performance that tend to support the generation of waste. In a resource- competent economy and society, the term waste refers only to those outstanding materials that have no economic value. According to this definition, conventionally valueless streams of waste can be considered resources for a new level of the economy. They can be improved or prevented from being lost through greater competence and management at every stage of assembly and consumption (National 3R Strategy for Waste Management, 2009).

MSW management problems are thought to impact factors and their interactions, like uncertainties in economic and technical data, dynamic variation in system components, and randomness in waste generation rates, policy analysis in waste-flow allocation, and limited resources and capacities, and must be systematically evaluated in planning an integrated MSW system. The difficulties could further compounded interactions among the uncertain and dynamic parameters and through additional economic implications caused by improper policies. The MSW generation rates often vary among different consumer behaviors, different communities, and different periods; additionally, waste generation rate from a community could vary temporally, with the detailed level at a given time period being uncertain. Vehicle types, collection efficiencies, oil prices, and collection routes can also affect waste collection; the operation cost may be related to labor fees, equipment prices, energy prices, and management expenses that can result in uncertain waste management cost in the future. Furthermore, the decision for desired waste treatment approach is related to multiple criteria (e.g., environmental, social, and economic objectives) with the detailed practices (e.g., landfill, incineration, composting, and/or recycling) being interrelated and interactive to each other. Therefore, incorporation of various uncertain and dynamic complexities within a general mathematical programming framework for improving the regional MSW management is desired (Yongping and Guohe, 2010).

There are in reality only three things that one can do with waste: bury it, burn it or recycle it. All of them bear environmental and financial costs, and all necessitate careful management. At first look burying or burning the stuff seems to be the simplest option, but the potentially hazardous costs of this require strict controls (Down in the dumps, 2009).

Waste first became a problem in big cities, where it accumulated quicker than it rotted away. This created a monstrosity as well as a health hazard. In 1552 Shakespeare's father was fined a shilling for leaving excrement in the street instead of taking it to the selected spot at the edge of town. Benjamin Franklin aided in setting up the first street cleaning service in America in Philadelphia in 1757. But even back then most items that would now be considered rubbish were collected and put to good use. Human along with animal droppings were gathered up and spread on fields as fertilizer and rags were recycled in order to make paper. Anything that had no further use was, and still is, burned or buried. In the beginning, dumps were merely places where waste was left to rot with little or no management. A coating of dirt or debris was usually spread over the rotting rubbish in order to help control smells and vermin (Down in the dumps, 2009).

The amplified volume of waste going to landfill tends to cause several problems. The first one is to find enough space for it. Even where there is a lot of land available, locals are often intolerant of landfills because of the damage they can do to human health and to the environment. Tightly packed organic matter creates methane as it rots which can then catch fire or cause explosions. This is also bad for the atmosphere, because methane is a greenhouse gas that is twenty one times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The process of decay produces ammonia too, which in sufficient concentrations can poison fish and amphibians and render water undrinkable (Down in the dumps, 2009).

The changing make up of waste that goes into a landfill also gives rise to other forms of pollution. The bacterium that breaks down rotting waste often produces acids. It used to be that the high proportion of ash in household rubbish helped to neutralize this, but it is thought that now they can be concentrated enough to break up poisonous heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Water that escapes through the landfill can carry harmful toxins that get into the groundwater and from there into drinking water and eventually into the food chain (Down in the dumps, 2009).

The role of municipalities, especially city managers, in the expansion of the cities and towns is very crucial and important in today's framework when urbanization is moving at a very rapid pace. The city managers in spite of their efforts are often incapable to perform better in terms of financial administration and efficient delivery of urban services. Consequently, the need of the hour is to strengthen and reengineer the urban local bodies which will perform better in terms of maximizing revenue generation and at the same time deliver the services in a better and efficient way. The only alternative which could bring such results can mainly be achieved through the introduction of innovative practices which openly targets these two issues, which mainly revolve around maximization of proceeds and better serviceability (Ogra, n.d.).

There is an assortment of core areas where city managers are involved for providing their services for the betterment of a city. These services are often explained as the obligatory and the mandatory tasks. It is with these functions where city managers have to execute in a way that they could maximize revenue generation and perform and deliver the services in an improved way. One of the important things which are missing in the system is that data is not managed properly. Because of the inappropriate management of the data and records, it often becomes hard to know about the functioning of the system in an efficient way. The basis of a solution to maximize profit creation and efficient delivery of the urban services lies in the overall management of the data system within the organization. The data is often linked to other data which then lies in a remote form. It is very significant to manage the data in an integrated way so that difficulty of the various systems can be reduced in order to solve the various issues that are related to the functions of the cities (Ogra, n.d.).

The most important task for solid waste management rests with city authorities who are the single most important actors to utilize the activities that are needed to deal with this issue. Successful results will necessitate the allocation of special responsibilities and financial resources to the local authorities by central governments. In many cases, this will involve policy changes, legal reform, institutional capacity-building, the use of modern management approaches and appropriate technologies in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current solid-waste management practices that are being used (Solid Waste Management and Sewage Related Issues, 1999).

In many cities, solid and liquid waste management is carried out by the private sector by way of agreement with the local authorities. The trend of comparable private sector association also appears to be increasing in developing countries as well. There are, nevertheless, risks that are related to the infrastructure preceding such privatization. An inadequately run public service, which is often the case in waste collection, is vulnerable to being replaced by a private monopoly over which a city manager would have little control. In this context, use of competitive tendering, retaining several different companies for the service needed and monitoring of contractor's performance ensure acceptable and effective services (Solid Waste Management and Sewage Related Issues, 1999).

The U.S. EPA defines municipal solid waste to include waste generated in the residential, commercial, and institutional sectors. Of the 232 million tons generated in 2000, approximately

55.4% was disposed of in landfills, 23% was recovered for recycling, 7.1% was recovered for composting, primarily yard waste, and 14.5% was combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. In addition to MSW, many other nonhazardous wastes are managed in these same facilities, including construction and demolition (C&D) waste, water and wastewater treatment plant sludge's, and nonhazardous industrial wastes ranging from food processing wastes to foundry sands (Barlaz, Cekander and Vasuki, 2003).