Bullying

Environmental Problems
And
Its Effects

Physical Science 101
( Earth Science )
BEED/BSE-3

Submitted by:
Nor-aliya D. Balt
Sheila Mae Rosete

Submitted to:
Mr. Tristan Babaylan

The Earth’s environment is in a sorry state, with no hope of getting it better any time soon. Wherever one looks, one encounters pollution in all its forms. Forests are disappearing. Green areas around cities are being replaced by concrete buildings. Waste products are being dumped indiscriminately. Water is too toxic to consume. The air is unfit for breathing in. Global warming has become a menacing issue. There are concerns about how long life ion earth, is going to survive. The human race is at the brink of a self-created disaster. Truly, there is a surfeit of environmental problems today. The activities as well as the lifestyle of human beings too plays an important role in how the surroundings or environment is affected. Till date, it is one of the major factor that has affected the environment of the earth as it is in constant conflict with it.
Here, we tried to choose and study two environmental problems that are practically the major problems in today’s generation.
First problem is the water pollution.

Water pollution is any chemical, physical or biological change in the quality of water that has a harmful effect on any living thing that drinks or uses or lives (in) it. When humans drink polluted water it often has serious effects on their health. Water pollution can also make water unsuited for the desired use. It is the presence in water bodies (including surface water and groundwater) of toxic chemicals and/or biological agents that exceed what is naturally found in water and may pose a threat to human health and/or the environment. Additionally, water pollution may include chemicals exclusively introduced into the water bodies due to human activities, in which case any amount of those chemicals detected in water denotes pollution, regardless of the harm they may pose to human health and the environment. Many of the chlorinated solvents commonly used in industry (such as PCE, TCE, 1,1,1-TCA) are examples of such chemicals polluting our waters exclusively due to human activities. Another example is MTBE (Methyl-tert-butyl-ether), a gasoline oxygenate that is currently banned in the U.S. Regardless of their provenance, the chemicals or biological agents causing water pollution are generically referred to as water pollutants. Any water body can become polluted, regardless on its size and/or location. This includes lakes from remote areas or huge water bodies such as Colorado river. This is due to the atmospheric transport of pollutants over large areas and deposition with precipitation water. Basically, the groundwater and surface water including swimming pools, ponds, lakes, creeks, rivers, seas, and oceans may become polluted. Obviously, the bigger the water body is, the shorter the time required for natural cleaning the pollution and recovery. This is mostly due to the quick diffusion and dissipation of contamination and due to the faster natural degradation and attenuation processes.
There are several classes of water pollutants. * First category are disease-causing agents. These are bacteria, viruses, protozoa and parasitic worms that enter sewage systems and untreated waste. * A second category of water pollutants is oxygen-demanding wastes; wastes that can be decomposed by oxygen-requiring bacteria. When large populations of decomposing bacteria are converting these wastes it can deplete oxygen levels in the water. This causes other organisms in the water, such as fish, to die. * A third category of water pollutants is water-soluble inorganic pollutants, such as acids, salts and toxic metals. Large quantities of these compounds will make water unfit to drink and will cause the death of aquatic life.
Another class of water pollutants are nutrients; they are water-soluble nitrates and phosphates that cause excessive growth of algae and other water plants, which deplete the water's oxygen supply. This kills fish and, when found in drinking water, can kill young children. * Water can also be polluted by a number of organic compounds such as oil, plastics and pesticides, which are harmful to humans and all plants and animals in the water. * A very dangerous category is suspended sediment, because it causes depletion in the water's light absorption and the particles spread dangerous compounds such as pesticides through the water. * Finally, water-soluble radioactive compounds can cause cancer, birth defects and genetic damage and are thus very dangerous water pollutants.

Water pollution is a serious problem for human health. This is because we may get exposed to polluted water in various ways, including, but not necessarily limited to: * Drinking the polluted water * Bathing or showering with the polluted water * Swimming in the polluted water * Breathing the vapors of a polluted water while sitting next to a polluted water source * Consuming polluted food (meat and/or vegetables) affected by polluted water * Consuming meat from animals fed with affected food (e.g., vegetables irrigated with polluted water or grown in an area with polluted groundwater)

The effects of water pollution may appear immediately after exposure and be more or less violent in the case of drinking water with high amount of pollutants. At the same time, the effects may appear some time after a repetitive exposure to water contaminated with lower amounts of pollutants. Health effects from simple intoxication, stomach ach, till death or deathly disease may occur.
The causes of water pollution vary and may be both natural and anthropogenic. However, the most common causes of water pollution are the anthropogenic ones including: * Agriculture runoff - carrying fertilizers, pesticides/insecticides/herbicides and other pollutants into water bodies such as lakes, rivers, ponds). The usual effect of this type of pollution consists in algae growing in affected water bodies. This is a sign of increased nitrates and phosphates in water that could be harmful for human health. * Storm water runoff – carrying various oils, petroleum products and other contaminants from urban and rural areas (ditches). These usually forms sheens on the water surface. * Leaking sewer lines – may add trihalomethanes (such as chloroform) as well as other contaminants into groundwater ending up contaminating surface water, too. Discharges of chlorinated solvents from Dry Cleaners to sewer lines are also a recognized source of water pollution with these persistent and harmful solvents. * Mining activities – mining activities involve crushing the rock that usually contains many trace metals and sulfides. The left material may easily generate sulfuric acid in the presence of precipitation water. Please, read more at Mining Sites. * Foundries – have direct emissions of metals (including Hg, Pb, Mn, Fe, Cr and other metals) and other particulate matter into the air. Please, read more at Foundry. * Industrial discharges – may add significant pollution to water bodies, but are usually regulated today. * Accidental leaks and spills – associated with handling and storage of chemicals may happen anytime and, although they are usually contained soon after they occur, the risk of polluting surface and groundwater exist. An example are ship accidents such as Exxon Valdez disaster which spilled large amounts of petroleum products into the ocean; * Intended/illegal discharges of waste – while such occurrences are less common today, they may still happen due to the high cost of proper waste disposal; illegal waste discharges into water bodies were recorded all over the world; * Burning of fossil fuels – the emitted ash particles usually contain toxic metals (such as As or Pb). Burning will also add a series of oxides including carbon dioxide to air and respectively water bodies. * Transportation – even though Pb has been banned in gasoline in the U.S. and many other countries, vehicle emissions pollute the air with various tailpipe compounds (including sulfur and nitrogen compounds, as well as carbon oxides) that may end up in water bodies via deposition with precipitation water. * Construction activities – introduce a series of contaminants into the ground that may eventually end up in groundwater. * Plastic materials/wastes in contact with water – may degrade slowly releasing harmful compounds for both human health and ecosystem. * Disposal of personal care products and household chemicals (including detergents and various cleaning solutions) – this is a serious problem since the releases to water are unpredictable and hard if not impossible to control. It is up to each of us to minimize this contribution to water pollution by controlling our consumption and disposal of such products as well as trying to recycle as much as we can! * Improper disposal of car batteries and other batteries – may add metals * Leaking landfills – may pollute the groundwater below the landfill with a large variety of contaminants (whatever is stored by the landfill). * Animal wastes – contribute to the biological pollution of water streams.

If you want to help keep our waters clean, there are many things you can do to help. You can prevent water pollution of nearby rivers and lakes as well as groundwater and drinking water by following some simple guidelines in your everyday life. * Conserve water by turning off the tap when running water is not necessary. This helps prevent water shortages and reduces the amount of contaminated water that needs treatment. * Be careful about what you throw down your sink or toilet. Don’t throw paints, oils or other forms of litter down the drain. * Use environmentally household products, such as washing powder, household cleaning agents and toiletries. * Take great care not to overuse pesticides and fertilisers. This will prevent runoffs of the material into nearby water sources. * By having more plants in your garden you are preventing fertiliser, pesticides and contaminated water from running off into nearby water sources. * Don’t throw litter into rivers, lakes or oceans. Help clean up any litter you see on beaches or in rivers and lakes, make sure it is safe to collect the litter and put it in a nearby dustbin.

Second problem is the Garbage Problem

This is very common in third world countries. The people do not have access to information to proper waste disposal that they end up mismanaging their garbage. This is evidenced by heaps of garbage in inappropriate areas and water systems. Some people also tend to burn their garbage leading to more environmental problems.
Solid waste is essentially garbage: waste produced in our homes, businesses and some industrial sources. Solid waste production in this country is growing in volume and in toxicity. More and more of our everyday products contain toxic chemicals, such as mercury or PBDEs (flame retardant chemicals), and these toxic products are combined with a plethora of other chemicals, which eventually impact public health and the environment. There are numerous solid waste facilities in New England, including landfills, incinerators, and a growing number of transfer stations. Many of the older facilities run by municipalities have been closed down because of environmental concerns, paving the way for the waste industry to market their “state-of-the-art” management and facilities.
In most of the world, including North America, we do one of two things with our ordinary garbage: burn it or bury it. Neither one is good for us or for the environment. Burning garbage in incinerators releases dangerous gases and dust (particulate matter) which contribute to global warming and pollute lakes, forests, oceans and cities half a world away from where they originated. Most incinerators in industrialized countries now remove large quantities of particles and pollutants, thus ensuring cleaner air. But the bulk of what they remove ends up in a landfill.This site concentrates on landfills, in part because this improvement in incinerator technology has increased the pressure on landfills, and in part because a much higher proportion of garbage in North America is sent to landfills than to incinerators.Burying garbage also causes both air and water pollution, and simply transporting it to the sites consumes an increasing amount of valuable fossil fuels, which produces more pollution and other problems.As a result, alternatives to the burn-or-bury option are increasingly attractive. Composting heads that list of alternatives.
It might seem that yard waste and food scraps must be amongst the more benign things you could send to your local landfill. These things are not toxic; how could they contribute to pollution? As for space, how much can these things take up? Besides, unlike an old toaster they decompose, which means that they take up less space next year than they do when they’re thrown away.All of this sounds perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, much of it is either wrong or misleading.
Across most of North America, yard and food waste make up over a quarter of all the ordinary garbage we throw away. That’s 25% by weight. In the U.S., that 25% is almost equally divided between yard waste (32.6 million tons, or 12.8% of all MSW) and food scraps (31.7 million tons, or 12.5%). And then there’s all the other organic stuff that could be composted: all the clothing, towels, and bedding made of organic fibers, plus wood, old furniture and sawdust. Then there’s paper, which at 83 million tons accounts for another 30% of municipal solid waste. As of 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, over 64% of the yard waste we throw away was recovered and composted, as was 54.5% of the paper and cardboard. Only 2.6% of food waste reached a compost heap. (See the EPA Fact Sheet on MSW for 2007.)In other words, well over fifty percent of our ordinary garbage could be composted, but most of it isn’t.This ordinary garbage, or Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), is household and business trash as opposed to chemical or industrial waste. It’s the stuff most of us put in our trashcans at home, at school, or at work, to be picked up and hauled away: paper, packaging, food scraps, old toys, old chairs, old microwaves, lamp shades, blue-jeans and books. It includes trash from offices and restaurants. In the majority of cases across North America, it ends up in a landfill. This is in spite of the fact that 24 states, at least one province, and hundreds of municipalities now ban yard waste from landfills.
Landfills also accept certain types of commercial and even industrial waste which is one reason why the mix in them can become so toxic.The bottom line is this: establishing a landfill is an enormous and enormously expensive undertaking. It is harder and harder just to find a suitable site for a new one, especially near a major city. Reducing the amount of trash that reaches landfills and incinerators has become an urgent matter in many areas across North America. Hence the ban on yard waste, one of the easiest things to divert. We need to compost more and throw away less.” Landfill liners are temporary and chlorinated benzene in PCBs can cause leaks in certain liners.” –Great Lakes Binational Toxics Strategy, May 16, 2000 Toronto Meeting Minutes.
The environmental impact of landfills is a complicated issue. As pointed out above, composting household and garden waste helps prevent landfills from becoming overfilled which lessens the danger that they will leak into water tables or waterways. It also saves the gas or other fuel that would be used to transport those wastes and prevents that much carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and particulate matter from entering our atmosphere. This is not a minor concern; large cities must sometimes truck garbage hundreds of miles.
Space is not the only issue. Municipal landfills can pollute air, water and soil. And yard and table waste actually contribute significantly to all of these pollution problems. Why? First, because they are wet. Secondly, because they are organic.
Wet Garbage = Water Pollution
Wet garbage, including yard waste which is 50 to 70 % water, adds to the toxic stew of chemicals — household cleaners, antiperspirants, nail polish, paint and so on — that mix in a landfill. In old, unlined landfills, this leachate, diluted and made more mobile by rainwater, percolated down to the bottom of the fill. There, it would sink into the soil, spreading downwards and outwards in a characteristic brush-stroke shape known as a plume, contaminating soil and water as it moved. (See the Washington State U. Extension publication called “Fertilizing with Yard Trimmings” – PDF format, pp.2-3.)
Closing a landfill or capping it with cement does not stop its plume from advancing. Modern, sanitary landfills are usually lined to prevent such pollution and the leachate is drawn off and treated. However, it is naive to assume that a liner will never fail. In 1987, the EPA estimated that eventually any liner would leak (US EPA Federal Register, Aug 30, 1988, Vol.53, No.168). In 2000, a joint Canada/U.S. group working to monitor and reduce PCBs in the Great Lakes wrote that "landfill liners are temporary and chlorinated benzene in PCBs can cause leaks in certain liners." That it would not do so immediately isn’t reassuring. The longer a landfill is capped and abandoned, the less likely it is to be adequately monitored and a leak detected.
Organic Garbage = Air Pollution
Air pollution may seem an unlikely consequence of landfills, but in fact it is a major problem. The primary culprit is anything organic such as yard and food waste.
Waste at landfills is usually compressed to save space. Each day’s deposit is covered with a layer of dirt to discourage insects and rodents and to help shed rain and thus minimize leachate. So far, so good. But the result is an almost oxygen-free environment. When organic materials decompose in such anaerobic conditions they produce methane, a greenhouse gas.
Since composting produces carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, it’s reasonable to suspect that the compost/landfill choice is a classic six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other situation. The first produces carbon dioxide, the second produces methane. What’s the difference between them? Is it really worth the time and effort to keep organics out of landfills?
It does matter where the stuff degrades and how. CO2 is a major pollutant and a major problem. But methane is worse. According to the EPA, methane “remains in the atmosphere for 9-15 years” and “is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period.” Methane is twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide.
As recently as 2003, the highest producer of methane was landfills (EPA). They’re still one of the top three sources, the others being cows burps, or enteric fermentation, and leakage from the production of natural gas. Landfills have dipped to second place, largely because an increasing number of them have systems in place to collect the methane, which is either burned off or used to produce electrical power.
In 2006, the EPA reports that US landfills emitted almost 6 teragrams of methane, equal to over six and a half million U.S. tons. This is equivalent to about 125.7 teragrams of CO2 in its effect on global warming or 138,560,531 tons.
Flaring methane — burning it as it is collected from the landfill — may seem both wasteful and horribly polluting. And it is. But if you bear in mind that methane is so much more dangerous to the environment than carbon dioxide, then the practice that converts CH4 to CO2 appears in a different light.
When do landfills stop producing methane? No one really knows. A number of sources now suggest that landfills continue to produce methane in dangerous amounts well past the point at which it is economical to collect it and long after the 30 year period that the EPA requires closed landfills be monitored.
Burning off the methane at landfills produces CO2, still a greenhouse gas, but not as bad as methane. In terms of making a long-term dent in global warming – quickly – landfill improvements offer one of the best opportunities around.
We do have some sustainable solutions, options that let us meet our current needs and provide for future generations as well. Our most promising alternatives are waste reduction and recycling.
Waste Reduction: Stop Throwing Things Out
A simple and obvious choice is to cut back on the amount of waste by using and throwing out less in the first place. Some states have adopted regulatory strategies to discourage dependence on landfills. In 1990, for example, California enacted a law that established a baseline for the amount of solid waste its cities and towns send to landfills. By 1995, that amount was to be reduced by 25 percent; by the year 2000, by 50 percent. California now diverts more than 25 percent of its waste, resulting in disposal of approximately 33 million tons per year. Such heavy cuts are usually accomplished by recycling.
Waste Reduction: Use Less Packaging
Packaging is one of the major sources of waste paper and plastics. According to EarthWorks Groups, it accounts for approximately one-third of all the garbage Americans send to landfills. Packaging should be minimal. Its production should be environmentally clean and it should be made up of materials that can be reused or recycled repeatedly. Some packaging is purposely elaborate to make the contents more attractive--cosmetics are notorious for this. Smart buyers can support the use of environmentally friendly packaging by purchasing products with minimal packaging or with packaging made of recycled or recyclable materials.
Recycling: Turning Waste Material into Raw Material
Recycling works, and it does so in several ways. It reduces the monetary and environmental costs of landfilling and incineration. It substitutes used materials for virgin materials, thereby reducing the demand for natural resources. It conserves energy. And it creates jobs in the community.
Many U.S. communities now actively recycle. Common programs include * Curbside recycling containers. The community provides containers in which individual families deposit such materials as newspapers; glass bottles and jars; tin and aluminum containers; plastic bottles and bags; mixed waste paper (cardboard, phone books, magazines, junk mail, office paper, brown bags); and used motor oil. The community arranges for curbside pickup and delivery to a recycling facility. * Drop-off recycling zones. Groups of large recycling bins are installed on public property in one or more locations throughout the community. * Recycling centers. The community provides the center itself and encourages residents to drop off or sell refuse materials there. * Green waste diversion and composting programs. Leaves, grass clippings, and other organic waste materials are composted and used to enrich soil or as mulch or landfill cover.
Hazardous Waste
Hazardous waste presents immediate or long-term risks to humans, animals, plants, or the environment. It requires special handling for detoxification or safe disposal. In the U.S., hazardous waste is legally defined as any discarded solid or liquid that * contains one or more of 39 carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic compounds at levels that exceed established limits (includingmany solvents, pesticides, and paint strippers); * catches fire easily (such as gasoline, paints, and solvents); * is reactive or unstable enough to explode or release toxic fumes (including acids, bases, ammonia, and chlorine bleach); or * is capable of corroding metal containers such as tanks, drums, and barrels (such as industrial cleaning agents and oven and drain cleaners).
The EPA has a list of more than 500 specific hazardous wastes.
Who's Responsible?
Businesses such as metal finishers, gas stations, auto repair shops, dry cleaners, and photo developers produce many toxic waste products. These by-products include sulfuric acid, heavy metals found in batteries, and silver-bearing waste, which comes from photo finishers, printers, hospitals, schools, dentists, doctors, and veterinarians. Heavy metals, solvents, and contaminated wastewater result from paint manufacturing. Photo processing also creates organic chemicals, chromium compounds, phosphates, and ammonium compounds. Even cyanide can be a by-product, resulting from electroplating and other surface-treatment processes.
If you think industry is the only source of hazardous waste, you may be surprised. There is hazardous household waste as well. For example, do you use any of the following items?* automotive products, such as gasoline, antifreeze, and batteries oil-based paints and thinners pool chemicals pesticides, herbicides, and other garden products household cleaning products
* There are nontoxic alternatives to many of these products that, when disposed of, do not constitute hazardous waste.
Possible Solutions for Hazardous Waste
Basically, there are two approaches to addressing the challenges of hazardous waste. One is waste management, and the other is waste prevention.
Waste Management: Minimizing the Impact
Waste management is based on the premise that a high volume of waste is the unavoidable result of our modern lifestyle and of economic development. The objective is therefore to manage waste and minimize its impact. Waste-management strategies include burying or incinerating waste or exporting it to some other state or country.
Waste Prevention: Minimizing the Volume
Preventing waste is a kind of "front-end" approach; it views waste either as material that should not be created in the first place or as a potential resource that can be used as raw material for another process. The fundamental objectives of this approach are to reduce the use of new raw materials and energy and to recycle waste products back into usable resources.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, the waste-prevention approach should have the following hierarchy of goals:
1. Reduce waste and pollution.
2. Reuse as many things as possible.
3. Recycle and compost as much waste as possible.
4. Chemically or biologically treat or incinerate waste that can't be reduced, reused, recycled, or composted.
5. After the first four goals have been met, bury what is left in state-of-the-art landfills or above-ground vaults. .
Sewage
Solid waste going into landfills has a serious impact on the environment, but it's not our only disposal concern. Wastewater also needs to be managed in order to reduce threats to public health, safety, and the environment. Wastewater can consist of industrial waste, human waste (or sewage), or runoff from rainwater.All of the wastewater produced by a city eventually ends up in a river, lake, or ocean. On its way, this wastewater flows through a sewage treatment plant. In conventional sewage treatment plants, bacteria remove up to 90 percent of biodegradable organic wastes before the sewage moves to a sedimentation tank, where remaining solids and microorganisms settle as sludge. The sludge is incinerated, dumped in the ocean or a landfill, composted, or used as fertilizer. The remaining wastewater, still containing oxygen-demanding wastes, suspended solids, nitrates, phosphates, and toxic metal compounds, may pass through additional advanced sewage treatment before being discharged to the river, lake, or ocean.
Treating Sewage: A Costly Proposition
Conventional sewage treatment is an expensive process that uses a lot of energy. During periods of heavy use or rapid growth, increases in wastewater volume add to that expense. As a taxpayer, you may be asked to fund short-term measures to cope with temporary crises, or to approve longer-term capital outlays for upgrades to your community's sewage system and treatment plant.Besides wastewater from sewage, there is urban runoff: water that flows down streets and into storm drains. In some coastal communities, urban runoff flows untreated into the ocean. When this happens, the runoff also transports contaminants such as gasoline, oil, paint, heavy metals, pesticides, human and animal waste, and trash. These contaminants pose a severe threat to the ocean as an economic, recreational, and biological resource as well as to the community's residents and economy.
Possible Solutions for Sewage
Seeking a more natural and less expensive approach to sewage treatment, the city of Arcata, California has implemented an effective low-tech alternative: an artificial wetlands waste treatment plant. Currently, more than 150 cities and towns in the United States use natural and artificial wetlands to treat sewage.
In the first stage of Arcata's system, sewage is held in sedimentation tanks where the solids settle out as a sludge that is removed and processed for use as fertilizer. The remaining wastewater is pumped into oxidation ponds; here, as in conventional treatment plants, bacteria break down the waste. About one month later, the water is released into a series of artificial marshes, where it is further filtered and cleansed by reeds, cattails, and bacteria. The purity of the water increases as it is subjected to the wide range of acidities that result naturally from daily cycles of photosynthesis.
Although the water is clean enough at the end of this process to be discharged directly into the bay, California state law requires it to be chlorinated, to ensure that all pathogens have been destroyed. So Arcata chlorinates the water and then dechlorinates it before sending it into the bay. In some communities in states that don't require chlorination, the water is diverted at this point to fish hatcheries. The remaining nutrients in the water provide food for the fish, thus contributing to a source of food for people.As an additional bonus, the Arcata marshes and lagoons serve a wildlife sanctuary and city park, providing habitats for otters, seabirds, and other marine animals and attracting many tourists.
Solutions to the Waste Problem

There are four common principles for better waste management and several ways to tackle the waste problem:

• decrease the consumption of energy and raw materials;
• recycle waste materials;
• reuse products as many times as possible;
• burn waste in order to extract and utilise all potential energy and to diminish their size (incineration);
• bury waste in landfills (pits and ditches); and
• compost organic matter.

The best way to solve this is to educate the people on garbage segregation. The people must also find ways on how to recycle their waste materials so that there will be little need to create more landfills in the future. Therefore, in every problems that the human do there will always be solution to make up the things that cause and affect our environment. We, the humans are the one who do things that makes us gives diseases to ourselves and to others. We let others suffer because of our activities that are bad to our health. Sometimes, we have to reflect if what are the consequences to the things we are doing. We have to help each other to prevent problems in our environmnet. Think twice before acting. Caring for our environment is a big offer and help to our Almighty God for giving us the chance to live in this world and let us join hands to remake our Mother Earth.

Webliography

Water Treatment Solutions http://www.lenntech.com/water-pollution-faq.htm#ixzz2cwIGLSnF
Environmental Problems and Solutions http://www.buzzle.com/articles/environmental-problems-and-solutions.html
Water Treatment Solutions http://www.lenntech.com/water-pollution-faq.htm#ixzz2cGjcwp5
Water Treatment Solutions http://www.lenntech.com/water-pollution-faq.htm#ixzz2cwIGLSnF
Environmental Pollutions Center http://www.environmentalpollutioncenters.org/water/causes/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2884469 http://www.organicgardeningguru.com/composter-connection/environmental-issues/garbage-gripes/ http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/related.html