How Do We Deal With Waste Today Discus Hellip

How do we deal with waste today? Discuss. BY KOH SHEN MING

With the rise of growing population in the world, the amount of waste gradually increases. In general, waste or rubbish, trash, junk, garbage, depending on the type of material or the regional terminology, is an unwanted or undesired material or substance. The waste products created by a natural process or organism quickly become the raw products used by other processes and organisms. Therefore, the existence of waste disposal treatments helps to regulate the waste efficiently and effectively such as recycling and incineration. In my opinion, there are many kinds of waste managements in order to regulate the amount of waste; despite there are being some inevitable drawbacks for such methods. Initially, incineration plants also known as waste-to-energy plants (WTE) — a waste treatment technology which the combustion of waste for recovering energy and is popular used in the countries which suffer from scarcity of land, such as Japan and Singapore. Incineration reduces the mass of the waste from 95 to 96 percent and this reduction depends upon the recovery degree and composition of materials, which means that incineration however, does not replace the need for landfilling, but it reduced the amount to be thrown in it. In Singapore, for instance, growing population and booming economy have contributed to a 6-fold increase in the amount of solid waste disposed from 1,260 tonnes a day in 1970 to a peak of 8,289 tonnes a day in 2013. Hence, the 4 incineration plants in Singapore such as Keppel Seghers Tuas Waste-To-Energy (KSTP), take the vital roles to reduce the amount of daily waste due to the shortage of landfills site. In Japan, the Toshima Incineration Plant in Tokyo burns 300 tons of garbage a day while producing electricity, hot water and even road materials instead of landfilling due to Japan is small and densely populated. Evidently, the amount of waste in countries that have limited of land can be reduced through the process of incineration.

Subsequently, today, the recycling programs are popular in most of the countries, such as United States and China, even in Singapore. In the process of recycling, the recyclable waste materials can change into new useful products that help the countries to reduce the amount of waste effectively. Moreover, 3R’s — “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” also used as guidelines in recycling which helps to reduce the garbage going into landfills thereby protecting and conserving the environment. In United States, for example, there were about 9000 curbside recycling programs in 2009. In the same year, American recycled 82 million tonnes of materials and recovered 34% of waste generated. In United Kingdom, the recycling rate was 17% in 2012 and the existence of Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 aid to decrease the amount of household waste. Ostensibly, the use of recycling can help to deal with waste into useful products. Furthermore, the most common waste management is landfilling which dispose the trash onto or into the land directly in most of the countries due to cost effectiveness and it is the last step in a hierarchy of waste management. After the incineration, the ashes from incinerators and non-incinerable waste are transferred to landfill. In Singapore, Semakau Landfill opened on 1st April 1999 and it is Singapore’s only landfill facility. In 2013, the landfill received an average of 2,400 tonnes of WTE plant ash and non-incinerable waste daily. Nevertheless, when landfill is completely used up, the particular country need to find another land to deal with waste and it is a challenge for small country, such as Singapore and Japan. For one word, the waste is commonly treated into landfill and it is the cheapest way compared to incineration and recycling. However, there are some disadvantages of such waste treatments such as high costs of recycling. Although recycling programs have become a key component in waste management, recycling programs are in fact one the most costly methods of waste disposal. With the time, money and energy spent collecting and processing recycled goods, the price of recycling is much higher than discarding waste into landfills or incinerators. In Atlantic Country, New Jersey, selling recyclable goods brings in $2.45 million, nonetheless, the cost of collecting and sorting these recycled materials plus interest payments on the recycling facility costs the country over $3 million. From my point of view, despite the high costs of recycling, the environmental and health benefits of recycling outweigh the costs and I believe that recycling is more than just an issue of economics and is essential to caring for human health and environmental sustainability.

In addition, the burning of waste such as incineration contributes to climate change. Incinerators emit more carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit of electricity (2988 lbs/MWh) than coal-fired power plants. (2249 lbs/MWh) and according to the U.S. EPA, “waste to energy” incinerators and landfills contribute far higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions. In Denmark, the poster child of Europe’s incinerator industry recently discovered that its incinerators were releasing double the quantity of carbon dioxide than originally estimated, and had probably been doing so for years, causing Denmark to miss its Kyoto Protocol GHG reduction targets. In my opinion, I think this is not a serious problem that needs to tackle, even though the emission of carbon dioxide can cause environmental problems, because of the amount of daily waste sharply increase will speed up the use of landfill sites if the waste is not reducing through incineration.

To sum up, there are certain types of waste disposal treatments with its advantages and disadvantages. Incineration — reduce waste largely at one time but it release excessive of carbon dioxide which is harmful to people’s health; recycling — waste materials change into useful products, however, it requires high costs to proceed; landfilling — the cheapest way to deal with waste but it is a challenge for some countries which had only limited land. From my point of view, there are a lot of waste managements to regulate the waste effectively, even though there are some drawbacks for using such methods.