Waste Managment

Waste Management Assignment

Ayden Blundell

Task 1 a) Define Waste
Waste is unwanted products from industrial, rural and domestic areas. Australians are one of the most wasteful people in the world. Waste management includes the collection, transport, processing of materials, which can be solid or liquid’s. b) Waste creation in the Hydrosphere
Water pollution occurs when a body of water is poorly affected due to the addition of large amounts of materials to water. The sources of water pollution are considered as being a point source or a non-source point of pollution. Point sources of pollution occur when the polluting substance is emitted directly into the waterway. The process of water pollution is slow, and will not happen overnight. It is the gradual build-up of wastes in our waterways.

Task 2 a) Define Stakeholders
Stakeholders can be individuals, groups or governments. They respond to local issues. They make decisions and come up with ideas to improve their local organization or project. b) Individuals, Conservation Groups, Businesses, Local Government, State Government
Individuals – Want the right to dump any sort of waste without cost at any time of year. Do not want to be living anywhere near the rubbish tips/dumping sites, do not want the smell of the waste, and do not want to be anywhere near where the chemicals can travel through the air and poison families. Therefore, they want the landfills located well away from residential areas.
Conservation Groups – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They believe we can reduce the amount of waste we produce, that many things can be reused instead of being thrown out straight

away and that most sorts of paper, aluminium, glass, plastics end even water can be recycled.
Businesses – Most businesses produce large amounts of rubbish each day. They want to be able to get rid of rubbish in any way they can without cost or hassle. They do not want to have to travel to dispose of their waste.
Local Government – Wants to ensure their community is clean and that everybody within the community is disposing of waste correctly. They also want to make sure that each local business in the area has an efficient way of rubbish disposal. The local government would also be responsible for hiring workers.
State Government – Would like for waste management to be as cheap and efficient as possible. Would also see the safety hazards of landfills near residential areas, and have them built as far away from homes as possible. The state government would be responsible for hiring workers, and seeing that their jobs are being done safely and efficiently.

Task 3 a) Ways to minimize personal contribution to waste. * Recycle paper, glass and aluminium * Create a compost bin for garden waste * Reuse plastic shopping bags as many times as possible * Use cloth shopping bags * Use washing machine water for lawns and gardens * Make your own household cleaning products * Harvest rainwater and utilize in shower and household use and garden irrigation * Take public transportation as much as possible

Task 4
What is meant by the three R’s?
The three R’s stand for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Education Campaigns, Landfill Methods and Fees, Pollution Laws & Littering Fines
Education Campaigns – The government started education campaigns for waste management to teach people how important waste management is. If the government could design a campaign that would air on television and radio, and be shown on posters and billboards to grab the attention of the public to teach them about waste management, then people would be much more aware of how important it is. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was introduced to promote eliminating waste and protecting the environment. The population was taught that: you can practice reduction by selecting products that do not have to be added to landfills or the waste stream in general, you can "reuse" materials in their original form instead of throwing them away, or pass those materials on to others who could use them too and that lots of things (like cans, bottles, paper, and cardboard) can be recycled and remade into either the same kind of thing or new products. Making new items from recycled ones also takes less energy and fewer resources than making products from brand new materials.

Task 5 a) Define Civics & Citizenship
Civics – The study or science of the privileges and obligations of citizens.
Citizenship - The status of a citizen with its attendant duties, rights, and privileges. b) Responses/methods that a citizen can take that may influence waste management decisions 1. Lobby local parliament for change 2. Write to local council 3. Organize community petitions 4. Create a campaign involving friends and the community 5. Attend/organize a protest day 6. Run for political office yourself 7. Join a political party 8. Vote for somebody who has the same views as you 9. Write to/contact waste business informing them on your views 10. Contact the Environmental Protection Authority

Banning the Plastic Bag
Australians use over 4 billion plastic checkout bags a year. We only use plastic bags for minutes, but many of them can take hundreds of years to break down. Plastic bags can last from 15 to 1000 years in the environment. As they are lightweight and water resistant they can be carried long distances by wind or water in Australia costing the local and state governments $200 million to clean up.
In the marine environment plastic bags are lethal. It is estimated that around one million seabirds and over 100 000 other marine animals are killed as a result of plastic litter every year. Sea turtles are particularly at risk as they confuse plastic bags with jellyfish.
Plastic bag production uses almost 10% of the world's annual oil supply. Only 3.5% of this number is recycled. This means that much of the planet's precious natural resources are being used to produce plastic bags that many of us believe are unnecessary. A ban on plastic bags in China placed four years ago has proven to have saved 4.8 million tonnes of oil. The ban also has reduced consumption of 800,000 tonnes of plastic and more than 24 billion plastic bags.