hello everybody my name is Zohir Chowdhury , and today we'll discuss about municipal solid
waste management so what is waste disposal waste disposal is the management of waste to prevent
harm to the environment injury or long-term damage to health disposal of waste is where the intention
is to permanently store the waste for the duration of its biological and chemical activity such as
such that it becomes harmless so we our objective when we are disposing waste is to really to keep
it in a place so that environmentally it is safe to keep it there and eventually it will turn into
something harmless the different method of waste disposal are listed in here and they are listed
in proper ranking as well from best to worst so avoidance waste minimization and reducing the
source is the best way to eliminate waste second is recycling which help us to recover material
next is composting or biological processing which also helps to recover material in the form of soil
in this case next is incineration which helps to recover energy from the waste number 5 is
land filling and last is ocean dumping or open dumping which is a least desired method of waste
disposal this chart shows in the u.s. for the year 2013 which is the latest available year for this
MIT for this for a municipal solid waste data the different components of municipal solid waste and
the relative percentage before recycling happens and then after recycling happens so the typically
the waste is composed of as you can see paper glass metal plastic rubber leather textile we
are trimming food waste this is typically how our municipal solid waste is composed
of before the year 2013 before any recycling happened 254 million tons of municipal solid
waste was generated as you can see a lot of it is paper in nature and yard and food waste is
another big category I mean here after recycling and composting has happened 167 million tons
still remains so 254 million tons - 164 million tons that's how much was recycled and this this
amount went well into the landfill so what are we throwing in the landfill a lot of it is paper
and paperboard product we are trimming such as grass clippings leaves twigs small branches these
are all about 8% goes into the landfill metals which potentially could be recycled goes into
the landfill glass plastics wood and a lot of it is food a lot of sometimes food can be wasted or
overproduction of food or many for many the reason food goes into the landfill if you think about
about restaurants or 5-star hotels even at your home we always buy a lot of food and we are unable
to use all the food before it becomes spoiled so if we the purpose of showing you this is to really
start thinking about what can we do to minimize the waste that goes into the landfill so can
we capture more paper and paperboard products before God before it goes to the landfill can
we capture metals and glass and plastic which are all recyclable material before it goes to
the landfill what can we do to intervene where waste goes into the before waste goes into the
landfill how can we optimize our food delivery and food usage pattern so it doesn't get wasted
especially thinking that almost half of the world does not have enough food a lot of the people are
out there are remain very hungry and in this case we can see that 21 percent of our waste is food
in nature so there's a lot to think about when we look when you look at this diagram and ways
to minimize our minimize our waste in so that we can recycle compost or avoid producing wastes to
start with the chart in here shows the municipal solid waste production what we showed you in here
about 254 million tonnes gets produced as you can see from 1960 still today solid waste production
has been steadily increasing in the US and in the last 10 years or so has been slowly plateaued per
capita generation also has been increasing because even though human even though population the US
has been increasing but the waste production has outpaced that per capita generation however
in the last 30-some years or so that per capita generation has more or less flattened and actually
we are seeing a slight decline and this is all very positive because we are recycling more and
at the same time you are also finding ways to generate less and less waste to start with so
we have to recycle last because there's less to recycle because we are producing less waste this
is very positive and in here since we're talking about recycling it's really looks pretty positive
the recycling rates have been increasing very steadily and recently has become more and more
difficult to keep continue recycling but still there's a slight increase of recycling it's
about thirty four point three percent of all our waste we get goes to goes to recycling the target
definitely it's much much higher so right now that you already know the type of voice that we get
that gets produced and and choice of what we want to do with waste here is what is done so whiskers
generated in residential areas industrial areas and commercial areas and all of this combined
is known as municipal solid waste in terms of management recycling composting incineration
or waste to energy production and landfilling are the pha-4 main ways where how we are managing our
waste and as you can see a lot of our waste goes to landfilling this this option in here and these
other options are slowly becoming more and more important of course according to u.s. epa it is
extremely important to to produce less waste for landfilling or for open dumping and to find a way
where we use material that we can use it over and over again or use materials so that we don't so
use it so use it in a way so that we don't have to use new material to start with so figuring
out a way to avoid making making waste or minimize making waste in fact these are the most preferred
method this is the least preferred method at the same time the volume of waste we want an inverted
pyramid that means that we want less waste in here and more ways to be diverted from here
so that we can reduce our overall waste pattern and to the left we are saying all the different
options that are available for uncontrolled or burning or dumping this is typically done in
developing countries not necessarily in developed countries so for the first category avoidance and
source reduction here are some examples of what can be done to avoid producing waste and that's
a question that I'd like to ask all of you think about what you could do to minimize your wastes
at home look at your trash can or look at your garbage disposal outside your house and see what
is in there or look at the pattern and see what can you do to minimize the waste are you producing
a lot of plastic bottles is there a way where maybe you can try to minimize producing so many
plastic using so many plastic bottles and try to represent this for a few times a reusable water
bottle it'll be cheaper in your wallet it'll be slightly less less convenient but the water can
be filtered in your home so you can buy a bigger filtration system and get your water filtered
and use a reusable bottle for your water are you are you printing one-sided can you buy a
printer that you can print double-sided or can you avoid printing it to start with and instead
maybe use more email or internet-based resources sharing platforms which most of us are doing are
you using one-time product or are you using reusable product are you buying a package a
lot of package material or are you not buying as much package material are you able to take
grocery bags to to to the store and refill your grocery bag your reusable grocery bag so these are
all questions that needs to be asked so that we can actually set thinking about ways that we can
reduce our waste so waste avoidance and source reduction is extremely important so let's do a
quick concept check printing paper two-sided is an example of exactly a waste avoidance
or source reduction or waste minimization very good that concludes our lecture for now