Waste composition:
It is important to understand what constitutes as waste so that the appropriate safety measures can be enacted to protect both humans and the environment.
Solid Waste
Generation: Homes, businesses, and community activities.
Examples: Discarded material (packaging, furniture, yard clippings, appliances, etc.).
Potential Harm: Polution, disease, harm to wildlife, and global warming.
Disposal Options: Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Buy in bulk, re-use grocery totes, and turn tin cans into planters.
Liquid Waste
Generation: Homes, businesses, and manufacturing.
Examples: From sewage, wastewater, left over paint, cooking oil, cleaning fluid, and pesticides.
Potential Harm: Water, soil and air pollution.
Disposal Options: Store the liquid in durable sealed containers that are proprly labeled to prevent mixing it up with solid waste and contact your local waste water treatment plant for support in disposal.
Hazardous Waste
Generation: Homes and businesses.
Examples: Electronics (cell phones, TVs, computer monitors), batteries, household cleaners, antifreeze, glue and adhesives.
Potential Harm: Health issues (i.e. cancer, kidney failure abd reproductive issues), water and land pollution and risk of explosion.
Disposal Options: Most cities have program in place to collect and dispose of hazardous waste. Additionally, there are independently run waste management companies that can dispose of this type of harmful waste.
Organic Waste
Generation: Homes, businesses and agriculture.
Examples: Food waste, green waste, wood waste, and food soiled paper.
Potenial Harm: Emition of greenhouse gases, and water/soil contamination.
Disposal Options: Composting – it breaks waste down until it becomes nutrient-rich fertilizer.
Recyclable Waste
Generation: From paper, cardboard, plastic, metal and glass.
Examples: Consists of items that can be broken down and reused to make new products.
Potential Harm: Possibility of releasing chemicals into the air, emition of greenhouse gases, and landfill cross-contamination.
Disposal Options: Implement a method for separation, clean and dry the recyclables, and don’t bag the items when putting them out for pickup. Majority or recyclables can also be repurposed for other household needs.
Radioactive Waste
Generation: From byproduct of nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, hospitals and research facilities.
Examples: Nuclear fuel and radionuclides generated from body organ imaging, and items exposed to radioactive contamination (i.e. protective clothing, packaging, cardboard, and paper, to name a few).
Potential Harm: Health risks, worst being death, environmental contamination, and nuclear weapons.
Disposal Options: Storage ponds, which are concrete ponds that hold fuel assemblies underwater, isolated and burried under natural barriers like clay, rock, and salt, incinerated (solids) or evaporated (liquid). Spent nuclear fuel can also be recycled to make new fuel.
NOTE: The disposal must be managed by regulated facilities.
Agricultural Waste
Generation: Farms.
Examples: From crop waste, animal waste, and processing waste.
Potential Harm: Significant degradation of soil, water, and air quality.
Disposal Options: Agricultural waste can be converted into bioenergy, such as bioethanol or biodiesel, which can be used as a renewable energy source or substitute for gasoline or diesel. Additionally, composting is an alternative that provides fertilizer.
Medical Waste
Generation: Hospitals, blood banks, dentists, research facilities, veterinary hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, and mortuaries.
Examples: Sharps, disposable masks, bandages, body parts, chemicals and medical devices.
Potential Harm: contain potentially harmful microorganisms that can infect and harm those that come in contact.
Disposal Options: Contact your local health board department. Additionally, postage-paid mail-back container programs ar available to have your sharps disposed through a medical waste incinerator.
Mining Waste
Generation: From various stages of the mining process.
Examples: Rock, tailings, topsoil and mineral processing.
Potential Harm: Produces CO2 emissions and negatively impacts
the quality of the environment.
Disposal Options: Tailings ponds are sedimentation holding ponds enclosed by dams and liners to capture and store the waste.
Oil/Gas Waste
Generation: Various stages of the oil and gas industry – exploration, extraction, refining, and distribution.
Examples: Saltwater, mineralized water, sludge, spent drilling fluids, cuttings, waste oil, spent completion fluids, and other liquid, semiliquid, or solid waste material.
Potential Harm: Drinking water contamination, air pollution, threat to aquatic life as well as human and wildlife.
Disposal Options:
Combustion Waste
Generation: From removed flue gas (aka exhaust gas).
Examples: Ash, slag, and particulates.
Potential Harm: Release of toxic chemicals and heavy metal, air pollution, ash with poisonous material, and potential to cause wildfires.
Disposal Options: Incineration, done in a highly controlled environment destroys the toxic organic properties and reduces the volume of waste.
Sewage Waste
Generation: Homes and businesses.
Examples: Wastewater, soaps and detergents, sanitary towels, condoms and plastic.
Potential Harm: Exposure to harmful microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses and parasites.
Disposal Options: Each municipality has treatment plants that have pipes leading from homes to the processing plant to remove harmful bacteria. Alternatively, septic tanks can be leveraged and emptied by privately hired companies.
To learn about how waste exposure can mpact humans, click here.
Click here to learn about what constitutes as waste to help avoid fines.