Waste to Energy Essay

As of January 1, 2003, the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario started to ship one hundred percent of its garbage into the landfills of Michigan.  In 2003, Toronto exported garbage at a

Municipal solid wastes are leftovers made by the population such as food, plastic bottles, household wares and many more. These items referred by most as “the garage” or “trash”. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2015) In the early 1900’s, incinerators were used to burn waste however by the Mid-20th century, lawmakers enacted the first government regulations in an attempt to address increasing concerns about the environmental impact of unregulated waste management practices. With the first waste management legislation being passed in 1965, brought along the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, thus bringing us into a new world of waste management.(Vault, n.d.)

Waste to energy is a great component in helping to keep generating clean, renewable energy with the credible management with municipal solid waste. Waste to energy is the best resource for communities around the world to use for reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering energy from waste.

Waste treatment in London is not very energy-efficient or economical which is a cause for high taxes. An interesting alternative, in addition to recycling, is for household waste to be burned or converted to biogas to be used as a source of energy which can provide thousands of households with heat and electricity [13][14].

These new changes to the waste management system will make Sydney a lot cleaner and also eco-friendlier. The new waste management Centre that are being set up will provide electricity from methane therefore less pollution and better air quality in Sydney – an added bonus if these positive alterations were considered and acted

In addition to fuel crops, Hawaii also has abundant resources for biomass heating. During their research Turn et al. (2002, 4) found that the biomass resources for Hawaii include: swine, dairy, and poultry manure, sugarcane bagasse and trash, pineapple processing waste, macadamia nut shells, municipal solid wastes, food waste from commercial food preparation facilities, sewage sludge, and fat, oil and grease wastes from food preparation activities. One of the main advantages is that biomass energy can use municipal solid waste. Hawaii also produces about 10 pounds of trash per person coming to about 1.8 million tons of trash per year (Yap 2008). Hawaii has a power plant that can use over 2,000 tons of garbage a day to generate electricity (Covanta Energy 2011). Hawaii has decided to start exporting its garbage to give it enough time to expand the power plant’s capacity (Yap 2008). Smaller scale biomass fueled power generation can help get rid of agricultural and municipal refuse, while alleviating the strain on the electricity grid and providing a cheap locally based source of electricity (Turn, Keffer, and Staackmann 2002, 17). If Hawaii develops biomass as a renewable resource, it can reduce the need to import petroleum and export garbage.

Additional issues arise because of Hawaii’s garbage disposal system. One of Hawaii’s most successful garbage disposal endeavors is Oahu’s H-Power Plant. However, this trash incinerator—or refuse derived fuel plant—is not complication free. While it saves money by producing energy and managing waste, the construction and upkeep of the plant can be costly, meaning that it

The United States produces roughly 250 million tons of solid waste, or garbage, on an annual basis. This number equates to 4.4 pounds of solid waste created by every American on a daily basis (Miller, Meindl, & Caradine, 2016). The recycling rate in the U.S. is around 35%, meaning over 165 million tons of waste is placed in the nation’s landfills or incinerated each year (Mozo-Reyes, Jambeck, Reeves, & Johnsen, 2015). Landfilling recyclables contributes to a greater strain on global resources because materials that may have been reused must now be replaced (Miller, et.al. 2016). Landfilling waste also contributes to air pollution through the release of methane (Delkash, Zhou, and Singh, 2016) and poses threats to groundwater near landfills (Talalaj & Biedka, 2016). As the population of the nation (and the world) increases, strategies must be found to reuse resources rather than simply disposing of them.

Making America great again has never been more of a challenge. We need to make America green again. “…over the last five decades as states have implemented requirements and consumers have become more aware, the U.S. is way behind leading European countries” (Lacey). America is one of the largest producers of waste in the world. With this we should be figuring out new ways in which to recycle and reuse different compounds and materials to ensure a better future.

The EPA has a ‘Waste Management Hierarchy’ and it begins with reducing and reusing what we consume in order to reduce waste.

Considering, the United States produces way too much waste and we need to start controlling what we are doing to our environment. Americans threw out about 570 billion pounds of waste in 2007. United State citizens are responsible for 30% waste and approximately 1,650 pounds

According to Faust (2009), about 75 percent of the waste produced in America is recyclable. Recycling materials instead of sending them to the landfill can help to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. Donating functional products such as light bulbs, clothes, fans, microwaves, and other household goods to charity instead of throwing them out or burning also reduces the dependence on fossil fuels. It does so in the following way: it reduces the cost of transportation for both new and old products, either to the dumping sites or to the

Landfills not only contaminate Earth’s soil and groundwater, but also produce a greenhouse gas known as, methane. In order to reduce the amount of methane being produced at landfills, humans should compost yard waste and recycle as much as possible (GAIA). Methane stands 25 to 72 times stronger than carbon dioxide and can be the foundation to health effects such as cancer and asthma. Landfills not only pollute the air we breathe, but are a significant source of global climate change. According to the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, for every ton of waste, more than 70 tons of manufacturing, oil explorations, and coal combustion form (GAIA). In 2012, Derek Thompson, stated the world would produce 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage just for that particular year. Thompson appraised that amount to the equivalent weight of 7,000 Empire State Buildings (Derek Thompson 2012). Out of the 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage, 46 percent is organic, 4 percent metal, 5 percent glass, 10 percent plastic, 17 percent paper, and 18 percent is other (Derek Thompson 2012). Nevertheless, all of these end up in the many landfills throughout the world, where they sit and decompose into Earth’s soil and produce the greenhouse gas, methane, and pollute our water and cause health

The faculty, staff and students at Ames University are committed to being at a zero waste and emissions by the end of 2025. To that end, Ames University, has requested that M-Global’s Department of Environmental Health, conduct a waste management and energy audit at their campus in Garner, North Carolina. This audit was prompted by a speech that the school’s president heard while attending a conference at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. The speaker, a DuPont representative, stated that new DuPont factories in Asia have almost reached the corporate goal of zero waste and emissions.

In 1970, when Americans produced 121 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW), three-quarters went directly into landfills, one-fifth was incinerated, and less