‘The key to managing waste in cities sustainably is to reduce waste generation.

’ To
what extent do you agree with this view?
People’s use of resources and production of waste has accelerated in the period since
the industrial revolution, combined with the growing number of people on the planet has
generated large volume of waste that needs to be disposed. This disposal requires
careful management which includes waste reduction, waste collection and waste
disposal.
One of the ways to manage waste in cities is to reduce the amount of waste generated.
One of the method is reusing and recovery. Reusing uses an object as it is without
treatment, reducing pollution and waste which makes it a more sustainable process. In
developing country, informal scavenging of municipal waste from city dumps is widely
practiced. Often times, it provides employment for people especially in the poorest
sector of societies. For example, in Latin America, up to 2% of the population earns
their livelihood by scavenging, recovering materials to sell for reuse or recycling. But in
developed countries, there are more formalized recovery and recycling schemes.
Reuse of resources has many environmental benefits. For example, recusing steel uses
up to 74% less energy, 85% less air pollution, 76% less water pollution, 97% less
mining waste and 40% less water use. However the limitations of recycling is that
limited number of materials can be reused and limited recovery from waste which could
not make up for the huge amount of energy and resources needed to produce these
waste in the first place. Another method is the use of Taxation. This is in line with the
‘polluter pays’ principal to encourage both reduction of waste and increase recycling
rates. Imposition of a tax on packaging effectively incorporates the full social costs of a
product into the retail price by including the cost of disposal of its wrapping. For
example, the Danish waste-reduction policy, in which the taxation system has played an
important role has registered considerable success. From 1987-1996, Denmark has
achieved a reduction of 26% in quantity of waste and reached an overall recycling rate
of 61%. However such method is only effective in developed countries where there is a
proper system of taxation in place. The last method of waste reduction is recycling.
Recycling helps save energy, reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills, conserves
natural resources and create new well-paying jobs in the recycling and manufacturing
industries. For example, Japan is one of the most successful countries in the world for
recycling plastics. In 200, 77% of the plastic waste was recycled. This saved energy and
resources and sustains the environment for future generation. However, recycling is an
energy-consuming procedure, therefore still produces waste and pollution. Furthermore,
there is a high upfront cost in building the recycling factories. Transportation, processing
and reassembly of recyclable materials also require energy and produces pollution.
Another method to manage waste is waste collection. Methods of waste collection
include house-to-house, community bins, curbside pick-up, self-delivered and
contracted service. However, waste collection is only effective in developed countries
where there is structured system in place to take of every neighborhood and ensures
there is a high frequency of collection. In developing countries, there are limited proper
bins to dispose their waste. Furthermore, the waste is also not sorted before it is
disposed of. Instead recyclables are removed by waste picker prior to collection, during
the collection and at the disposal sites. This is because source separation ad source
collection can add costs to the waste collection process.
The last method to manage waste is incineration. Incineration can be combined with
energy recovery especially for tyres where their high energy content makes them ideal
for energy recovery through combustion, allowing them to become alternative fuels in
various industries. However, incinerators do release harmful emissions into the
atmosphere. It is also considered quote low down the list of possible techniques devised
from an environmental impact perspective. And the ashes left will have to be
transported to landfills to get buried. But now countries such as japan and Sweden has
found new uses for the ash such as in the civil engendering industry or in the forestry
industry. The limitations of incineration also includes the site selection where
incinerators are often build near low-income people. But it has been argued that it is
because the incinerators are built near the low-income group people that these people
are able to find a house as the property value are driven down.
To conclude, there are many ways to manage waste in cities and no one method is
better than the other as they all have their benefits and limitations. Some methods may
work better in developed countries as compared to developing countries. But all the
strategies have to work together to ensure waste management is sustainable in the long
run and prevent further environmental degradation by waste.