Reuse Collection System - Essay Example

REFUSE COLLECTION SYSTEM (Five Phases of Refuse Collection) of (affiliation) Location of February 10, 2014 Refuse Collection SystemThe amount of garbage, waste, and refuse that the world produces each day is huge as the consumption of humans increase due to population increases and higher standards of living. The management of wastes is a big headache and expense for most local governments as they try to find sanitary landfills for the safe disposal of these huge amounts or mountains of wastes.

These governments have to hire garbage workers and buy equipment using garbage taxes they impose. It has also become big business for savvy entrepreneurs who literally find money in garbage. The cost of landfills also increased the incentive to convert waste to energy (Reddy, 2011).There are five (5) distinct phases in the whole process of refuse collection, which are the following: first step is from the house (kitchen, toilet, etc.) to the refuse can, second step is from the garbage can to the garbage truck, third step is the garbage truck going from one house to the next house, fourth step is selecting the most efficient truck routes, and lastly, the movement of a garbage truck to the final destination (either a materials recovery facility, a disposal site such as a sanitary landfill, or to a transfer station for eventual transfer to another final destination), so this process of refuse collection is actually a multi-phase process (Worrell & Vesilind, 2012).

Some improvements are the home garbage compactor which reduces the waste volume to about one-fifth the original volume or size, the increasing use of plastic garbage bags to control any fluid leakages, use of garbage trucks which are side-loaded instead of rear-loaded to reduce worker injuries (strains, bruises, cuts, and fractures), use of can-on-wheels (waste wheelers), use of hydraulic hoists, use of garbage can snatchers, and covered trucks with compactors to increase the volume capacity a single truck can carry on its regular route per day to minimize trips.

On a larger scale, environmental awareness gave the insight never to locate a landfill on top of water underground aquifer, near a wetland or bodies of water like lakes and rivers (Greenberg, 2008). ReferencesGreenberg, M. (2008). Environmental policy analysis and practice. Piscataway, NJ, USA: The Rutgers University Press. Reddy, P. J. (2011). Municipal solid waste management: Prcessing – energy recovery – global examples. Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press.

Worrell, W. A. & Vesilind, P. A. (2012). Solid waste engineering. Stamford, CT, USA: Cengage Learning.