Unit II Solid Waste Disposed - Essay Example

Unit II Solid Waste Disposal Affiliation This paper entails solid waste disposal with reference to chapter 7, which involve sanitary landfill operations. The paper looks at waste quantities as well as trends in the disposal of solid waste and the methods used to dispose solid waste. This happens as the need to create a healthy environment increases across the world. The chapter shows many changes regarding the ways of managing solid wastes between 1990 and 2006. Typically, there are various methods of disposing solid waste material (Lanier & Eldredge, 2005).

These include landfills especially sanitary landfills, incineration, recycling, sustainability, biological processing, and energy recovery among others. Sanitary landfills refer to the sites in which waste isolation from the environment is done until the living environment is safe (Lanier & Eldredge, 2005). Safety is achieved through physical, chemical, or biological degradation. Recycling of waste involve the collecting and reusing the waste materials, but mainly for secondary purposes. In the case of sustainability, improvement of the environment is done through sustainability-related programs such as resource recovery practices.

In the biological processes, materials that are organic are recovered through digestions and composting processes aimed to decompose them. On the other hand, the energy recovery methods involve the conversion of waste materials that are non-recyclable into useable energy such as heat, fuel, or electricity (Kutz, 2009). Generation of solid waste and its disposal shows an increase trends over the recent years. People are increasing in term of population as well as their purchasing power thereby contributing to higher waste generation each year.

The capacity of waste handled by each method of disposing solid waste seems to increase as well. This happens due to the government’s efforts to maintain a healthy environment despite the increased waste generation. Between 1999 and 2006, the management of waste has improved significantly (Kutz, 2009). It appears that as the volume of waste materials increase since 1999, the disposal methods are improved and widened to absorb such materials. Generally, the trend in the management of solid waste materials shows an ever-increasing improvement in almost every method used.

References Kutz, M. (2009). Environmentally conscious materials handling. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiles & Sons, Inc.Lanier, H. J., & Eldredge, R. W. (2005, August 29). Part 3: The Sanitary Landfill. A Brief History of Solid Waste Management in the US During the Last 50 Years. Retrieved from forester.net: http://www.forester.net/msw_0001_history.html