Sustainable Waste Management for Tourist Areas in Koh Samui, Phuket and Pattaya: Thailand - Thesis Example

Human activities are the primary contributors to waste in the environment. Every single thing that humans do be it from daily activities such as cooking; cleaning the household; bathing and using air-conditioning can contribute highly to the waste that is thrown into the environment. Industrial waste on the other hand contributes to toxic waste that causes harm to the environment that can cause diseases and other forms of illnesses that have not existed before.The management of such waste requires tremendous amounts of effort, money, and determination in order to fully accomplish any plans.

Thus, simply managing it through personal actions may not be as effective, which is why interventions from high authorities are required to accomplish plans for managing waste. Waste management is the collection, transport, processing or disposal, managing, and monitoring of waste materials that are products of human activities.The goal of waste management is to reduce the chance of the dangerous effects of waste on the lives and health of people and the living things in the environment. There are different methods involved in waste management and each of these methods has something to do with the waste materials involved.

In every country, there are different methods used in the management of waste and this depends on the development of the country in terms of the technology it uses.Although waste management or waste disposal is a vital action to perform for the management of waste products from human activities, it can sometimes cause damage to the environment even if the aim of waste management is to reduce the possible effects of waste management on the health of the living things in the environment.Sustainable waste management is important for the conservation of valuable resources of natural resources.

It is a known fact that all goods and products contain raw materials and energy in them and if these raw materials are disposed of without any caution, it would also mean that the valuable natural resources found within these goods would also be discarded in the process.   

This is why sustainable waste management is for the conservation of the valuable natural resources found in the discarded goods and products. Although traditional forms of waste management such as landfills are still considered in sustainable waste management, it is not given priority. In fact, in the hierarchy of eliminating waste, it comes last and the first one preferred is the reduction or the prevention of waste from existing in the first place. The goal of this first step is to minimize the creation of waste created by humans by initiating waste management initiatives to help businesses and households in the reduction of the amount of waste that are created from human activities.

The second priority of sustainable waste management is to reuse waste as much as possible. Reusing waste is using one item more than once for the same function. Reusing can be a great method to use in waste management because the energy and raw materials used in the production of that good or product can be saved. The cost and the requirement to dispose such waste can also be reduced in the process of reusing. Reusing is different from recycling because recycling is the act of breaking down the material into its raw state to be used in another material.

This method ranks third in the hierarchy when it comes to sustainable waste management. Recycling may be a different process but the aim with reuse is very similar, which is to prevent the discarding of potentially useful materials and the reduction of the usage of fresh raw materials, energy usage and air pollution and water pollution. Fourth on the list in the sustainable waste management is energy recovery, which is the process of generating energy from waste through the use of different technologies that treats waste materials and turn them into useful gases that can be used for consumption by the masses.

The last in the list is the disposal of waste in landfills, which is the least of the priorities of many countries aiming for sustainable methods of eradicating waste (Local Government Improvement and Development, 2010). Disposing waste in landfills is dangerous especially if they are not maintained properly. Waste materials are often dumped in abandoned or unused quarries, mining voids or borrow pits. In some countries where strict rules in landfill waste disposal is not implemented, health and environmental effects can be very dangerous because several adverse environmental impacts including wind-blown litter, attraction of pests, and generation of liquid leachate can cause diseases among the people living in the perimeter of the landfill (Local Government Improvement and Development, 2010).

Landfills also generate toxic gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, which can cause odor problems and destroy surface vegetation. In addition, these gases are greenhouse gases and releasing them in the atmosphere will contribute greatly to the problems of air pollution and climate change. However, not all countries in the world have the capability of deploying sustainable waste management in taking care of their waste materials. In most developing countries, only a few of the top priorities of sustainable waste management is undertaken and most of the procedures are still traditional methods like dumping in landfills and incineration.

For some developing countries, waste management is still a problem and the methods to discard waste materials are still in the process of development to create the most appropriate methods to solve the problem. Waste Management Problems in Developing Countries Many developing countries are still experiencing problems when it comes to waste management and in Asia, countries like Thailand still consider waste management as a huge environmental, social and health problem in the country. In the global level, the amount of solid waste generated is 12 billion tons and 4.

4 billion of the entire amounts are generated in Asia alone (Sustainability of Solid Waste Management in Thailand, 2010).