The Impact of Municipal Solid Waste on the Environment

The Impact of Municipal Solid Waste on the Environment

"We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it"(Adler).

We are living in a consumist - throwaway society (see Figure 18-15) where there is little awareness about the impact of Municipal Solid Waste, "MSW--more commonly known as trash or garbage--consists of everyday items such as paper and paperboard (35.7%), yard waste (12.2%), food wastes (11.4%), plastics (11.1%), metals (7.9%), rubber, leather, and textiles (7.1%), wood (5.7%), glass (5.5%)" as shown in Figure 18-2 (United States Environmental Protection Agency, "Municipal"), on the environment. New York City is one of the largest cities that leads the MSW production in the USA by exporting 11,000 tons per day of MSW to other states, at an average cost of $64 a ton (Wright 495). Therefore, we are facing a great challenge by trying to reduce the impact of garbage on the environment because there is a lack of education, public policy, and civil action. Our goal will be to achieve an integrated solid waste management, in order to go toward a sustainable future (Wright 506).

First, let's have an approach to the concept of consumption which refers to the goods, services, energy, and resources that are used by people, institutions, and societies (Giddens et al. 611). It is a phenomenon with both positive and negative dimensions (Giddens et al. 611). On the one hand, rising levels of consumption around the world mean that people are living under better conditions than in times past (Giddens et al. 611). Consumption is linked to economic development - as living standards rise, people are able to afford more food, clothing, personal items, leisure time, vacations, cars, and so forth (Giddens et al. 611). On the other hand, consumption can have negative impacts as well (Giddens et al. 611). Consumption patterns can damage the environmental resource base and exacerbate patterns of inequality (Giddens et al. 611).We are running out of space to put our trash and garbage (Wright 491 - 492). Perhaps we are happy to purchase the goods displayed so prominently in our malls and advertised in the media, but we are reluctant to accept the consequences of getting rid of them responsibly (Wright 491 - 492).

Long Island has a garbage problem ("Taking"). It is producing trash in ever larger amounts, with no place to put it all -- not around here, anyway ("Taking"). We have no landfills, no more room at our incinerators and no realistic chance of ever building new ones ("Taking"). But the amount of waste we produce keeps rising, year by year, ton by ton ("Taking"). From one perspective, this problem is no problem at all, because landfills in other states have been happy to do business with us ("Taking"). We can still buy, eat and consume all we want, and pay to make whatever is left go away ("Taking"). But it is obvious, as John Rather explained in a perceptive Times article last Sunday, that this system is inherently unstable ("Taking"). We are buying our way out of trouble, but that may not always be the case ("Taking").

Cities are consumers of natural capital such as water, energy and other resources, and producers of large quantities of wastes, which must be absorbed by the natural systems upon which cities depend (Kenworthy 75 - 76). There is now a well-documented view that cities are "parasitic organisms" (Kenworthy 75 - 76). It has been shown that the ecological footprint of prosperous cities already extends many times beyond the areas of land that they actually occupy, while innumerable other less resource-consuming, though fast-growing, cities in lower-income nations are increasing their impacts at an alarming rate (Kenworthy 75 - 76). Indeed, there is now a global movement which argues that, given the profligate resource consumption and waste in wealthy nations, and the pace of urbanization, especially in developing countries, cities must become more sustainable ecosystems in their own right in order to avoid serious ecological collapses during this, the "century of cities" (Kenworthy 75 - 76). Still others have suggested that ". . . social, economic and cultural systems cannot escape the rules of abiotic and biotic nature" (Kenworthy 75 - 76).

Our world is changing (Kump et al. 1). In fact, Earth has always been changing and will continue to do so for ages to come (Kump et al. 1). Earth is changing faster today than it has throughout most of its 4.6 billion-year history (Kump et al. 1). The cause of this accelerated pace of change is simple: human activity (Kump et al. 1). Human populations have expanded in numbers and in their technological abilities to the point at which we are now exerting a significant influence on our planet (Kump et al. 1). The effects of our actions are seen most clearly in the thin envelope of gases that supports our existence, the atmosphere, but they are observable elsewhere as well (Kump et al. 1). Forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and even the oceans exhibit the telltale signs of human activity (Kump et al. 1). All of us can think of situations in which human influence has clearly been detrimental to the environment, for example, cities plagued with polluted air and water (Kump et al. 1).

In a landfill, the waste is put on or in the ground and is covered with earth (Wright 493). Because there is no burning, and because each day's fill is covered with at least six inches of earth, air pollution and populations of vermin are kept down (Wright 493). Municipal waste managers generally had no understanding of, or interest in, ecology, the water cycle, or what products decomposing wastes would generate, and they had no regulations to guide them(Wright 493). Therefore, in general, any cheap, conveniently located piece of land on the outskirts of town became the site for a landfill (Wright 493). Frequently, this site was a natural gully or ravine, an abandoned stone quarry, a section of wetlands, or a previous dump (Fig. 18-4) (Wright 493). Once the municipality acquired the land, dumping commenced without any precautions (Wright 493). After the site was full, it would be covered with earth and ignored. Only recently have landfills been seen as a valuable open space resource as shown in Figure 18-1 (Wright 493). The solid-waste problem can be stated simply: "We generate huge amounts of MSW, and it is increasingly expensive to dispose of it in ways that are environmentally responsible and protective of human health" (Wright 492).The refuse generated by municipalities is a mixture of materials from households and small business, in the proportions shown in Figure 18-2. However, the proportions vary greatly,