Increasing Problem and Adverse Effects of Solid Waste and its Solutions
Over the centuries humans have evolved a lot, from just utilizing basic elements provided by mother nature. From not knowing the shape of their own home to knowing the shape, size, and behavior of heavenly bodies millions of light-years away. From Abacus to Pascaline to Charles Babbage's Analytical engine to Mark-1 to our extra efficient smartphones that can just fit in our pockets. All the success depends on “materials” and here the problem lies.
The Problem
As we know a simple law of science that “Mass can neither be created nor be destroyed”. The problem lies in the latter part. “It cannot be destroyed” that’s why the wastes are generated and as the population is increasing the usage of materials is increasing and more waste is being generated all over the world. Obviously, when anything is in use it has its worth but when it is used and thrown away its worth decreases to zero and it becomes only a burden as the case with solid waste.
Some Statistics About Increasing Waste
According to World Bank, 2.01 billion tons of solid waste is generated every year in the world. It is expected that this amount will increase up to 3.40 billion tons by 2050. The biggest contributor in this waste is East Asia and the Pacific region which is 23%, while the lowest contributor is the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, it is accumulating on Earth every year and it will increase if it is not taken care of.
Components of Solid Waste
Another important thing to consider is what products are present in solid waste generated. According to World Bank, Globally, it contains 44% food products, 17% paper products, 12% plastic, 5% wood products, 4% metals, 2% rubber, and the rest are others.
Most of these materials are degradable and takes a few days or weeks to decompose. The biggest problems are plastic and rubber because these wastes are very durable. Rubbers take years to decompose and plastic can take up to half a millennium to do so and in between all these years, they will remain stuck in landfills or where they are dumped and will create problems.
Adverse Effects
All these wastes produce so many adverse effects on our Earth because the problem is 33% of all these wastes are dumped openly, 25.2% are landfilled, 11.2% are incinerated which obviously affects our environment producing harmful gases, 13.5% only is recycled while more than 5% are compostable.
In 2016, 1.6 billion tons of Carbon Dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases were generated by waste, in which the biggest contributor was food waste.
Talking about plastic waste, annually 500 billion plastic bags are used in which single one of them has just a useful lifetime of 15 minutes. 10 million tonnes of all plastic are dumped in the ocean annually due to which 1 million marine animals are killed every year, they are becoming a cause of extinction of many animals.
Solutions
We have to understand that only recycling plastic cannot be the sole solution to reduce the problem but we have to perform 3 R’s which are Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Reduce the use of things will create less pollution. For this, we have to create a whole environment in different ways. If billions of people in the world only reduce the use of plastic bags they use daily or reduce the number of drinks they drink daily, the waste will automatically be reduced by billions. Another thing we noticed that food waste creates most of the greenhouse gases by solid waste. Why food is wasted so much in the first place? a question everybody should ask themselves.
Reuse is also very important rather than throwing the things away and buy a new one we can reuse them. In this way, the waste amount will reduce in great amounts.
Recycle is the most important of these Rs. it depends on technology and it is an area in which work is going on and improvements are being done on daily basis.
In Recycling, first of all, materials are made in a way so they can decompose easily. Plastics are being made of compostable material so that they can decompose and get mixed into the sand to favor the growth of crops etc.
Moreover, plastic and rubber are recycled to produce fuel, as I myself as a chemical engineer worked on recycling of plastic into the fuel of diesel range and got the success. Basically, plastics are made from the residue of crude oil so they can be reconverted into crude products by different processes such as pyrolysis, cracking, gasification. In all of these the most primary thing is to heat the waste. It gets us two benefits, one is the waste is reduced and the second is that we can produce fuel from an alternative way as we know the fuel in our lands our running out and only 47 years of oil remains.
So, the conclusion is sooner or later we have to control the waste, the sooner the better and there is no other way or it will continue to produce its adverse effects on our environment. Now it's in our hands to make the environment wins the race or the wastes.
