Following the trend of rising population and increase in consumption, waste generation has also increased massively around the world. It is predicted that by 2050, worldwide municipal solid waste generation will hit 3.4 billion tonnes, that is 300kg worth of trash per person in a year (Statista, 2018)! With huge volumes of waste being generated yearly, cities are faced with the issue of having enough resources to collect and dispose of the municipal waste generated within its boundaries. To understand more about how cities minimise waste pollution, we take a look at the general process of waste management in a city.

Collection

Waste management begins from collection. This means accounting for all trash created within the vicinty of the city. States with a good collection system is more likely to have lower risk of waste pollution, as most of the city’s waste is accounted for and collected to be thrown away at a proper facility. In cities from the global south, where urbanisation and city expansion far exceeds the city’s ability to plan for a comprehensive waste collection system, most municipal waste end up on the streets, and some leak into surrounding rivers or left in a plot of land with no proper facilities. This leads to pollution of the environment, and bring about negative impacts to the people around it, such as contamination of groundwater, as well as exposure to pathogens and diseases originating from the landfill, carried by pests.

Disposal

Proper collection of waste is not the end of the journey for proper waste management. As previously mentioned, municipal waste is a threat to the environment as well as humans due to the sheer amount of toxic and dangerous substances it harbours. Thus, municipal waste will need to be properly treated before being sent the waste to a proper disposal facility. Incineration is a common method used in most city’s waste management system, whereby the waste is brought to an incineration plant to be combusted. Combustion not only treats the waste, it can also reduce the volume of waste by up to 90% (Demirbas, 2010). Treatment of waste for some cities however, is seen as a form of luxury; not all cities can afford to send their trash in for treatment. When untreated waste enters landfills, it threatens the environment and people near its vicinity. Subsequent blog posts will mention the dangers of poorly managed landfills.

Focus on recycling to reduce waste

As we look through the journey of waste in a city, how it goes from households all the way down to the landfills where they remain for thousands of years, one startling questions comes to mind: What happens if we run out of land for landfills? This concern has haunted cities (especially land scarce ones), and is serious enough to be reflected in one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the UN (SDG 11) (UN, 2015). Cities must look for ways to encourage the decrease in consumption and increase in recycling, else risk living side by side with the rubbish we produce in the future.

References

Demirbas, A. (2011). Waste management, waste resource facilities and waste conversion processes. Energy Conversion and Management, 52 (2), 1280–1287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2010.09.025

Statista. (2018). Municipal solid waste generation globally 2050 . Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/916625/global-generation-of-municipal-solid-waste-forecast/

United Nations. (2015). The 17 Goals | Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/goals