The Garbage Crisis - Essay Example

GARBAGE-OLOGY James Webster According to Merriam Webster garbage-ology or garbology is “The study of modern culture through the analysis of what we throw away as rubbish” and rubbish as “discarded or useless material”(Websters Dictionary).The first noted instance of garbage becoming an issue to humans was as far back as 10000BC when people begun to form communities and towns and live together in permanent situations. Garbage and its disposal has been a growing world wide concern ever since. It was in 1388 that Britain banned the blatant dumping of rubbish in the streets and the first metal recycling plants begun in America in 1776. It wasnt until the middle of the 17th Century that it was discovered that there was money to made out of rubbish and the junk dealer evolved. The 1920s saw a worldwide shift to the reclaiming of city wetlands and the filling of them with rubbish and soil and this form of rubbish disposal is still in vogue today. Over the past 20 years all the the major fast food and drink producers have introduced recyclable plastic bottles and packaging while McDonalds in 1990 discontinued the use of Styrofoam packaging. However it wasnt until 2000 that laws were enacted to force the recycling of garbage. Today almost every city in the world in fact almost every town has a rubbish tip, a location set aside for the digging of pits that are filled with rubbish and cover with soil to rot and most of those so called rubbish dumps have recycling plants located near by. Garbage is everywhere and it multiplies in our homes, businesses and factories at alarming rates. It chokes up our waterways and often kills our wild life. In America alone the average waste produced by each person is 726kg per year, multiply that the a population of 307 million and the mind boggles at the magnitude of the waste problem. Americans alone could circle the equator 300 times with just the disposable eating utensils they have thrown away and each an every American office worker throws away 500 disposable cups a year. Household waste is were the biggest portion of rubbish is produced with food scraps being the main ingredient and that is also the easiest to dispose of and most of it quickly rots away as compost. Scrap metal and white goods such as old fridges and washing machines are also easily disposed of and recycled. Hazardous wastes such as paints and oils are not so easily discarded along with old TVs and computers and of course asbestos is one of the most dangerous. The huge amount of rubbish produced by fast food outlets is astronomical with tons of plastic, paper and foam they use every day and there still is little they are doing to resolve the problem with McDonalds causing the most concern.” McDonalds Litter Accounts For Almost a Third Of All Fast Food Rubbish Dropped In The UK.”(Newslite, 2009). Green Waste is another easily disposed of waste and will also break down quickly into compost and glass is recycled. Grey water such as washing water and toilet waste is now being managed effectively by most councils. Landfill is the oldest and still the most popular form of dealing with rubbish throughout the world and is simply the disposal of rubbish by burial. The major problem with landfill is leachate which is the draining of water through landfill waste and even today there is no solution to the disposal of it.”No matter how hard landfill designers and operators try to avoid generating waste, through waste reduction, re-use, recycling, composting and many other methods of waste pre-treatment prior to landfilling, landfilling will continue, and thus leachate generation and its safe disposal without causing pollution, is a problem which is here to stay.”(Leachate.com.uk.2011). Millions of garbage tips throughout the world utilize land fill at their tips. However most of them today require you to sort your rubbish before it is dumped and in fact most countries have separate rubbish bins for household waste, recyclable material and green waste. Most council garbage tips today have separate areas for the disposal of cardboard that is sold to cardboard recyclers and made into new cardboard products. Glass also has its own area and meets the same fate as cardboard while steel and white goods also have a separate dumping area and it is melted down and reused as metal products. Green waste areas are for all your tree and shrub clippings along with grass and most tips have the facilities to grind all this down for sale and garden soil, composts and mulching products. Burning is not as popular as it once was for the disposal of rubbish and usually requires council permission during the fire danger seasons. It is often offensive to neighbors with not only the smell but the air pollution being a cause of concern for people living near by. With the ash floating around the community it is not a solution that can be used in urban communities. Waste management is now a subject that is being implanted in peoples subconscious to aid in the world wide waste disposal problem and firstly and obviously the simplest answer is to reduce waste by not purchasing items with disposable products or packaging. The producers could also develop lighter packaging with waste management in mind or no packaging at all. Progress has been made in this area however there is a long way to go and both producers of disposable goods and the purchasers need to be more diligent in their efforts. Recycling is something we all can be involved with and apart from the metal and cardboard items we take to the tip we can recycle our own green waste into our gardens. Most of our waste food can mix with our lawn clippings and paper goods to make a beautiful quality soil for our gardens and not only we do help with waste but we create a healthy garden full of soil enriching worms to produce a great garden vegetable. I might add the a great deal of grass, food scraps and paper breaks down into a very small amount of soil and so it really is an effective form of waste management in the home. One of the latest ideas for waste management is with the building of large furnaces for the burning of combustible waste with the resulting steam being used to produce energy and with the cost of power rising and the pollutants with conventional power production this could be the long term answer. Land fill with its obvious leakate problem is still one of our most effective methods, however with sites worldwide filling up and public rebuttal of new sites being made the realistic, long term answers lie in the reduction in the production of disposable products and the redesigning and a complete rethink on how goods are packaged with the increase in the production and sale of recyclable and re-usable items. Governments need to play a larger role and the building of many more waste to power facilities is a must. We all need to understand the scope of the problem and we need to play our role in solving the problem. We must force companies to rethink their packaging strategies by making a concerted effort tin not buying those items that need to be disposed of through waste. We need to look consciously at what we are buying and were the waste will end up before we take it home. Reduce, re-use and recycle is the only answer. Research Murray, William. “The Garbage Crisis”.Depositary Services Program. The Government of Canada.1995. web. 14th Nov. 2011 Clean Air.“Waste and Recycling Facts” The Clean Air Council. n.d. web. 14th Nov. 2011 “Garbage” ." Merriam-Webster.com.An Encyclopaedia Britannica Company. n.d. web. 14th Nov. 2011 BFI Kids. “Return to On lineTrash Timeline”.Bfi kids>recycling>timeline.1998 net. 14th Nov 2011 The Leakate Expert Web Site.”What Is Leakate” Landfill Treatment Expert Website.2011. Web. 14th Nov. 2011 Newslite.tv “McDonalds Rubish Covers British Streets”. 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