Waste management is the sum of all the processes and actions that are required to manage waste from its generation to its disposal. It includes a wide range of processes such as collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste.
Waste is of several types. We mainly divide it into five broad categories that include- Organic, Solid, Liquid, Hazardous and Recyclable. We will discuss all of them in brief.
Types of Waste
Solid Waste: It includes a variety of items that are found in our households and at commercial and industrial locations as well. Some common items include plastic waste, paper waste, ceramics and glass, tins and other metals.
Liquid Waste: These, too, are found both in households and industries, It includes dirty water, wash water and organic liquids.
Organic Waste: All the waste materials that can be decomposed by microorganisms come under this. It includes food waste, rotten meat and vegetables, garden waste, etc.
Recyclable Waste: All those waste items that can be recycled into products and can be used again come into this category. Paper, metals, furniture, etc fall into it.
Hazardous Waste: It includes waste that is flammable, toxic, reactive and corrosive. These are those wastes that pose a significant threat to the environment.
How to manage waste?
There are several ways to manage waste. Let's have a look at them.
Use alternatives to plastic. Plastics make a big proportion of household wastes, from carrying bags to wrappers plastics are found in everything. As we have already mentioned in our article about microplastics, the mass of plastics is increasing in the oceans. Its non-degradable nature poses the biggest threat.
Use colour-coded bins for different types of wastes. i.e. green bin for the biodegradable waste, blue for recyclable waste and a black bin for hazardous domestic wastes.
Adopt composting to dispose of organic wastes and it can be used as a fertilizer. It can reduce household waste generation by 30 per cent.
Papers make up about 35 per cent of the waste that is dumped in the landfills. Going paperless can reduce the waste generated plus it will also save trees that would have been used to make paper.
Adopt 3R's. These include reducing, recycle and reusing. Out of these three, reuse is the best method as it doesn't require any further processing unlike recycling or decreasing your usage unlike reducing.
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