Paper Example on Solid Waste Disposal History in USA

Introduction

In the 1800s American cities lucked an organized system for street cleaning, refuse collection, water treatment, and human waste collection. As a result of recurrent epidemics efforts were made to improve the health and environment. By 1880s George Waring of New York City had established a solid waste management system which included sweeping the streets, refuse collection, transportation and disposal of wastes (Nathan, 2015). The idea was adopted nationwide and was managed by city departments of sanitation. Motorized street sweepers, incineration, and landfills were adopted in later decades.

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Definition of Terms

Waste can be described using several terms. On the one hand, garbage refers to waste or rubbish especially household refuse. On the other hand, rubbish can be used interchangeably with garbage; which means some waste material refuse or litter (Guerrero et al., 2013). Trash and refuse can also be used to describe waste which means a waste material or refuse and worthless or useless part of something. Having said that, it is clear that waste can be generally defined as something which is useless unwanted and worthless to humans and therefore should be disposed of away (Waste, 2018). The process of waste involves a number of equipment and processes.

Transfer Station

A transfer station is a building or a waste processing site for temporary deposition of waste. Transfer stations are often used as a place where local waste collection vehicles deposited their waste while waiting for large loading trucks to come and pick the waste and transport the it to the end point which in this case may be an incinerator or a landfill. Transfer stations are more likely to be found in a place where the landfill is far away (Nathan, 2015). Job transfer stations are very necessary as they act as a holding place for waste to be kept waiting for disposal to the end point.

Incineration

Incineration is a waste treatment process which involves the burning of the organic substances which are contained in the waste material. Incineration can be termed as thermal treatment as it involves a high amount of heat in treating the waste.in this process, the end product of the waste is ash, fuel gas and heat (Nathan, 2015). An incinerator is a place where incineration takes place. Incineration has many advantages. For example, it does not need a lot of space where the population is dense and land is scarce. Also, the amount of heat produced during the process can be used to generate power. Equally, incineration has some hand full of disadvantages, the major one being pollution. Pollution caused by the smoke emitted is harmful to the environment. Also, depending on the substance burned the ash can be very toxic which needs to be safely disposed of again, creating waste from waste (Waste, 2018).

Pyrolysis Process

Pyrolysis is the process where waste material is decomposed by raising the level of temperature. As a result of the change in temperature the material undergoes a permanent change in chemical composition (Nathan, 2015).

Landfills Construction

Landfill is the site of waste disposal which is usually a huge track of land where waste is disposed by baring it into the ground. Waste buried into the ground will decompose with time and become manure (Guerrero et al., 2013). The main feature which makes it very different to a dump site is that in a dump site waste is just dumped there and left open. While in the landfill the waste is placed and buried into the ground.

Dhaka's Solid Waste Management

Cities in the world still struggle with waste disposal day in day out. With the increase in population and decrease in land portion, it has become very difficult for some cities to manage waste. A good example is Dhaka in Bangladesh, with its large population the amount of waste produced is enormous and disposal space is limited (Nathan, 2015). With a couple of trucks and a number of landfills, it has become almost impossible to handle the city's waste properly. On a scale of one to ten, the city can be rated at two...