Endlessly Green looks at the history, the science and the art of composting and sustainable waste management through a kaleidoscope of philosophical, moral and ethical intricacies. The author digs into her rich pool of experiential learnings and raw inputs gathered through a decade of research, legwork and fearless execution. This engaging field guide equips community volunteers, activists, students, SWM practitioners and professionals with practical inputs on segregation, composting and organic gardening/farming, making sustainability imaginable in a concrete jungle. In doing so, it helps individuals discover the possibilities of bringing about a change in their environment by engaging their own environmental sensibilities. Endlessly Green is an extraordinary celebration of things small and significant and the fight against waste, culminating in a replicable and scalable end-to-end solution.
Advanced Organic Waste Management: Sustainable Practices and Approaches provides an integrated holistic approach to the challenges associated with organic waste management, particularly related to sustainability, lifecycle assessment, emerging regulations, and novel approaches for resource and energy recovery. In addition to traditional techniques, such as anaerobic digestion, composting, innovative and emerging techniques of waste recycling like hydrothermal carbonization and vermicomposting are included. The book combines the fundamentals and practices of sustainable organic waste management with successful case studies from developed and developing countries, highlighting practical applications and challenges. Sections cover global organic waste generation, encompassing sources and types, composition and characteristics, focus on technical aspects related to various resource recovery techniques like composting and vermicomposting, cover various waste-to-energy technologies, illustrate various environmental management tools for organic waste, present innovative organic waste management practices and strategies complemented by detailed case studies, introduce the circular bioeconomy approach, and more. Presents the fundamentals and practices of sustainable, organic waste management, with emerging regulations and up-to-date analysis on environmental management tools such as lifecycle assessment in a comprehensive manner Offers the latest information on novel concepts and strategies for organic waste management, particularly zero waste and the circular bioeconomy Includes the latest research findings and future perspectives of innovative and emerging techniques of waste recycling, such as hydrothermal carbonization and vermicomposting
Solid waste management affects every person in the world. By 2050, the world is expected to increase waste generation by 70 percent, from 2.01 billion tonnes of waste in 2016 to 3.40 billion tonnes of waste annually. Individuals and governments make decisions about consumption and waste management that affect the daily health, productivity, and cleanliness of communities. Poorly managed waste is contaminating the world’s oceans, clogging drains and causing flooding, transmitting diseases, increasing respiratory problems, harming animals that consume waste unknowingly, and affecting economic development. Unmanaged and improperly managed waste from decades of economic growth requires urgent action at all levels of society. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 aggregates extensive solid aste data at the national and urban levels. It estimates and projects waste generation to 2030 and 2050. Beyond the core data metrics from waste generation to disposal, the report provides information on waste management costs, revenues, and tariffs; special wastes; regulations; public communication; administrative and operational models; and the informal sector. Solid waste management accounts for approximately 20 percent of municipal budgets in low-income countries and 10 percent of municipal budgets in middle-income countries, on average. Waste management is often under the jurisdiction of local authorities facing competing priorities and limited resources and capacities in planning, contract management, and operational monitoring. These factors make sustainable waste management a complicated proposition; most low- and middle-income countries, and their respective cities, are struggling to address these challenges. Waste management data are critical to creating policy and planning for local contexts. Understanding how much waste is generated—especially with rapid urbanization and population growth—as well as the types of waste generated helps local governments to select appropriate management methods and plan for future demand. It allows governments to design a system with a suitable number of vehicles, establish efficient routes, set targets for diversion of waste, track progress, and adapt as consumption patterns change. With accurate data, governments can realistically allocate resources, assess relevant technologies, and consider strategic partners for service provision, such as the private sector or nongovernmental organizations. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 provides the most up-to-date information available to empower citizens and governments around the world to effectively address the pressing global crisis of waste. Additional information is available at http://www.worldbank.org/what-a-waste.
Waste management has become a great challenge for cities and urban areas, especially in countries with a high population density. This book looks at the waste management apparatus of the city of Indore, India, to see how the city overhauled its waste management practices and strategies to become one of the cleanest cities in the country. The volume highlights the challenges that the city faced and its use of innovative business models, technology, and infrastructure as well as instituting sweeping policy and process changes to bring change. It examines the city’s successful efforts to bring informal waste management systems to the mainstream and other interventions to close the gaps between government institutions, sanitation workers, and the general public. It further throws light on the use of technological interventions that the city government adopted for streamlining waste management and developing a sustainable business model for waste and emission reduction leading to achieve carbon credits and net zero goals. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of urban planning and management, urban sociology, urban geography, waste management, and environmental studies. It will also be useful to policymakers and professionals working in the field of city management planning and governance.
How the marriage of Industry 4.0 and the Circular Economy can radically transform waste management—and our world Do we really have to make a choice between a wasteless and nonproductive world or a wasteful and ultimately self-destructive one? Futurist and world-renowned waste management scientist Antonis Mavropoulos and sustainable business developer and digital strategist Anders Nilsen respond with a ringing and optimistic “No!” They explore the Earth-changing potential of a happy (and wasteless) marriage between Industry 4.0 and a Circular Economy that could—with properly reshaped waste management practices—deliver transformative environmental, health, and societal benefits. This book is about the possibility of a brand-new world and the challenges to achieve it. The fourth industrial revolution has given us innovations including robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D-printing, and biotech. By using these technologies to advance the Circular Economy—where industry produces more durable materials and runs on its own byproducts—the waste management industry will become a central element of a more sustainable world and can ensure its own, but well beyond business as usual, future. Mavropoulos and Nilsen look at how this can be achieved—a wasteless world will require more waste management—and examine obstacles and opportunities such as demographics, urbanization, global warming, and the environmental strain caused by the rise of the global middle class. · Explore the new prevention, reduction, and elimination methods transforming waste management · Comprehend and capitalize on the business implications for the sector · Understand the theory via practical examples and case studies · Appreciate the social benefits of the new approach Waste-management has always been vital for the protection of health and the environment. Now it can become a crucial role model in showing how Industry 4.0 and the Circular Economy can converge to ensure flourishing, sustainable—and much brighter—future.
Sustainable Food Waste-to-Energy Systems assesses the utilization of food waste in sustainable energy conversion systems. It explores all sources of waste generated in the food supply chain (downstream from agriculture), with coverage of industrial, commercial, institutional and residential sources. It provides a detailed analysis of the conventional pathways for food waste disposal and utilization, including composting, incineration, landfilling and wastewater treatment. Next, users will find valuable sections on the chemical, biochemical and thermochemical waste-to-energy conversion processes applicable for food waste and an assessment of commercially available sustainable food waste-to-energy conversion technologies. Sustainability aspects, including consideration of environmental, economic and social impacts are also explored. The book concludes with an analysis of how deploying waste-to-energy systems is dependent on cross-cutting research methods, including geographical information systems and big data. It is a useful resource for professionals working in waste-to-energy technologies, as well as those in the food industry and food waste management sector planning and implementing these systems, but is also ideal for researchers, graduate students, energy policymakers and energy analysts interested in the most recent advances in the field. - Provides guidance on how specific food waste characteristics drive possible waste-to-energy conversion processes - Presents methodologies for selecting among different waste-to-energy options, based on waste volumes, distribution and properties, local energy demand (electrical/thermal/steam), opportunities for industrial symbiosis, regulations and incentives and social acceptance, etc. - Contains tools to assess potential environmental and economic performance of deployed systems - Links to publicly available resources on food waste data for energy conversion
A rapidly growing population, industrialization, modernization, luxury life style, and overall urbanization are associated with the generation of enhanced wastes. The inadequate management of the ever-growing amount of waste has degraded the quality of the natural resources on a regional, state, and country basis, and consequently threatens public health as well as global environmental security. Therefore, there is an existent demand for the improvement of sustainable, efficient, and low-cost technologies to monitor and properly manage the huge quantities of waste and convert these wastes into energy sources. Innovative Waste Management Technologies for Sustainable Development is an essential reference source that discusses management of different types of wastes and provides relevant theoretical frameworks about new waste management technologies for the control of air, water, and soil pollution. This publication also explores the innovative concept of waste-to-energy and its application in safeguarding the environment. Featuring research on topics such as pollution management, vermicomposting, and crude dumping, this book is ideally designed for environmentalists, policymakers, professionals, researchers, scientists, industrialists, and environmental agencies.
A junior/senior-level introductory text aimed at civil and environmental engineers taking a basic introduction to Solid Waste Management. The text includes the latest 1990-1991 laws and regulations.
Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.
