What is waste? It is any plastics, paper, glass, metal, foods, chemicals, wood, oil, soil, effluents, liquids that have been discarded. How the waste gets generated is from commercial, household and industrial sources. Sewage sludge is another source. Domestic and municipal waste is generated by the consumption of goods, manufacturing, sewage treatment, agriculture, the production & disposal of hazardous substances and construction. It is then picked up by urban waste disposal committees from skip bags, trailer bins, from the kerbside by waste collection trucks. There are several methods of garbage disposal that an urban area would employ. Incineration, dumping it in land fill sites and recycling are the ways to process this waste yet some less common, still more sustainable ways are anaerobic digestion.
Environmental concerns have reached a grave level. Population has increased, and with the globalisation of commerce, so has consumerism and consumption. The quantities of waste generated have probably shot up quite proportionately. If consumerism has worked up to tremendous levels, then so has the amounts of natural resources we are using up to manufacture and produce the goods for it increased. As a result of all of this, not only is more waste generated, but there is also more to be disposed of. And methods of disposal like incineration use up natural resources, energy is used up simply to process the garbage by burning it. It also releases vast amounts of atmospheric pollutants, which is one reason that the number of incinerators has reduced by decree of the EU. Another thing is that the energy given out when burning trash can in fact be utilised as a source/provider of power.
Organic waste as far as waste disposal is concerned, can be mulched and used as soil compost or fertiliser. Large scale composting is now being undertaken for the same purpose. Higher than ever production of waste and all these processes of disposal of the waste have a significant impact on the damage we are wreaking upon the natural resources left on this planet and to the environment and atmosphere around us. Recovery of the waste is often the toughest part of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle and recover’ credo.
Starting at home, being responsible on an individual level is the way that we can impact a change. Along with being more careful about how much waste we accumulate and then have to get rid of, garbage bins are not the collection unit that best facilitates the process of recovering and containing garbage.
Skip bags are one increasingly popular way to collect, contain and dispose of waste. About eighty percent of the trash in skip bags is recycled. Skip bags are extremely strong and can contain everything a steel bin can; they do not tear or break. They are easy to move, have no time limit on the amount of time they are used and easy to store away since if folded up, they are about the same size as a shopping bag. Some even come with divisions set inside them with sections created for green waste and other kinds of waste. Skip bags are extremely easily accessible to every household and are beginning to replace other kinds of bins. Skip bags are picked up by the service that provides them, and the service can be notified to replace the one they’re taking away each time.