Humanity has long gone beyond the biological species that peacefully exists in the biosphere of the Earth. The modern version of civilization is intensively and largely thoughtlessly exploiting the resources of our planet - minerals, soil, flora and fauna, water and air. Everything that hands reach, humanity is being remade to the growing needs of our technocratic society. This leads not only to the depletion of planetary resources, but also to the emergence of a huge amount of waste of various kinds.
What is waste in general? Are they a problem for us?
To simplify and summarize, waste is the result of human and industrial activities of mankind, harmful to the environment. These include any technocratic objects or their parts that have lost value and are no longer used in everyday life, in production or in any other human activity. Today there is a situation where the Earth has the potential to literally drown in the products of its own vital activity, if very serious and urgent measures are not taken.
In order to imagine the scale of the issue, one fact is enough: in some countries, one resident of a metropolis produces a year before a ton of household waste. Tons! Fortunately, some of these wastes are recycled, but most are deposited in the giant landfills that form a large part of the major cities in the world. For example, around Moscow, 800 hectares of planned landfills only. And probably ten times more natural - in ravines, on the banks of rivers and streams, along roadsides.
Now imagine a large plant - metallurgical, textile, chemical - this is not so important. Waste from this production is also measured in tons, but not per year, but per day. Imagine this dirty, poisonous stream going from a metallurgical plant in Siberia and a chemical plant somewhere in Pakistan, an automobile production in Korea, and a paper mill in China. Is waste a problem? Of course, and very serious.
Waste History
Before synthetic materials, waste, for the most part, did not exist. A broken ax, a worn and discarded shirt, a drowned boat, and even a forgotten castle overgrown with moss, although they were human activities, they didn’t harm the planet - organics were processed, the inorganic quietly and peacefully went underground, waiting for archaeological enthusiasts.
Perhaps the first "real" household waste was glass, but at first it was produced in scanty amounts. Well, the first serious industrial waste appeared at the turn of the 18-19 centuries, with the advent of machine-type factories. Since then, their number has been growing like an avalanche. If the factory of the 19th century merely emitted coal combustion products into the atmosphere, the industrial giants of the 21st century pour millions of liters of highly toxic waste into rivers, lakes and oceans, turning them into “mass graves”.
A truly “revolutionary” breakthrough in increasing the amount of household and industrial waste occurred in the first third of the 20th century, with the onset of the widespread use of oil and oil products and in the future - plastic.
What is the waste: classification
Over the past decades, people have produced such an exorbitant amount of waste that they can be easily divided into groups: food waste and paper waste, glass and plastic, medical and metallurgical, wood and rubber, radioactive and many others.
Of course, all of them are unequal in their negative impact on the environment. For a better visualization, we will divide all the waste into several groups according to the degree of pollution.
So which waste is “good” and which one is “bad”?
Light waste
- Paper. This includes old newspapers, books, leaflets, stickers, paper sleeves and cardboard, glossy magazines and everything else. Recycling and disposal of paper waste is one of the simplest - most of them are so-called waste paper and subsequently again turn into newspapers, magazines and cardboard boxes. And even paper waste dumped into a pit and forgotten will disintegrate in a short time (relative to some other types) without causing significant harm to nature, in addition to ink from printed pages that gets into the soil and water. The most difficult to naturally decompose is glossy paper, and the simplest is raw and loose.
- Food. All organic waste from kitchens, restaurants, hotels, private farms, agricultural holdings and food factories - all that was "malnourished" by man. Food waste also decomposes quickly, even considering that over the past decades, food has fewer natural ingredients and more chemistry. It is precisely it that harms nature - for example, antibiotics widely used in livestock rearing, chemicals that increase the shelf life and presentation of food products. A special place is occupied by GMO substances and preservatives. GMOs, genetically modified foods, are hotly debated by their opponents and supporters. Preservatives, on the other hand, are blockers of the natural decomposition of organics - in large quantities, they turn it off from the natural cycle of decomposition and creation.
- Glass. Glass and its various fractions are probably the most ancient type of “artificial waste”. On the one hand, they are inert and do not emit anything into the environment; they do not poison air and water. On the other hand, with a sufficiently large amount, glass destroys natural biotopes - communities of living organisms. For example, we can cite animals that receive wounds and die without mechanisms of protection against ubiquitously scattered sharp fragments - and this is not to mention the inconvenience for the people themselves. Glass decomposition takes about a thousand years. Our distant descendants will already conquer distant galaxies, and the bottles thrown into the garbage chute today will still invariably lie in the ground. The disposal of glass waste is not a problem of paramount importance, and therefore their number is multiplying every year.
Waste of "moderate severity"
- Plastic. The amount of plastic waste today is simply amazing - a simple listing of its types would take a couple of pages. It will not be a great exaggeration to say that today almost everything is made of plastic - packaging and household appliances, bottles and clothes, equipment and cars, dishes and yachts. Plastic decomposes twice as fast as glass - just 500 years. But unlike him, he almost always releases toxic substances into the environment. Also, some of the properties of plastic make it an "ideal killer." Few people know that in the world oceans there appeared whole “islands” from bottles, corks, bags and other “profile” garbage brought by currents. They destroy millions of marine organisms. For example, seabirds are not able to distinguish plastic fragments from food, and naturally die from clogging the body. Plastic consumption waste is one of the most serious environmental problems today.
- Metallurgical waste, unrefined petroleum products, part of chemical waste, construction and part of automobile waste (including old tires). All this clogs the environment quite strongly (especially if you imagine the scale), but decompose relatively quickly - within 30-50 years.
The heaviest waste
- Waste containing mercury. Broken thermometers and lamps, some other devices. We all remember that a broken mercury thermometer became a source of serious tension - children were immediately expelled from the "polluted" room, and adults were extremely careful to collect liquid metal balls "rolled" across the floor. Extreme mercury toxicity is equally dangerous for both humans and soil - tens of tons of this substance are simply thrown away annually, causing irreparable harm to nature. That is why mercury is assigned the first (highest) hazard class - special points for the reception of mercury-containing waste are organized, and containers with this hazardous substance are placed in airtight containers, labeled and stored until better times when they can be safely disposed of - waste recycling at the moment of mercury is very ineffective.
- Batteries Batteries, household, industrial and automotive batteries contain not only lead, but also sulfuric acid, as well as a whole range of other toxic substances that cause serious environmental damage. One ordinary battery that you pulled out of a television remote control and thrown out on the street will poison tens of square meters of soil. In recent years, mobile reception centers for spent household batteries and accumulators have appeared in many large cities, which indicates the high danger posed by such waste.
- Radioactive waste. The most dangerous waste is death and destruction in its purest form. Adequate concentration of radioactive waste destroys all life, even without direct contact. Of course, no one will throw spent uranium rods into a landfill - the disposal and disposal of waste from "heavy metals" is a very serious process. For low-level and medium-level waste (having a relatively short half-life), various containers are used in which the spent elements are poured with cement mortar or bitumen. After the half-life, such waste can be disposed of as regular waste. Highly active waste is recycled for use in a complex and expensive technology. The complete processing of the waste of highly active "dirty metals", at the current level of technological development, is impossible, and they, placed in special containers, are stored for a very long time - for example, the half-life of uranium-234 is about one hundred thousand years!
Attitude to the problem of waste in the modern world
In the 21st century, the problem of environmental pollution by waste is one of the most acute and controversial. The attitude of the governments of different countries to it is also different. In many Western countries, the problem of waste disposal and recycling is of paramount importance - the separation of household waste with the subsequent safe recycling, hundreds of recycling plants, special protected sites for the disposal of especially dangerous and toxic substances. Recently, a number of countries have pursued a policy of a “no-waste economy” - a system in which the secondary use of waste will be equal to 100%. The farthest along this road were Denmark, Japan, Sweden, Scotland and Holland.
In third world countries, there are no financial and organizational resources for the planned processing and disposal of waste. As a result of this, giant landfills arise, where municipal waste under the influence of rain, sun and winds emit extremely toxic fumes, poisoning everything around for tens of kilometers. In Brazil, Mexico, India, and African countries, hundreds of hectares of hazardous waste are surrounded by multi-million cities, which daily replenish their "stocks" with more and more waste.
All ways to get rid of garbage
- Waste disposal in landfills. The most common way to recycle garbage. In fact, the garbage just gets out of sight, thrown out of the doorway. Some landfills are temporary storage before recycling at the garbage plant, and some, especially in third world countries, are only growing in size.
- Disposal of sorted garbage in landfills. Such garbage is already much more "civilized." Its processing is much cheaper and much more efficient. Almost all countries of Western Europe switched to a separate waste system, and very serious fines are imposed for throwing a “multidisciplinary” package with household waste.
- Incinerators. In such plants, waste is disposed of using high temperatures. Different technologies are used depending on the type of garbage and financial possibilities.
- Burning garbage with energy. Now more and more processing plants are switching to technology for generating energy from garbage - for example, in Sweden “waste energy” provides 20% of the country's needs. The world is beginning to realize that waste is money.
- Recycling. A significant portion of the garbage can be recycled and reused. It is to the maximum degree of wastelessness that developed countries are now striving for. The most simple in processing are paper, wood and food waste.
- Preservation and storage. This method is used for the most dangerous and toxic waste - mercury, radioactive, battery.
The situation with the disposal and recycling of garbage in Russia
Russia in this matter lags far behind the developed countries of the world. Complicating factors are large territories, a significant number of obsolete enterprises, the state of the Russian economy, and, to be honest, the domestic mentality, which is best described by the common language about the extreme residential structure and unwillingness to know about the problems of neighbors.
