subject: Management Of Municipal Solid Waste Services [print this page] We might not be paying too much attention to household garbage, but for those personnel and volunteers who work within Municipal Solid Waste Management Companies, having too much of the household garbage means that so much municipal solid waste is going to the dumpster and eventually to the landfill.
Household Garbage, better known as municipal solid waste by solid waste management experts, is a type of solid waste that is found in the urban setting. This type of waste includes domestic household garbage together with a few elements of commercial wastes that are collected and processed within a given municipality. Municipal solid wastes are usually in solid or semisolid forms and are a different group of waste material from hazardous wastes.
Management of Municipal Solid Waste is easier compared to management of water and toxic wastes. How municipal solid waste is managed and handled can be divided into several phases:
The first functional phase of any solid waste management paradigm is the recognition of the solid waste itself, termed Waste Generation. This does not mean that people intentionally generate solid waste just for the heck of it, but it generally pertains to human activities that involve the identification of materials that have no value and are ready for disposal.
The wastes are then handled and separated, stored into different containers and initially processed at the source. It is in this phase that municipal solid waste is managed until they are aptly stored in proper containers. This process also involves the segregation of waste components and moving of the containers to loading points for collection.
Collection of the waste is then undertaken, and includes the collection of solid waste to include recyclable materials and also the transport of these materials to the proper processing facilities. Once they are in the right places, the solid wastes are finally separated, processed and ultimately transformed.
The wastes are then transported again either from smaller collection vehicles to the larger transport vehicles or be transferred over long distances to another processing site or finally to a disposal site.
Ultimately, when the municipal solid waste reaches the disposal site, they are primed and ready to be disposed for good. At present, most disposal sites are designed to become landfills. Disposal of municipal solid waste by land spreading or filling is the end of the solid wastes long journey. Modern sanitary landfills nowadays encompass the conventional dump or landfill of yesteryears since it has evolved into something much more. Sanitary landfills today are designed to be more efficient at solid waste disposal in order to avoid public health hazards associated with conventional land filling.
Definitely, municipal solid waste processing facilities are engineered to prevent environmental hazards and health risks such as the breeding of insects within the land fill and the contamination of surrounding ground water tables. Some facilities even use greener technologies. Some plants process the solid waste and eventually extract fuel sources, usually in the form of methane. This methane is a natural gas and can be used in order to generate energy.
