Municipal solid waste management
Excerpt
The issue
How to effectively manage municipal solid wastes to improve the quality of life and protect and conserve natural resources.
Background
The wastes of today's society are highly diverse in nature and encompass a variety of materials including household refuse, agricultural, mining, and industrial byproducts. This position paper applies mainly to solid waste and is not intended to address issues of hazardous waste, animal manure, or biosolids management. Animal manure and biosolids management will be addressed in other policy statements.
Waste is defined as discarded material judged to be of no value for ordinary or normal use. Many “wastes” are really potential resources. When material no longer has an economic value for a certain purpose, it is discarded. This results in resources being discarded that may have values for other uses. Proper management of wastes and will continue to be a critical environmental problem.
The Soil and Water Conservation Society is concerned about the ultimate disposition and management of wastes. The Society thus adopts a position that encourages the following resource recovery hierarchy for waste stream management. First, material should be managed appropriately at the source to reduce unnecessary contributions to hture waste streams. Second …
Footnotes
- Copyright 1996 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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