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Background Study

1. The document discusses waste management and sustainability. In 2018, the US produced 292.4 million tons of municipal waste, averaging 4.9 pounds per person. Landfills threaten the environment through leachate pollution of groundwater and soil. 2. To achieve sustainability, some countries have banned landfills and encourage recycling and reuse (3R concept) through laws. In the US, 69 million tons of waste was recycled in 2018 to reduce landfill dumping. 3. Recycling and reuse minimizes waste production and lowers disposal costs, providing an environmentally sustainable solution compared to landfills, which produce long-term pollution threats.

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38 views

Background Study

1. The document discusses waste management and sustainability. In 2018, the US produced 292.4 million tons of municipal waste, averaging 4.9 pounds per person. Landfills threaten the environment through leachate pollution of groundwater and soil. 2. To achieve sustainability, some countries have banned landfills and encourage recycling and reuse (3R concept) through laws. In the US, 69 million tons of waste was recycled in 2018 to reduce landfill dumping. 3. Recycling and reuse minimizes waste production and lowers disposal costs, providing an environmentally sustainable solution compared to landfills, which produce long-term pollution threats.

Uploaded by

Beman Easy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

0 Background Study

In the rise of globalisation, waste material had rose up to become a major concern towards
the environment. According to United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there
a total of 292.4 million tons of municipal waste that was produced in USA during 2018 alone.
Based on this amount, an average of 4.9 pounds of solid waste produce by a single person in
the USA. If the amount of waste production were combined from all over the world, the total
amount might even reach billions in numbers. Therefore, the continuous search for
sustainable development were done by many experts to overcome the main issues of massive
waste production in the world.

A proper waste management solution must be found in order for the world to achieve
sustainability and preserve the environment for the futures generation. Sustainability in
environmental term are derived as an ability to maintain the ecological balance for certain
period of time. In waste management issues, sustainability can be achieve by implementing
the 3R Concept which is recycling, reuse and recover into practical by the society (L.
Makarichi et al., 2018). To encourage the implementation of 3R Concept into the society,
some countries had taken an initiative by enforcing law to ban the use of landfill in the future.
By doing so, the society does not have any choice other than practicing 3R Concept to
manage their own waste.

In United States, from 292.4 million tons of waste produced, 69 million tons of that
waste were recycled and reused for other purpose. This initiative was taken to reduce the
amount of waste that being dump into the landfill. The construction of landfill is not
sustainable way to manage waste material. The opening of landfill might manage to collect
all waste material at one place but brings a lot of threat towards the environment such as
leachate that was produced by toxic and chemical release from waste material. Leachate
absorbed into the ground and very harmful as it could pollute the groundwater, soil properties
and even affecting human health (Brennan et al., 2016).

Due to such arising problem from landfill opening, some countries had began to ban it
and ecourage it society to recycle and reuse their waste for a better waste management. The
practicing of recyle and reuse of waste material will help to minimising the waste production
hence will bring a lot of benefits towards the environment and economical since the
operational cost for waste disposal management had been reduce. Thereore, recycling and
reusing waste material would be the best solution to achieve environmental sustainability.

References
Brennan, R.B., Healy, M.G., Morrison, L., Hynes, S., Norton, D. & and Clifford, E. (2016). Management
of landfill leachate: The legacy of European Union Directives. . Waste Management, 355-
363.

EPA. (2021, May 30). Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling. Retrieved from United
States Environmental Protection Agency: https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-
materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials

Makarichi L., Jutidamrongphan W. and Techato K. (2018). The evolution of waste-to-energy


incineration: A review. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev, 812-821.

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