Major Obstacles in Waste Management System and Efficient Ways to Overcome it

A proper waste management system requires successful completion of various steps starting from waste prevention, waste minimization, waste treatment, disposal and recycling. In developing countries achieving such a system is a big challenge. Here we are focusing on such obstacles faced and some simple solutions to them.

A developing nation faces many problems like –

1. lack of organizations and systems at the local and central level .

2. lack of financial facilities to efficiently run the waste management system .

3. Lack of proper technology and lack of proper appointed team to develop or borrow new technologies.

4. Poor literacy level of the rural population.

5. large population density and the larger waste disposal requirement.

6. Lack of general awareness and interests by the public.

7. lack of support by the government authorities to train or educate the public in proper waste disposal systems.

The main procedure of waste collection and disposal in developing nations are collection from houses by simple organizations appointed by the cooperation or other local bodies sometimes as less frequently as twice a week and these garbage are collected in open trucks giving an unaesthetic look and the workers labored do not have safety dress required to handle waste and due to this they often fall sick . The wastes are then dumped into landfills without proper leachate treatment plants and these landfills are not buffered zones with people living close by leading to issues raised by them.

In developing nations the waste management cannot be entirely left to the government. Therefore integrating the private sector formal and other informal bodies can only be a solution to the success of proper waste management.

The various ways to overcome these issues are by-

1. The government should take this seriously and include a proper waste management system for next 20 years and work accordingly to reach that goal.
2. It is best for the government to encourage and educate people on the importance of disposing waste at the source level and converting waste into resource rather than opting for costlier equipments like incinerators which are of no use.
3. Plans that provide more job opportunities is to be implanted like street sweepers and safety kits for them and regular free medical check ups .
4. There should be a periodic third person investigation of the solid waste management done by the municipality
5. The government should collect a special fee from the polluter and laws regarding polluting the environment should be made more serious.
6. The government can also levy a small tax for waste management from citizens.

Many laws also should come to place like

1 . Laws that regulate higher tariff on commodities with large volume of packaging or that which produces higher volume of waste

2. Landfill areas should be declared as buffer zones and no development should take place around it for 50 meters

3.In order to encourage private sector participation grants of loans and subsidies can be given with exemption for duties for machinery etc.

4.A research and development team has to be created for researching on newer land fills and newer technologies for proper waste management

5. At the municipality level they can open fairs and exhibition where old things can be traded for the needy on fixed days monthly.

Only if there is a united effort and a true willingness in majority of the citizens mind to achieve a clean zero waste environment can a nation be fully successful in its waste management system

Wealth from Waste- Usable Items That Can Be Created From Waste

Reuse the second of the three R’s is what we will be concentrating on and some ideas on how to reuse and create useful items from waste will be described below . From large scale professional methods to simple do it yourself projects are listed below. This content will be classified according to the different type of waste articles and how we can reuse each one of them. 

 

Do Not Waste Your Waste

There’s a famous saying that goes like  ” Waste is waste only when it is wasted “.

Plastics-Crude oil from Plastic 

The most common of the non biodegradable item that has been a controversy for a few couple of years on how we could reduce and limit their use but having so many advantages plastic has taken a valuable position today’s world and so the new concept was to somehow reuse them and a wonderful idea was to convert plastic into crude oil. Basically returning plastic back to where it came from was really an awesome idea .Accordingly it was found by the Evion systems that they could produce a barrel of crude oil for 10 dollars compared to a barrel of synthetic oil costing about 70 dollars. A single ton of plastic waste could produce a liter of crude oil and this oil after refining could be fed as fuels to vehicles. Recently in Bangalore (india) a Chennai based private company named M K Aromatics have taken up a project to convert the plastics there to crude oil. The basic technology behind this is thermal polymerization which break down long chain polymers. They also have the advantage of not producing any waste materials through this process and anything ranging from potato chips covers to bottles could be just fed into this machine without having to clean or process anything.

Plastic Bottle Walls

Bottles filled with mud is just as strong and even better than those typical brittle bricks. When plastic bottles are filled with mud and cemented together they also have an aesthetic look. The advantages of using plastic bottles are many including ease of availability, cost efficient, eco friendly, good shock absorber as they are more flexible and less brittle than bricks and ease of build.

Plastic Bottle Mosquito Traps

 This has found to be very useful the method simply requires cutting out the bottle top and filling the lower bottom with brown sugar heated in water and cooled to 70 degree F mixed with yeast. Now cover the bottle with the top cut out of the bottle by placing it in an inverted funnel into the lower half. A large number of mosquitoes will fall into the trap by placing it in corner of your room.

Plastics can also be used as holders and bag sealers that are useful to us instead of buying readymade ones from the market. 

Metal Cans

These make beautiful garden lamp . Cover a metal can with designed paper and fill it with water freeze the can and punch holes all around the outline of the design and let the ice melt and water flow out .Now fill the can with mud and insert a candle and you can light it at night in your garden.

You can also use these cans to decorate birthday parties and other occasion by simply giving them colorful painted covers.

Also these can be saved up to use as school or college project materials.

Biodegradable Wastes

Egg Shells 

Egg shells can be made into beautiful crafts. They are used by artists in mosaic patterns also you can simply paint eggs and decorate for Easter. Egg shells also have other uses as fertilizers, non toxic pest control for your garden, eco friendly household abrasive and also as medicine for minor skin irritation. Also eggshells have also been found to be a potential for hydrogen fuel.

There are many more useful things you can get from waste and remember one man’s waste is another mans wealth. With little effort thinking and a willingness to change the way we behave we could save the world and dream of a better tomorrow. 

Useful amazon products

1). A book on Feedstock recycling and pyrolysis of waste plastics.

2)  Beaded egg shell treasures by mildred robinson.