Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources Chapter 2

Renewable and Nonrenewable ResourcesChapter 2

Theme Outline Lesson 2.4 • Solid Waste Management • Municipal Solid Waste • Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

PA Academic Standards for Environment & Ecology • Standard 4.2.10.D • Explain different management alternatives involved in recycling and solid waste management. • Analyze the manufacturing process (before, during and after) with consideration for resource recovery. • Compare various methods dealing with solid waste (e.g., incineration, compost, land application). • Differentiate between pre/post-consumer and raw materials. • Illustrate how one natural resource can be managed through reduction, recycling, reuse or use.

Learning Objectives • Students will compare various methods dealing with solid waste, including incineration, composting, and the use of landfills. • Students will analyze several manufacturing processes with consideration for resource recovery. • Students will learn how aluminum and other resources are managed through reduction, recycling, refuse, or use. • Students will differentiate between pre/post-consumer and raw materials.

Solid Waste Management • Natural resources harvested from the Earth are typically processed. • This processing generates waste products that can either be • Released into the environment • Recovered and sold • Recycled within a manufacturing process • Taken to landfills or other waste management facilities for disposal.

Natural Resources… • Renewable • Food and Fiber • Soil • Wind • The Sun • Water • Biomass Fuels • Geothermal Energy • Non-Renewable • Ores • Rocks as Resources • Fossil Fuels What are the two types of natural resources?

Municipal Solid Waste • Definition: waste that consists of paper, yard waste, food, and plastics

How is municipal waste handled? • Composting • Combustion • Landfills • Source Reduction • Recycling

Composting • Definition: biological method of waste disposal in which worms, bacteria, fungi, and other organisms decompose piles of fruit and vegetable food scraps, wood, and lawn clippings

The pros… • Removes materials from the waste stream • Processed product can be used for erosion control • Provides nutrients to the topsoil • Inexpensive • Free fertilizer

The cons… • Time consuming • Time intensive

Combustion • Definition: process of waste disposal by which waste material is burned

The pros… • Reduces volume by 90% • Reduces mass by 75% • Conservation of mass still applies, thus the mass that is reduced is actually redistributed • Destroys bacteria • Waste to energy facility (W-T-E) The cons… • Air pollutions • Disposal of excess waste in landfills

Landfills • Definition: regulated area where wastes are placed in the land

Landfill Volumes

How are landfills constructed? 5. Trucks are weighed, waste deposited, trash compacted by heavy machinery, trucks weighed again. 6. Daily cover Why? 7. Trash, dirt, trash, dirt… 8. Cap or seal installed to contain waste. • Select a location Pits and quarries…. Why? • Liner installed. • Layer of clay deposited. Why clay? • Ready to accept trash.

Leachate • Definition: waste material (liquid) that collects in the bottom layers of landfills as waste material decomposes

Landfill Gas (LFG) • Definition: waste material (gas) that collects at the top of landfills as waste material decomposes producing gases such as methane What’s the problem with these gases? • Methane contributes to… • Local smog • Air pollution • Depletion of the Ozone layer

So what’s the solution? • Gases can be burned using a flare. • Gases can be processed, converted to fuel, and sold to supply energy.

Modern approach to LFG production? SELL IT!!!

Landfills in Pennsylvania

Landfills in perspective • The number of landfills in the United States has decreased sharply in the past decade for various reasons. • What do you think are those reasons? Landfills have closed because… • Posed environmental concerns. • Leakage of leachate. • Improperly handled hazardous waste. • Have reached their capacity.

Pennsylvania and it’s trash… • Pennsylvanian’s recycle about ¼ of their MSW. • Pennsylvania’s deposit about 3 million tons of MSW in landfills yearly. • So what happens with all the extra landfill space?

One time you might not want to be #1...

Ten years down the road…

Trends in Solid Waste

Source Reduction • Definition: alteration of the design, manufacture, or use of materials to reduce the amount of toxicity of the waste generated • Source reduction, generally speaking, means reducing the amount of solid waste which enters the waste stream. It means that waste is prevented before it is created by using materials more efficiently, using reusable products and extending life of products. • In other words, source reduction can be achieved by reducing the total volume of disposable packaging material generated for domestic, commercial, industrial and governmental use by: • reducing the disposal impact of packaging waste by changing to more environmentally benign packaging material • increasing the recyclablility of packaging products that cannot be reduced • increasing the recycled material content of packaging products.

Source reduction example… http://www.cleaning101.com/environment/source_reduction.cfm

Recycling • Definition: series of activities that reuse a product’s raw materials to manufacture new products

These symbols are used to mark recyclable materials as “recyclables.” • The different symbols represent the materials from which the current product was made. • Example: HDPE stands for high-density polyethylene.

Aluminum Recycling facts… • Some 119,482 cans are recycled every minute nationwide. • Used aluminum cans are recycled and returned to store shelves as new cans in as few as 60 days. • Recycling saves 95 percent of the energy required to make aluminum cans from virgin ore. In 1995, aluminum companies saved the equivalent of over 20.6 million barrels of oil -- or 12.3 billion kilowatt hours by recycling. This represents enough energy to supply the electrical needs of a city the size of Pittsburgh for about six years.

IncompleteCycle • Definition: process by which materials (wastes) do not complete a full cycle in the waste recovery system and are disposed

Closed-Loop Cycle • Definition:process by which materials (wastes) complete a full cycle in the waste recovery system and are partially reused and recycled

What happens to recyclables? • Recyclables have a series of different paths they can take, once entering the recycling stream. MatsPlayground PadsFuel Sources Rubber PackagingLawn furnitureVideotape cassettesInsulation Plastics Metals Metals Melted, Sorted & Recast Paper Paper Reduced to pulpReprocessed

What are some interesting statistics about recycling? • Hotels will create 1.5 pounds of solid waste per day per room • Each person produces 3.5 pounds of solid waste per day • There are 6 two liter bottles in one pound of PET • One three foot stack of newspapers is equal to one tree, approximately 30 feet tall • One three foot stack of newspaper weighs 100 pounds • To make one ton of virgin paper uses 17 trees (3 2/3 acres of forest) • 62,860 trees must be cut to provide pulp for a single edition of the Sunday New York Times. • Recycling one aluminum can saves the energy equivalent to one cup of gasoline. • A steel mill can reduce its water pollution 76% and mining wastes 97% using scrap metal, such as steel cans, instead of iron ore. • In the summer, nearly one third of all summer waste handled by garbage haulers consists of grass clippings. • In the fall, leaves comprise as much as half of all waste generated by residents. • One dollar out of every $11 spent on groceries goes to pay for packaging • 32% of all municipal waste is from packaging. • Americans are the world’s trashiest people. US citizens consume more goods per capita than any other nation in the world. Each year we throw away: • enough aluminum to rebuild the entire American Airlines air fleet 71 times. • enough steel to reconstruct Manhattan • enough wood and paper to heat 5 million homes of 200 years. • one third of all of the food we buy

Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources Chapter 2