Municipal solid waste

Municipal Solid Waste

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Municipal solid waste

Municipal solid waste (MSW), also called urban solid waste, is a waste type that includes predominantly household waste (domestic waste) with sometimes the addition of commercial waste

Commercial waste

Commercial waste consists of waste from premises used wholly or mainly for the purposes of a trade or business or for the purpose of sport, recreation, education or entertainment but not including municipal waste; agricultural or industrial waste ....
s collected by a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them....
within a given area. They are in either solid or semisolid form and generally exclude industrial hazardous waste

Hazardous waste

Put simply, a hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment and generally exhibits one or more of these characteristics:...
s.

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What is the total amount of the greenwaste fraction of MSW generated in the U.S. every year

Encyclopedia

Municipal solid waste (MSW), also called urban solid waste, is a waste type that includes predominantly household waste (domestic waste) with sometimes the addition of commercial waste

Commercial waste

Municipality

Hazardous waste

Put simply, a hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment and generally exhibits one or more of these characteristics:...
s. The term residual waste relates to waste left from household sources containing materials that have not been separated out or sent for reprocessing .

There are five broad categories of MSW:

Biodegradable waste
Biodegradable waste

Biodegradable waste is a type of waste, typically originating from plant or animal sources, which may be broken down by other living organisms. Waste that cannot be broken down by other living organisms may be called non-biodegradable....
: food and kitchen waste
Food waste

Food waste is any form of waste composed of food materials, which can be active ingredients but also materials found in preparation or containment of foods....
, green waste
Green waste

Green waste is biodegradable waste that can be comprised of garden or park waste, such as grass or flower cuttings and Hedge trimmings.Green waste is often collected in municipal curbside collection schemes or through private waste management contractor businesses and subject to independent audit....
, paper
Paper

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
(can also be recycled).
Recyclable
Recycling

Recycling involves processing used materials into new products in order to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virg...
material: paper, glass
Glass

Glass generally refers to a Hardness, brittle, transparency amorphous solid, such as that used for windows, many Glass Bottles, or eyewear, including, but not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovite , or aluminium oxynitride....
, bottle
Bottle

A bottle is a container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a "mouth." Bottles are often made of glass, clay, plastic or other impervious materials, and typically used to store liquids such as water, milk, soft drinks, beer, wine, cooking oil, medicine, shampoo, ink and chemicals....
s, can
Tin can

A tin can, also called a tin or a can, is an air-tight Packaging and labelling for the distribution or storage of goods, composed of thin metal, and requiring cutting or tearing of the metal as the means of opening....
s, metal
Metal

In chemistry, a metal is a chemical element whose atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions , and form metallic bonds between other metal atoms and ionic bonds between nonmetal atoms....
s, certain plastic
Plastic

Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic chemistry solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products....
s, etc.
Inert
Inert

In English, to be inert is to be in a state of doing little or nothing....
waste: construction and demolition waste
Construction and demolition waste

Construction and demolition waste consists of unwanted material produced directly or incidentally by the construction or demolition industries....
, dirt
Soil

Soil is the naturally occurring, unconsolidated or loose covering on the Earth's surface. Soil is composed of particles of broken rock that have been altered by chemical and environmental processes including weathering and erosion....
, rock
Rock (geology)

In geology, rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock....
s, debris.
Composite wastes: waste clothing
Clothing

A feature of all human societies, except perhaps the most primitive, is the wearing of clothing or clothes, especially in public. The primary purpose of clothing is functional, as a protection from the weather....
, Tetra Pak
Tetra Pak

Tetra Pak is a multinational corporation food processing and packaging corporation of Sweden origin. It was founded in 1951 in Lund, Sweden, by Ruben Rausing....
s, waste plastics such as toys.
Domestic hazardous waste
Hazardous waste

Put simply, a hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment and generally exhibits one or more of these characteristics:...
(also called "household hazardous waste") & toxic waste
Toxic waste

Toxic waste is waste material that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It usually is the product of industry or commerce, but comes also from residential use, agriculture, the military, medical facilities, radioactive sources, and light industry, such as dry cleaning establishments....
: medication
Medication

A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine or medicament, can be loosely defined as any substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease....
, e-waste, paint
Paint

Paint is any liquid, liquifiable, or mastic composition which after application to a Substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film....
s, chemicals, light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, spray cans, fertilizer
Fertilizer

Fertilizers are chemical compounds given to plants to promote growth; they are usually applied either through the soil, for uptake by plant roots, or by foliar feeding, for uptake through leaves....
and pesticide
Pesticide

A pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances used to kill a pest .A pesticide may be a chemical substance, biological agent , antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest ....
containers, batteries
Battery (electricity)

In electronics, a battery or voltaic cell is a combination of one or more electrochemical cell Galvanic cells which store chemical energy that can be converted into electric potential energy, creating electricity....
, shoe polish
Shoe polish

Shoe polish , usually a waxy paste or a cream , is a consumer product used to polishing, waterproofing, and restore the appearance of leather shoes or boots, thereby extending the footwear's life....
.

The functional elements of Municipal Solid waste are as follows:
1) Waste generation:
Waste generation encompasses activities in which materials are identified as no longer being of value and are either thrown away or gathered together for disposal.

2) Waste handling and separation, storage and processing at the source:
Waste handling and separation involves the activities associated with management of waste until they are placed in storage container for collection. Handling also encompasses the movement of loaded containers to the point of collection. Separation of waste components is an important step in the handling and storage of solid waste at the source.

3) Collection:
The functional element of collection includes not only the gathering of solid waste and recyclable materials, but also the transport of these materials, after collection, to the location where the collection vehicle is emptied. This location may be a materials processing facility, a transfer station or a landfill disposal site.

4) Separation and processing and transformation of solid wastes:
The types of means and facilities that are now used for the recovery of waste materials that have been separated at the source include curbside collection, drop off and buy back centers. The separation and processing of wastes that have been separated at the source and the separation of commingled wastes usually occur at a materials recovery facility, transfer stations, combustion facilities and disposal sites.

5) Transfer and transport:
This element involves two steps:
i)the transfer of wastes from the smaller collection vehicle to the larger transport equipment
ii)the subsequent transport of the wastes, usually over long distances, to a processing or disposal site.

6) Disposal:
Today the disposal of wastes by landfilling or landspreading is the ultimate fate of all solid wastes, whether they are residential wastes collected and transported directly to a landfill site, residual materials from materials recovery facilities (MRFs), residue from the combustion of solid waste, compost or other substances from various solid waste processing facilities. A modern sanitary land is not a dump; it is an engineered facility used for disposing of solid wastes on land without creating nuisances or hazards to public health or safety, such as the breeding of rats and insects and the contamination of ground water.

Municipal solid waste

See also