The Most Common Waste Disposal Methods in the US

According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the United States produced over 243 million tons of municipal solid wastes (household and business trash) in 2009, working out to just about 4.3 pounds of daily per capita garbage, one of the highest rates in the world. As a result, waste reduction and disposal are pressing concerns in the United States, involving a number of methods to reduce the impact and the cost of such an enormous amount of waste.

Landfills

• Landfills, huge subterranean containers engineered to hold solid wastes, are the most common waste disposal method used in the United States. More specifically, 54.3 percent of all municipal solid wastes (MSW) generated in the country are disposed of in landfills, according to 2009 EPA estimates. Modern landfills usually have liners and safety containment systems to keep chemicals in the waste from filtering out of the landfill and contaminating the air, soil or groundwater around the site. Nonetheless, landfill runoff (precipitation that passes through the site and absorbs potentially dangerous pollutants), leaching (gradual filtering through the lining) and loss of land value around a landfill continue to present serious difficulties with continuing to use the method to accommodate growing volumes of waste.

Combustion

• Incineration, the process by which MSW are burned at extremely high temperatures to reduce their volume and facilitate disposal, accounted for 11.9 percent of waste disposal in the 2009 EPA Study. The combustion of MSW dramatically decreases the space they take up and can reduce stress on landfills, yet the combustion process can also release dangerous chemicals like dioxins into the air. Although the installation of scrubbers and filters in combustion facilities greatly decreases the risk to human and environmental health around an incinerator, the technology is still far from a low-impact way of disposing of waste, and many neighborhoods are still highly opposed to the installation of incinerators nearby. Because of this opposition, most incinerators are installed in poor, marginalized communities with little political power and access to medical attention, where the effects of particulate pollution can be disastrous.

Recovery and Recycling

• Often described as the most rational solution to waste management, in conjunction with efforts to reduce the overall waste stream, recovery, recycling and composting efforts took in 33.8 percent of U.S. MSW in 2009. These efforts include everything from community composting efforts to charitable organizations that take useful discarded items and national recycling companies that filter recyclable items out of the waste stream. While recycling, unlike recovery and reuse, does involve some energy use, it also creates manufacturing jobs, reduces virgin resource extraction needs, removes waste volume headed for landfills and incinerators and preserves resources for future use.

Hazardous Waste

• Hazardous wastes are generated in many of the same places that generate non-hazardous MSW. Simple household items like used car oil, batteries, used medical equipment and broken electronics, for instance, contain dangerous substances that require special attention and disposal. Household hazardous wastes, therefore, make up a separate waste stream with its own disposal processes and facilities. Much like conventional wastes, hazardous wastes can be land-filled, recycled, reused or incinerated, but the sensitive nature of the materials requires additional security measures. Hazardous material landfills, for example, require additional linings to seal in the wastes, just as hazardous material recycling and incineration facilities are strictly regulated and must comply with specific indications for each material to keep dangerous pollutants from endangering public health or the environment.