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By Daniel P. Duffy, P.E., When most people think of waste collection, they think of the weekly waste pickup at the curb outside the home. For most of us, the typical waste collection truck loaded by men picking up individual trash cans and dumping them in the back of the truck is all there is to waste collection. What most of us do not realize is that weekly residential waste collection is only one of many wastestreams. In fact, residential waste is often not the largest wastestream in terms of total to...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Collection, Commercial, Wastes
by John Trotti Regardless of how delicious the food from the kitchen of your favorite restaurant is, there’s something going on behind the scene you won’t find on the menu, notably that bilious vetch of fats, oils, and grease we euphemistically call FOG. Some of it—the yellow stuff—occasionally finds its way into such recognizable products as biodiesel, but there’s also its sinister half brother, the dark-colored glop caught by grease traps that people with sucker trucks charge good money to haul away a...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Environment, Materials, Wastes
Written by Chace Anderson The British Empire’s imperial power came from its Navy. British leaders viewed timber as a strategic resource for its naval shipbuilding. Since “John Bull” had not implemented a policy of resource sustainability, British Navy officers eventually found themselves looking out over a deforested British Isles. How did the “Redcoats” respond to this resource deficit? They restricted their colonies from harvesting timber, including white pines, which were especially good for mak...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Management, Operations, Wastes
Written by John Trotti I’m going to come at this in a backhanded fashion, referring first to a presentation made by Jeremy O’Brien, SWANA’s Applied Resources Foundation (ARF) director, at the association’s “The Road to Zero Waste” this past February. Focusing principally on the economic benefits of zero waste performance, he offered a number of local community benefits as offsets to what are by any measure daunting systems costs. Among these were such factors as: (1) retaining rather than exporting...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Diversion, Management, Wastes
Written by Marc J. Rogoff, Greg McCarron, and Bruce Clark While organic materials (foodwaste and yardwaste) represent roughly about a quarter of the typical municipal solid wastestream, many of these materials have, up until recently, been disposed in landfills and waste-to-energy facilities. In recent years, many solid waste agencies and waste generators have looked to these organics as a feedstock for biogas-generating facilities or composting plants. Governmental regulations and technologies for...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Diversion, Recycling, Wastes
Written by Jeremy K. O’Brien This article provides highlights from a research memorandum recently published by the SWANA Applied Research Foundation (ARF) on the collection of organic wastes from high-rise buildings and apartment complexes. This research need was identified by North Vancouver, British Columbia, and selected for investigation during FY2012 (July 2011 through June 2012). The research memorandum presents the results of background research conducted with input and support provided by t...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Collection, Operations, Wastes
Written by Justin Tseng Up until four decades ago, waste management practices in Japan looked very similar to those found in the US. However, in the 1970s, new legislation driven by the scarcity of landfill space pushed Japan to seek such solutions as waste-to-energy. Beginning in the 1990s, growing environmental awareness and stricter laws like the 3Rs policy brought the country to the forefront of the waste management industry. One of the greatest enabling factors for this transformation was a cu...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Management, Wastes
Written by Carol Brzozowski When it comes to increased market development for recycled materials, those who coordinate municipal recycling efforts would like to see more information sharing, a greater demand for recycled products on the back end, and more collaboration between the product packaging industry and recyclers. Ultimately, what each municipality decides to recycle depends on the marketability of that material as a recycled product. In Milwaukee, WI, recyclables are collected by the munic...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Recycling, Technology, Wastes
Written by Pat Proano Our cities and counties, including the County of Los Angeles, continue to be recognized for excellence and achievement in the restoration of multiuse ecosystems and the development of sustainable capital projects that consistently earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. We have become master recyclers and maintain some of the highest recycling rates in the nation. In Los Angeles alone, we recycle nearly two-thirds of our trash. But despite this...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Conversion, Technology, Wastes
Written by Neal Bolton Waste compaction is a cornerstone of landfill operations. A survey I once conducted indicated that waste compaction is one of the highest operational priorities for a landfill manager—No surprise there. But what is surprising is how limited—as an industry—our thinking is. Now to be sure, I’m not tossing every manager into this basket. There are many standouts—those who go far beyond simply putting a compactor in the budget…and then leaving it up to the crew to “compact the ga...... continue reading
From: MSW Management Topics: Compaction, Landfill, Wastes
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