Waste Management: Value and Waste

Waste management is the process of collection, transportation, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste to avoid its adverse effects in human health and environment also. Waste management is a very important issue in the today’s modern business world. According to the Wikipedia “waste management is the generation, prevention, characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse and residual disposition of solid waste”.

Waste management is the process of collection, transportation, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste to avoid its adverse effects in human health and environment also. Waste management is a very important issue in the today’s modern business world. According to the Wikipedia” waste management is the generation, prevention, characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse and residual disposition of solid waste.

Concept of Waste

In general, waste are the things or items which we (people and industries) don’t need and we discard these things. Sometimes law does not permit to us to use the things /items; they are prohibited by the law because they can be harmful to the society as well as environment. Generally waste can be liquid(storm water, water from home, liquids used for industry cleaning and waste detergents etc.) and solid(garbage, plastics materials, old newspapers, broken furniture even food waste etc.) .Both liquid and non-liquid waste type also has grouped into reusable and recyclable waste not all the wastes are hazardous or harmful to health and environment). Growing proliferation of waste led to the many serious disease such as bubonic plague, cholera and typhoid led to suffering and death.

Waste management

There are various type of solid waste including municipal(residential, institutional, commercial)agricultural and special health care household hazardous waste” The waste management concept is mainly refers to the ‘3Rs’-Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. This concept gives focus on the waste reduction plans, re-cycle the waste by different processed and re-use the waste for different purpose i.e. producing the other products like compost etc. The waste is the problem and waste management is the solution.

There are various sources of waste they are briefly discussed below:

• Municipal sources of waste: This includes the waste produce by households, School College, market place and restaurant and public places. They include daily items like food debris, plastic bags, water bottle etc.
• Medical/hospital sources of waste: It includes surgical items, pharmaceuticals, blood, body parts dressing material and needles, syringes etc.
• Agricultural sources of waste: This includes like horticulture, fruit growing, seed growing, livestock, market gardens and nurseries etc. produced by agricultural activities.
• Industrial sources of waste: includes leather, textile, electronics, food, plastics and metal products etc. produced by the different manufacturing houses.
• Construction sources of waste: includes waste resulting from the construction of the building, road, bridge etc.
• Electronic waste sources: waste from electronic and electronic devices like TV, music players, telephone, computers, vacuum cleaners and other electrical stuff. For e.g. contains lead, cadmium, and mercury etc. which may be harmful to people and environments.

Waste Management from the Environmental perspective

Waste management is the major challenge to not only the rural and urban but also to the developed and under developed Nations. There are some techniques can be used for waste management. They are:

1. Landfill: The most common and traditional methods of waste disposal is landfill. According to this method water is burying or dumping in the land. It is an inexpensive way to get rid of waste. Before it is placed into the certain process used that eliminates the danger and odors of waste. This method is becoming less useful these days. Due to the lack of sufficient space availability and strong presence of the methane and landfill gasses, both of which may cause various contamination problems. Hats why enough care should be taken to ensure that waste that does not harm the environment is dumped in landfill.
2. Combustion: The combustion is another type of waste management techniques in which municipal or local government solid waste are burned at high temperature in order to convert waste in to the residue and gaseous products. Major advantage of this techniques is that it can reduces the column of the solid waste 20% to 30 % of the original volume it also reduces the burden of landfills .Japan has applied this techniques to manage the waste.
3. Recycling: The recycle is the process of converting the waste products in to the new products to prevent the consumption and usages of the raw material. It is the modern techniques of waste management. The main idea behind recycling is to reduce usage of energy and reduces the volume of the landfills, water pollution, reduce the green house and preserve the natural resources for the future generation.
4. Composting: Composting is a waste management method in which all organic waste like food, plant, paper etc. are decomposed (breakdown) and recycle then as compost for use in agricultural and landscaping applications.
5. Waste to Energy (WET): It is a process in which converting the non-recyclable waste items into the usable heats, electricity, and fuel by using the different process. This types of energy is renewable energy sources (can be use again and again to create the energy).The advantages of this method is recuing the carbon emission by offsetting the need for energy from fossil sources, it is most popular and widely used methods in managing the wastage.

Thus the waste management has become the parts of our human life. If we have to live, we will produce the waste .If we don’t treat waste, it will choke us.

Waste Management from the business perspective

The waste management is very important for the business organization also. The business organization has been producing the some kinds of commercial waste by knowingly or unknowingly. The waste volume and types can be differing business to business. The business waste management is somewhat different from the residential or household. Generally manufacturing industries produces more waste than service industry, for example Construction Company produces more waste than banks. The waste creates the unnecessary cost burden and increases the environmental footprint and can make business vulnerable to the risk, regulation and fines. Waste management for the company is reducing the environmental impact of organizational activities and simiutenously reducing the costs.

To manage the waste in the business in better ways the organization should follow the different ideas. Some of the business waste management ideas are discuss below:

1. Conduct the waste audit: waste audit is the formal and systematic process in order to know the know or quantify the amount and types of waste being generated by the company in particular time period. Info form audit will help to identify the current waste practice and how they can be improved. Being waste-wise mean-a more efficient and effective company, reduces the costs, better use of the resources.
2. Grab company waste bill and call the company that services your locations to ask them: It is another way of reducing the waste in the business. The company should ask the service provider for unjustified bills unnecessary, amount(cost) to be removed from your bill such as vague and unclear “environmental fee or fuel charge etc. ”and company should identifies the other ways like reducing the no of service time and other recycling process etc.
3. Better inventory management: The Company should keep minimum stock to serve the customer. They should avoid keeping too many stocks that may expire or become useless and will increase the cost.
4. Scrutinize the products you purchase for unnecessary packaging: unnecessary packaging will only increase the waste and cost of the business so the business organization should avoid purchasing the disposable products and tools and purchase the product with less packaging and work with vendor to take back and reuse the packaging.
5. Donate extra food and gently used the items instead of throwing them away: another way of managing the waste is donating the extra food to the society‘s needy people.
6. Work with neighboring business to implement recycling: to reduce the business waste the organization should work with other similar company to reduce the costs through scale by sharing equipment and selling quantizes of valuable recyclable products.
7. Standardize the recycling equipment: The business organization should purchase the standardize recycling equipment in order to process waste. The equipment should have certain standard for operations.
8. Engage with your employee, customer and community: The Company should provide the training to the employee and asking for their suggestions and creating the waste reduction incentives. Similarly, the business organization should engage with the society customer to provide the proper information about the products through social media.

Thus, waste management is most important to the business in order to protect the environment and reducing the costs and adding value to the business.