waste management human resources department phone number (2023)

FAQs

Which government department is responsible for waste management? ›

In terms of mandatory provisions, DEA is responsible for: Establishing the National Waste Management Strategy.

1.1 The “waste hierarchy” ranks waste management options according to what is best for the environment. It gives top priority to preventing waste in the first place. When waste is created, it gives priority to preparing it for re-use, then recycling, then recovery, and last of all disposal (e.g. landfill).

a major source of pollution, and there are many negative issues associated with them. Rubbish buried in landfill breaks down at a very slow rate and remains a problem for future generations. The three main problems with landfill are toxins, leachate and greenhouse gases.

The 5 R's: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle.

In accordance with the Waste Act, waste holders, such as private individuals, property owners or companies, are primarily responsible for the management of waste. An exception to this rule is the responsibility municipalities and certain manufacturers may have for organising waste management.

Controlled waste includes commercial, industrial and household waste. You have a legal responsibility to ensure that you produce, store, transport and dispose of controlled waste without harming the environment. This is called your duty of care.

The Three W's of Hazardous Waste: Who, Why, and Where?

The waste management hierarchy replaces the traditional waste management approach of “the three Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle), expanding it into a five-step process where the most preferred actions are at the top and the least preferred are at the bottom of the inverted pyramid.

As food waste and other types of garbage decompose, they release methane and other greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change. The most environmentally sound approach, according to the Outline, would be to stop producing as much trash in the first place.

How close is too close to a landfill? ›

Summary: Health is at risk for those who live within five kilometers of a landfill site. According to research published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, health is at risk for those who live within five kilometres of a landfill site.

But rumors that the U.S. is running out of landfill space are a myth, according to industry leaders. Just a few decades ago, almost every town had its own dump, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates there are more than 10,000 old municipal landfills.

A breakdown of solid waste types and sources is provided in Table 8.1. For the purposes of this review these sources are defined as giving rise to four major categories of waste: municipal solid waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste and hazardous waste.

Having a proper waste management can result in the availability of valuable materials to reuse. This can save money while potentially creating new jobs and business opportunities. Reducing, reusing and recycling your waste is important for the environment, but it can also be profitable.

According to Dr Kumar, the major problems affecting solid waste management are unscientific treatment, improper collection of waste, and ethical problems. This in turn leads to hazards like environmental degradation, water pollution, soil pollution, and air pollution.

Waste management officers/recycling officers organise and manage the collection and transportation of household and industrial/commercial waste. They also deal with recycling, waste treatment and disposal, street cleaning, litter and fly tipping.

No person should throw, burn, or bury the solid waste generated by him, on streets, open public spaces outside his premises, or in the drain, or water bodies. Generator will have to pay 'User Fee' to waste collector and for 'Spot Fine' for Littering and Non-segregation.

General Duty of Care

Anyone who produces, imports, keeps, stores, transports, treats or disposes of waste must take all reasonable steps to ensure that waste is managed properly. This duty of care is imposed under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

Overview. The "duty of care" refers to the obligations placed on people to act towards others in a certain way, in accordance with certain standards.

Waste codes provide instructions to Treatment, Storage & Disposal Facilities (TSDFs) regarding how to properly treat, deactivate or destroy the waste and its associated hazard. Either the pure chemical is specifically listed (named) or the Sole Active Ingredient of the product is specifically listed.

What are the 7 categories of hazardous waste? ›

The hazardous waste categories include acutely hazardous waste, extremely hazardous waste, non-RCRA hazardous waste, RCRA hazardous waste, special waste and universal waste.

You will find there are eight major groups of waste management methods, each of them divided into numerous categories. Those groups include source reduction and reuse, animal feeding, recycling, composting, fermentation, landfills, incineration, and land application.

Reusing is the act of taking old items that you might consider throwing away and finding a new use for them. Get the most mileage out of the materials you encounter. Jars from grocery store foods can be used to store leftovers or to take lunch to work. Use old clothing as cleaning rags.

As a result, types of waste management are usually split into three categories based upon the now famous “3Rs” — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The three Rs are reduce, recycle and reuse. The term 'reduce' aims at lowering the usage of natural resources to avoid wastage. For example, using less electricity. The term 'recycle' aims at using the discarded items by recycling them.

Source reduction, also known as waste prevention, means reducing waste at the source, and is the most environmentally preferred strategy. It can take many different forms, including reusing or donating items, buying in bulk, reducing packaging, redesigning products, and reducing toxicity.

Non–recyclable paper – wrapping paper that is laminated or contains foreign materials such as foil-coatings or glitter, photographic film, microwave containers, hardcover books, frozen food boxes, thermal fax paper, carbon paper, blueprints, aluminum foil boxes and binders.

Once the waste leaves your home, it is transported to a waste disposal processing facility, where the trash is sorted and categorized. Waste such as paper products, uneaten food, scrap metal, furniture and clothing take a variety of sorting paths depending on the item.

According to the US EPA, the material most frequently encountered in MSW landfills is plain old paper, it sometimes accounts for more than 40 percent of a landfill's contents. Newspapers alone can take up as much as 13 percent of the space in US landfills.

How far should you live from waste management? ›

Relevant standards of municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLs) require MSWL and hazardous waste landfills to maintain an isolation distance of 500 and 800 m from the surrounding residents and water bodies. In summary, it is necessary to set the isolation distance.

Short-term exposures (typically up to about two weeks) to elevated levels of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide in air can cause coughing, irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, headache, nausea, and breathing difficulties. These effects usually go away once the exposure is stopped.

Previous research shows that people living closer to landfill sites suffer from medical conditions such as asthma, cuts, diarrhoea, stomach pain, reoccurring flu, cholera, malaria, cough, skin irritation, cholera, diarrhoea and tuberculosis more than the people living far away from landfill sites [31,32,33,34,35,36].

States With Highest Tons of Waste Per Person

Upper Midwestern and eastern industrial states rank highly on the trash-per-capita list, with Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio taking the top five spots.

What is the difference between a landfill and a dump? A landfill is a government-regulated place where waste is treated, monitored and properly layered. A dump is most often an illegal site where people take their trash that is unregulated and poses a risk to the environment.

 Normally, it takes two to six weeks in a landfill to get completely decomposed, but can take decades, depending on moisture levels within the landfill.

Under the lean manufacturing system, seven wastes are identified: overproduction, inventory, motion, defects, over-processing, waiting, and transport.

Many different types of waste are generated, including municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, industrial non-hazardous waste, agricultural and animal waste, medical waste, radioactive waste, construction and demolition debris, extraction and mining waste, oil and gas production waste, fossil fuel combustion waste, and ...

What are the 5 types of waste disposal? ›

Waste is defined as unwanted and unusable materials and is regarded as a substance which is of no use. Waste that we see in our surroundings is also known as garbage.

Poor waste management contributes to climate change and air pollution, and directly affects many ecosystems and species. Landfills, considered the last resort in the waste hierarchy, release methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change.

Waste management requires facing a number of challenging issues, for instance, balancing objectives between promoting recycling and protecting consumers against harmful chemical substances in recycled materials; insufficient data collection; quality aspects related to recycling; energy recovery of waste; and waste ...

Waste collection is the responsibility of the municipal corporations in India, and bins are normally provided for biodegradable and inert waste [24–26].

The responsibility of garbage collection and management is done by the local area municipality or corporation workers. All the management of wastes are done by many workers employed in municipal corporation.

KOC has developed the Waste Management Procedure (KOC. EV. 008) for management of waste, and its Assets and Directorates are following the same. The KOC Assets are utilizing the services of contractors to manage the Hazardous waste generated within their operational areas.

The waste industry in England holds over 11,000 Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR) permits issued by the Environment Agency; 81% of all EPR permits issued. Sites can hold more than one permit.

According to Dr Kumar, the major problems affecting solid waste management are unscientific treatment, improper collection of waste, and ethical problems. This in turn leads to hazards like environmental degradation, water pollution, soil pollution, and air pollution.

What is the garbage man called? ›

A waste collector, also known as a garbageman, garbage collector, trashman (in the US), binman or (rarely) dustman (in the UK), is a person employed by a public or private enterprise to collect and dispose of municipal solid waste (refuse) and recyclables from residential, commercial, industrial or other collection ...

Poor waste management - ranging from non-existing collection systems to ineffective disposal -causes air pollution, water and soil contamination. Open and unsanitary landfills contribute to contamination of drinking water and can cause infection and transmit diseases.

Germany has the best recycling rate in the world. Austria comes in second, followed by South Korea and Wales. All four countries manage to recycle between 52% and 56% of their municipal waste. Switzerland, in fifth place, recycles almost half of its municipal waste.

The prevalent solid waste disposal method in Kuwait is landfill burial. Despite being a small country, Kuwait has astonishingly high number of landfills. There are 18 landfills, of which 14 sites are closed and 4 sites are still in operation. These landfills act as dumpsites, rather than engineered landfills.

The total quantity of generated solid waste in Kuwait from all urban sources is estimated to be 2.265 million tons per year.

The Environmental Protection Agency protects people and the environment from significant health risks, sponsors and conducts research, and develops and enforces environmental regulations.

No person should throw, burn, or bury the solid waste generated by him, on streets, open public spaces outside his premises, or in the drain, or water bodies. Generator will have to pay 'User Fee' to waste collector and for 'Spot Fine' for Littering and Non-segregation.

Policy Objectives

To minimise waste generation at source and facilitate repair, reuse and recycling over the disposal of wastes, where it is cost effective. To provide clearly defined roles and responsibilities to identify and co-ordinate each activity within the waste management chain.