UNIT 1

GENERATION AND
CHARACTERISTICS
OF WASTE
• Solid waste is the unwanted or useless solid materials
generated from human activities in residential, industrial or
commercial areas.

• It may be categorized in three ways. According to its:

-- Origin (domestic, industrial, commercial, construction or
institutional)
-- Contents (organic material, glass, metal, plastic paper
etc)
-- Hazard potential (toxic, non-toxin, flammable,
radioactive, infectious etc).
• In metro cities in India, an individual produces an average of
0.8 kg/ waste/ person daily.

• The total municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in urban

India has been estimated at 68.8 million tons per year (TPY)
(0.573 million metric tonnes per day (MMT/d) in the year
2008).

• The average collection efficiency of MSW ranges from 22% to

60%.

• MSW typically contains 51% organic waste, 17% recyclables,

11% hazardous and 21% inert waste.

• However, about 40% of all MSW is not collected at all and

hence lies littered in the city/town and finds its way to nearby
drains and water bodies, causing choking as well as pollution
of surface water.
• Unsegregated waste collection and transportation leads to
dumping in the open, which generates leachate and gaseous
emissions besides causing nuisance in the surrounding
environment.

• Leachate contaminates the groundwater as well as surface

water in the vicinity and gaseous emissions contribute to
global warming.
• Solid waste management is defined as “the discipline
associated with control of generation, storage, collection,
transport or transfer, processing and disposal of solid waste
materials in a way that best addresses the range of public
health, conservation, economic, aesthetic, engineering, and
other environmental considerations”.
• In its scope, solid waste management includes planning,
administrative, financial, engineering, and legal functions.
• Solutions might include complex inter-disciplinary relations
among fields such as public health, city and regional planning,
political science, geography, sociology, economics,
communication and conservation, demography, engineering,
and material sciences.
• Solid waste management practices can differ for residential
and industrial producers, for urban and rural areas, and for
developed and developing nations.
• The administration of non-hazardous waste in metropolitan
areas is the job of local government authorities. On the other
hand, the management of hazardous waste materials is
typically the responsibility of those who generate it, as subject
to local, national, and even international authorities.

Objectives of Waste Management

• The primary goal of solid waste management is reducing and

eliminating adverse impacts of waste materials on human
health and the environment to support economic development
and superior quality of life. This is to be done in the most
efficient manner possible, to keep costs low and prevent waste
buildup.
Functional Elements of
the Waste Management
System
6 Functional Elements of the Waste Management System
• There are six functional components of the waste
management system, as outlined below:
• Waste generation: This encompasses any activities involved
in identifying materials that are no longer usable and are
either gathered for systematic disposal or thrown away.
• Onsite handling, storage, and processing: This relates to
activities at the point of waste generation, which facilitate
easier collection. For example, waste bins are placed at sites
that generate sufficient waste.
• Waste collection: A crucial phase of waste management,
this includes activities such as placing waste collection bins,
collecting waste from those bins, and accumulating trash in
the location where the collection vehicles are emptied.
Although the collection phase involves transportation, this is
typically not the main stage of waste transportation.
• Waste transfer and transport: These are the activities
involved in moving waste from the local waste collection
locations to the regional waste disposal site in large waste
transport vehicles.
• Waste processing and recovery: This refers to the facilities,
equipment, and techniques employed to recover reusable or
recyclable materials from the waste stream and to improve the
effectiveness of other functional elements of waste
management.
• Disposal: The final stage of waste management. It involves
the activities aimed at the systematic disposal of waste
materials in locations such as landfills or waste-to-energy
facilities.
 SOURCES AND
TYPES OF SOLID
WASTE
 WASTE
COMPOSITION
• Some of the general observations associated with the
composition of wastes include the following:

-- The major constituents are paper and decomposable

organic materials.
-- More often than not, metal, glass, ceramics, textile, dirt and
wood form part of the composition, and their relative proportion
depends on local factors.
-- Average proportions of the constituents reaching the
disposal sites are consistent and urban wastes are fairly constant
although subject to long-term changes such as seasonal
variations.

• Waste composition varies with the socio-economic status

within a particular community, since income, for example,
determines life style, composition pattern and cultural
behavior.
Typical Waste Composition: Low/High Income Population
• Waste composition also depends on the moisture content, density and
relative distribution of municipal wastes, as shown in Table below, and is
important for the characterization of solid waste for most applications
 WASTE
CHARACTERISTICS
 To identify the exact characteristics of municipal wastes, it is
necessary that we analyze them using physical and chemical
parameters
1. Physical characteristics: Information and data on the
physical characteristics of solid wastes are important for the
selection and operation of equipment and for the analysis and
design of disposal facilities.
The required information and data include the following:
(i) Density
(ii) Moisture content
(iii) Size
The physical properties that are essential to analyze wastes
disposed at landfills are:
I. Field capacity
II. Permeability of compacted wastes
III. Compressibility of MSW
2. Chemical characteristics
• The classification of chemical compounds and their
characteristics is essential for the proper understanding of the
behavior of waste, as it moves through the waste management
system.
• The products of decomposition and heating values are two
examples of chemical characteristics.
• If solid wastes are to be used as fuel, or are used for any other
purpose, we must know their chemical characteristics,
including the following:
i) Lipids ii) Carbohydrates
iii) Proteins iv) Natural fibres
v) Synthetic organic material (Plastics) vi) Non-combustibles
vii) Heating value viii) Ultimate analysis
ix) Proximate analysis
 FACTORS CAUSING
VARIATION
OR
FACTORS AFFECTING
GENERATION AND
COMPOSITION OF SOLID
WASTE
 There are several factors, which affect the present as well as the
future waste quantity and composition (Tchobanoglous, et al.,
1977), and some of which are listed below:

i) Geographic location
ii) Season
iii) Collection frequency
iv) Population diversity
v) Extent of salvaging and recycling
vi) Public attitude
vii) Legislation
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