History of Waste Management

History: In ancient cities, wastes were thrown onto unpaved streets and roadways, where they were left to accumulate. It was not until 320 BCE in Athens that the first known law forbidding this practice was established. At that time a system for waste removal began to evolve in Greece and in the Greek-dominated cities of the eastern Mediterranean. In ancient Rome, property owners were responsible for cleaning the streets fronting their property. But organized waste collection was associated only with state-sponsored events such as parades. Disposal methods were very crude, involving open pits located just outside the city walls.

As populations increased, efforts were made to transport waste farther out from the cities. After the fall of Rome, waste collection and municipal sanitation began a decline that lasted throughout the Middle Ages. Near the end of the 14th century, scavengers were given the task of carting waste to dumps outside city walls. But this was not the case in smaller towns, where most people still threw waste into the streets. It was not until 1714 that every city in England was required to have an official scavenger. Toward the end of the 18th century in America, municipal collection of garbage was begun in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.

Waste disposal methods were still very crude, however. Garbage collected in Philadelphia, for example, was simply dumped into the Delaware River downstream from the city. During the industrial revolution, recyclers began to form businesses and later trade associations, dealing in the collection, trade and processing of metals and paper. America’s Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), a trade association with more than 1,400 member companies, traces its roots back to one such organisation founded in 1913. In the 1930s many people survived the Great Depression by peddling scraps of metal, rags and other items.

In those days reuse and recycling were often economic necessities As industrial societies began to produce ever-growing quantities of garbage, recycling took on a new meaning. Rather than recycling materials for purely economic reasons, communities began to think about how to reduce the waste flow to landfills and incinerators. Current Conditions: Our whole concept of the business plan has on two important phases – ‘WASTE MANAGEMENT + RECYCLING’ Waste Management: Waste management is the collection, transport, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste materials.

The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and the process is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management is a distinct practice from resource recovery which focuses on delaying the rate of consumption of natural resources. All wastes materials, whether solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive fall within the remit of waste management. Recycling: Recycling is a resource recovery practice that refers to the collection and reuse of waste materials. The materials from which the items are made can be reprocessed into new products.

Material for recycling are collected by us from general waste using dedicated bins and collection vehicles are sorted directly from mixed waste streams and are known as kerb-side recycling, it requires the owner of the waste to separate it into various different bins (typically wheelie bins) prior to its collection. The most common consumer products recycled include aluminium such as beverage cans, copper such as wire, steel food and aerosol cans, old steel furnishings or equipment, polyethylene and PET bottles, glass bottles and jars, paperboard cartons, newspapers, magazines and light paper, and corrugated fibre board boxes.

PVC, LDPE, PP, and PS are also recyclable. These items are usually composed of a single type of material, making them relatively easy to recycle into new products. The recycling of complex products (such as computers and electronic equipment) is more difficult, due to the additional dismantling and separation required. The type of material accepted for recycling varies by city and country. Each city and country has different recycling programs in place that can handle the various types of recyclable materials. However, certain variation in acceptance is reflected in the resale value of the material once it is reprocessed