Waste Management

Waste management is the overall process of collection, transportation, treatment and discarding of waste products, sewage and garbage. It also includes other legal, monitoring, recycling and regulating activities.

There are many forms of waste such as solid, gas or liquid and each has different process of disposal and management. Waste management manages different types of waste created by industries, household, commercial activities or natural waste. Large segment of waste management deals with municipal solid waste i.e. the waste created by industries, housing and commercial establishments.

The general concepts of waste management are waste hierarchy, that includes three approaches that are reduce, reuse and recycle. Second is life cycle of product that includes designing, producing, distributing followed by the 3 R’s of waste hierarchy. The third concept is resource efficiency that focuses on efficient use of resources. And the fourth concept is polluter-pay principle where the polluter-party i.e. one who generates waste has to pay for the impact caused to the environment. However, waste management carried on in developing and developed countries, cities and villages varies.

Inefficient waste management has several negative effects on health of living beings, environment and economy for e.g. air pollution, soil contamination, spread of hazardous diseases, etc. Waste management is aimed to reduce the adverse effects of waste on environment, health and the beauty of nature.