Organic waste management is important in urban life. Not only because it is essential for individual household, it also benefits the region’s environment.
Organic waste includes materials such as food waste and plant based material, including vegetable and fruit scraps, newspapers, prunings, grass clipping, weeds or even hair. A large percentage of household waste and other waste is organic.
There are few different ways in managing organic waste, such as landfilling, recycling and composting. As landfill
is one of the oldest form
of waste management. The focus is on composting and recycling. The future of organic waste management is based on the reuse of the organic waste for compost production.
Reducing waste to landfill
When people put organic waste into the household rubbish bin, it is going to be dumped in landfill. The organic material rots without oxygen in landfill. Therefore, this process produces odorous gases and methane. This is a potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Organic waste in landfill produces leachate. Leachate is a liquid that created during the process of waste decomposition. It contains harmful resources that can damage the groundwater and waterways.
Benefits of composting
- During the composting process, rich nutrients are released into the land. This benefits the plants.
- Compost improves the soil health and structure. And it improves quality of the soils. It also helps sandy soils hold water.
- Compost limits the need for water, pesticides and fertilizers.
- Compost helps to absorb and filter runoff, protecting streams from erosion and pollution.
- Composting is friendly waste management of the environment. It is a natural process of decomposition. It turns wastes into helpful materials and benefits the earth
Better Economic
Composting waste management not only benefits the environment. Is also benefits the business. By composting organic waste, businesses have less cost in waste management. We all know landfill is expensive. First of all, the land purchase is costly and maintaining cost is also high. 47 per cent of the organic waste was disposed of to landfill (Australian Government Department of the Environment, 2013). Organic waste has a lot of potential but poor waste management is not only hurting our environment and also the economy.
Greenhouse gases
The greenhouse effect is already a serious problem for the human race now. The landfill gas is made up to 54 percent of methane and 40 percent of carbon dioxide. Methane is extremely harmful for our environment. These greenhouse gases are going to affect human health.
Contamination
The land used for landfill is not useable in the future because it is contaminated. The waste in landfills breaks down without oxygen. It produces materials like acids. The acids can affect other waste items to create leachate. Leachate collects at bottom of the land landfills. And it can damage the ground water system. This makes the damage of the contamination ever harder than usual.
Overall, poor organic waste management is damaging our one and only earth. Better decisions must be made and we need to be reasonable in waste management in order to protect our environment.
References:
Administrator. 2016. Back to Earth green waste recycling benefits., accessed 14 June 2016, <http://backtoearth.vic.gov.au/recycling-benefits.html.>
Australian Government Department of the Environment. 2013. National Waste Reporting 2013. Canberra: Australian Government.
Composting Fact Sheet. 2009. Clean Up Australia Ltd.,Viewed on 13 June 2016,
<https://www.cleanup.org.au/PDF/au/cleanupaustralia_factsheet_composting.pdf>
Wealth From Waste 