Articles

Waste Management and Disposal Bins
Author: Michiel Van Kets

What is waste management? Simply put it is the collection of waste materials produced by human consumption and activity, transporting it to a facility that will treat it and then the recycling of the waste material, or if it is not reusable, disposing of it for good.

Recycling products and materials is becoming the norm due to the growing understanding of the effects it has on our environment; concern about waste disposal practices to our surroundings and is an important issue to companies and local governments.

Once, the management of waste would have meant the dustbin truck taking your refuse and transporting it to the local garbage dump.  Fortunately landfills are no longer regarded as an appropriate solution to dealing with waste; refuse, garbage, trash, rubbish, scrap, however you want to name it, is now being accepted as a valuable resource that shouldn't only be land filled but found many valuable and resourceful uses for. Governments and private companies aim to control waste by offering facilities to households and businesses to dispose of it, one of the main methods used are the provision of disposal bins. disposal  bins can be hired to collect a variety of waste including food, plastics, metal, furniture, timber and construction, garden and electronic waste.

The kind of disposal  bin required will depend on the type of materials you are planning on disposing of. For example, green waste skip bins are used for anything from tree clippings to grass and hardfill disposal bins for substances like concrete, soil, rubble and tiles. Hazardous chemicals and contaminated waste can’t be put into disposal bins due to the dangers involved and so for these materials it is necessary to call the local council and they will advise on how to dispose of them, hazardous substances include acids, solvents, cyanide waste materials, paints and oils. There are also bulk bins and disposal bin hire solutions for the collection of refuse from businesses such as building and construction sites, large size developments and industrial companies.

As well as disposal bins, amenities are provided to safely dispose of and destroy private documents such as quarantine stock, computer hardcopy, tapes and microfiche and out of date products. Electronic waste is also recycled these days and includes components from disused computers and other IT equipment. Collection and treatment services exist for clinical and medical waste from businesses and industries such as laboratories, surgeries, veterinaries, dental surgeries, food processing plants and hospitals.

The disposal hire industry and resource recovery facilities are particularly essential for the future of the environment as they create an awareness of how everyone can help in increasing the amount of waste recycled and thus reducing landfill. Nations all over the world are joining in the attempt to find ways of recycling waste, from using complicated methods to change the calorific content present in waste into electricity or sorting through landfills to remove recyclable materials and reduce the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of. Waste management is an ongoing problem for society, a problem that will never go away, but if managed effectively, can be controlled.

Recycling
Author: Alasdair Meldrum

Recycling is the reprocessing of materials that would otherwise become waste in order to make them into new products. This is in contrast with reuse: collecting waste such as food containers to be cleaned, refilled and resold.  Recycling prevents waste being landfilled or incinerated, reduces the consumption of new raw materials, and is advocated by supporters to require less energy than virgin production Commonly recycled materials include glass, paper, aluminium, asphalt, steel, textiles and plastic. These materials can be derived either from pre-consumer waste (materials used in manufacturing) or post-consumer waste (materials discarded by the consumer). Recycling is a key concept of modern waste management and is the third component of the waste hierarchy. To be recycled waste has to be sorted and separated. Waste sorting can be done by the waste producer, at curb side collection sites, or at a materials recovery facility. In everyday speech the word recycling often refers to the practice of waste sorting done by consumers.


One of the main benefits of recycling comes from reducing the amount of new material required. In theory, recycling allows a material to be continually reused for the same purpose, and in many cases this theory holds true, most notably in the recycling of metals and glass.


Since less raw material is required, recycling creates further benefits for materials where cost of the initial extraction or production is high—either economically, socially or environmentally. The recycling of aluminium, for example, saves 95% of the CO2 emissions—an environmentally harmful greenhouse gas—compared to refining new metal.


Concerns about limited resources such as raw materials and land space for disposal of waste have increased the importance of recycling. However maximum environmental benefit is gained by reducing the amount of waste produced, and reusing items in their current form, for example refilling bottles. All recycling techniques consume energy, for transportation and processing, and some also use considerable amounts of water. Both of these resources have an environmental impact which is why campaigners use the slogan Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to indicate the preferred order for waste management in the waste hierarchy.