Sustainable Solid Waste Management

Changing from current unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns will clearly require technological, political and other structural changes, but also individual behavior change. Consumer demand and individuals' purchasing power exerts pressure on many parts of the production system, including how crops are produced (e.g., organic), products are packaged and labeled (e.g., rBGH-free labels on milk), and even where products are distributed and how they are disposed of. Individual consumer behaviors have even led to political and structural changes over time, such as the consumer boycott of tuna which led to 1990 US legislation creating the “Dolphin Safe” tuna label.

One of the central ways to foster responsible citizenry and promote sustainable production is to harness the capacity of teachers and schools to create change. Educating for conscious consumerism is a critical part of creating changes in production, consumption and disposal systems, but our current education system and approaches often reinforce unsustainable practices that neglect subjective ways of knowing as well as action and change. Research and experience suggests that traditional, information intensive teaching about sustainability alone does not motivate the behavior change a transition to sustainability will require. Utilizing a previously developed framework that identifies four distinct types of knowledge—declarative, procedural, effectiveness and social—we hypothesize that procedural, effectiveness and social knowledge are important predictors of an individual's participation in sustainable behaviors, while declarative (information) knowledge is not. While the knowledge domain framework has been theoretically detailed by other researchers (19 and 11) and qualitatively assessed through an intensive case study education program (Redman, 2013), to date, this is the first quantitative assessment of the relationship between the four domains of knowledge and sustainability-related behaviors.

We tested our hypothesis through an extensive survey of 346 current and future K-12 teachers about sustainable food and waste knowledge and behaviors. The survey results supported our hypothesis that high levels of declarative knowledge alone did not predict increased participation in sustainable behaviors while procedural and social knowledge were statistically significant predictors of sustainable food behaviors and procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge were all statistically significant predictors of sustainable waste behaviors. Through active incorporation of appropriate forms of procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge into the K-12 classroom, educators can empower the next generation to make individual changes based on their vision of the future and insist on structural and institutional changes that are essential for a successful transition to sustainability.

Dhaka metro city life functions as a throw-away society. The price for that is a growing problem of how to handle all the waste that is generated. Precious space for it is decreasing. Households in Dhaka Metro are creating and throwing away more waste than ever. From junk mail to excess paint to food scraps, this garbage takes time and money to deal with. Fortunately, there's a lot you can do to reduce your waste at home. Besides, nobody likes taking out the trash. The solution is not just reducing, reusing, recycling and composting, but also a complete re-education of how we live. The recycling bin is the symbol of the low-waste approach, but it hasn't caught on in this mega metro city to make a noticeable difference. Resource recovery saves energy, causes minimal pollution and land disruption, cuts waste disposal costs, and extends the life of landfills by preventing waste from residing there. Greatly increased recycling in this mega city could be reached through several measures. Some measures to achieve this include enacting a national bottle bill into law, banning disposable plastic items (Polythenes), requiring labels on products made with recyclable materials and the percentages used, using education and advertisements to discourage the "throw away" mentality, requiring households to separate wastes for recycling (or offering financial incentives for doing so).Other hand the technology for safely and effectively treating and disposing hazardous waste has not even come close to the technology for producing the stuff. This study examines the antecedents of recycling and composting intentions in the context of an integrated waste management behavior model. This model incorporates a wide variety of important factors from previous research on environmental behavior. The theory of planned behavior provides a theoretical framework to integrate these factors. Overall, the results suggest that this model fits the data well, helping to explain intentions to engage in recycling and composting.

Malaysia is one of the most successful developing countries in term of economy growth. The rapid urbanization process in Malaysia has brought many peoples migrate to the urban areas. Reflecting from this phenomenon, Malaysia has experiencing a transition of solid waste management due to the rapid solid waste generation. In fact, there is a policy and legislation with regard to solid waste management has been introduced in Malaysia. Enactment of Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Act (Act 672) has brought huge transformation in solid waste management in Malaysia. However, the policy implementation on solid waste management is looks like feeble and doubtful which not goes like its planning. Landfilling is still the main solid waste disposal approach and recycling rate among Malaysian is low at 5% which still left behind with compared to the neighbouring countries. The objective of this concept paper is to give an insight for developing countries like Malaysia towards effective policy implementation on solid waste management through a good governance practices. The issues and factors of ineffective policy implementation on solid waste in Malaysia will be discussed briefly.

Sustainable municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is a major challenge in urban areas throughout the world, with the situation getting worse in most developing countries. This paper evaluates MSWM performance in Ghana, using the Wa Municipality as a case study. The policy and legal, institutional, and financial frameworks, as well as the technical capacity for waste management, were examined. The methodology and research design for the study was an exploratory and interpretive case study that was analysed through both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The study findings indicate that Ghana has a good institutional framework, sufficient and robust legislation, existing bylaws, policies and programmes regarding MSWM. However, the challenge is the non-enforcement of and non-compliance with the laws and regulations governing MSWM. Also, the emphasis on stakeholders' involvement in MSWM in the country is focused mainly on waste collection, and no attention paid to waste reduction, treatment and final disposal. Additionally, waste management financing and the technical capacity for waste management are woefully inadequate. Thus, improving the enabling environment for sustainable MSWM with a focus on the examined indicators could scale up MSWM performance in Ghana for the attainment waste management goals. Keywords: municipal waste; management performance; enabling environment; institutional arrangements; waste financing; technical capacity.

The present work leads to sustainability (responsible management of resources consumption) of both paper and sugar industries. It, simultaneously, upgrades recycled waste paper (namely old newsprint) and creates a new use for molasses (an important byproduct of the sugar industry). This study introduces -for the first time world wide- a novel environmentally safe approach to upgrade recycled natural cellulose fibers (waste paper namely old newsprint), for use as specialty paper green nanocomposites suitable for several advanced purposes. The recycled cellulose fibers are upgraded by increasing their alpha cellulose content, and restoring their natural nanoporous structure, which is -normally- collapsed due to the first cycle of papermaking. Molasses is then incorporated into this restored nanoporous structure to obtain paper green nanocomposites filled with kaolin in presence of molasses. In comparison to conventionally recycled waste paper, the green paper nanocomposites -produced in this work- exhibit high dry and wet strength, and a surprisingly tremendous retention of inorganic fillers used in papermaking. This was achieved through a green nanotechnology process, where the solvent used is water (the ideal green solvent). The input and output components are renewable environmentally safe materials i.e. waste paper (cellulose fibers) and molasses (a by product of the sugar industry). The procedures used are simple physical processes conducted at room temperature rather than hazardous chemical reactions. Thus, saving energy, and decreasing the risk of chemical and thermal accidents, pollutive releases, explosions, and fires.