Location
Chicago, Illinois
Date
03 May 2013, 10:30 am - 11:10 am
Abstract
Sustainability is the condition of maintaining a process or a state at a certain level for perpetuity. In waste management and geoenvironmental engineering terms: sustainability is making marginal and waste lands and waste products into usable properties, products and services. To address sustainability issue, this paper first presents waste minimization policies prior to disposal; a few examples of this are: recycling, composting and incineration. After efficiently using the waste minimization policies, the remaining produced waste needs to be disposed of which has two aspects (i) the presently active waste disposal sites and (ii) the already disposed waste and closed waste sites. Active sites can be made sustainable by using techniques, such as, optimizing the airspace within the permitted boundaries by using MSE Berm, using bioreactors and utilizing landfill gas (LFG) for energy generation. The closed sites can be made “more sustainable” by developments, such as, parks, golf courses, industrial and commercial buildings, and solar and wind power generation projects. Finally, there are a few incubator technologies that, at the present time, are at pilot scale levels and work on them needs to be actively encouraged so that the advancement in sustainable technologies is continued. A few examples of such technologies are: Plasma arc, converting hard to recycle plastics into diesel and gasoline, and energy parks. This paper discusses these issues and presents case histories that help sustainability. The case histories presented consist of MSE berm and bioreactor technologies at active waste disposal sites; and industrial and commercial buildings and solar energy projects constructed on top of already closed landfills. All these cited case histories exhibit that by using existing technologies greenhouse gases (GHGs) and carbon footprint can be reduced resulting in the maintenance of sustainability.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
7th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2013 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Sharma, Hari D., "Sustainability and Waste Management: Case Histories" (2013). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 7.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/7icchge/session14/7
Sustainability and Waste Management: Case Histories
Chicago, Illinois
Sustainability is the condition of maintaining a process or a state at a certain level for perpetuity. In waste management and geoenvironmental engineering terms: sustainability is making marginal and waste lands and waste products into usable properties, products and services. To address sustainability issue, this paper first presents waste minimization policies prior to disposal; a few examples of this are: recycling, composting and incineration. After efficiently using the waste minimization policies, the remaining produced waste needs to be disposed of which has two aspects (i) the presently active waste disposal sites and (ii) the already disposed waste and closed waste sites. Active sites can be made sustainable by using techniques, such as, optimizing the airspace within the permitted boundaries by using MSE Berm, using bioreactors and utilizing landfill gas (LFG) for energy generation. The closed sites can be made “more sustainable” by developments, such as, parks, golf courses, industrial and commercial buildings, and solar and wind power generation projects. Finally, there are a few incubator technologies that, at the present time, are at pilot scale levels and work on them needs to be actively encouraged so that the advancement in sustainable technologies is continued. A few examples of such technologies are: Plasma arc, converting hard to recycle plastics into diesel and gasoline, and energy parks. This paper discusses these issues and presents case histories that help sustainability. The case histories presented consist of MSE berm and bioreactor technologies at active waste disposal sites; and industrial and commercial buildings and solar energy projects constructed on top of already closed landfills. All these cited case histories exhibit that by using existing technologies greenhouse gases (GHGs) and carbon footprint can be reduced resulting in the maintenance of sustainability.
