Waste Management ed to final disposal sites.
Storage of waste is followed by waste collection. The
Just think of how much waste we generate every day.
As soon as we wake up, we start generating waste to the
time we sleep in the night. Toothpaste boxes, soap boxes,
cartons, milk pouches, jam jars, sauce bottles, aluminium
foil, chocolate wrappers, paper-balls, juice packs, cold drink
cans and bottles, fruit peels, rotten vegetables and what
not! But have you ever thought where does it go? Read on
to find out!
We generally put these waste materials in dustbins
which is a method of waste storage at source not waste
disposal. It has to be collected and processed before dispos-
al. Thus, waste management involves four major steps:
storage, collection, segregation and processing, and dispos-
al.
There are three levels of waste storage: at source, at
community level, at transfer stations. In a majority of urban
India, people having independent bungalows follow storage
of waste at source until collection in dustbins, etc. while
people living in flat systems and apartments empty their
bins into the community bins of their societies once they
are full. Through different types of collection systems
explained later, this waste reaches to regional transfer sta-
tions where they are segregated, processed and transport-
Twinkle★STAR ¾ TheHitavada,
collection systems followed in India include: door-to-door
collection, kerbside collection, block collection and commu-
nity bins. As the name suggests, door-to-door collection
refers to the collection of waste by waste collectors from
individual houses. They transfer the wastes into collection
trucks which carry them to transfer stations. Kerbside col-
lection refers to the collection of wastes by specialised
vehicles which pick up waste containers like dustbins from
the edge of pavements of houses, empty them into them-
selves and keep them back. In block collection, the collec-
tion vehicles arrive at a fixed place where all the people
come with their wastes, empty them into the collection
vehicles, and return. Community bins have already been
described earlier.
After collection, the waste is segregated and processed
at transfer stations. First, high quality materials are picked
up, cleaned and reused. Then, the recyclable materials are
traded for recycling purposes. After this, the organic mate-
rial is separated and sent for conversion to compost. At
last, the remaining wastes are sent to landfills and other
disposal sites for final disposal.
-Shreenabh Agrawal,
Std IX,
Saturday, March 31, 2018 21