Chapter 19
Wading Through the Waste Stream: Solid and Hazardous Waste
IN THIS CHAPTER
Mapping the waste stream
Defining waste disposal methods
Considering ocean garbage patches
Finding ways to reduce waste
Recognizing the danger in hazardous waste
Some types of waste can break down and be reused by other organisms, thus being recycled through the ecosystem. In the natural environment, what appears as waste from one organism is food for another (think decomposers; see Chapter 6). Humans, however, are the only creatures on Earth that generate garbage and solid waste that can’t recycle through the environment and instead must be safely stored or reused. In this chapter, I focus on the materials humans create, use, and throw away.
Garbage and solid waste disposal creates problems that spill into many other issues environmental scientists want to solve; it creates air and water pollution, uses land space, and can release toxins into the environment. As I explain in Chapter 3, matter is ...
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