Natural Environment Blog

How concerned are you with what you leave behind? With eco-friendliness and a green attitude becoming prominent in today’s day and age, there are still many individuals, as well as corporate entities that appear wholly unfazed by the amount of waste they leave behind. What is more, they deliberately choose to remain uninformed on the richness of options currently available for hazardous waste disposal.

Essentially, hazardous waste is any type of material that can come to represent a threat, either to the environment or to the safety of living beings, be they humans or non-humans. They can either be flammable, reactive when in contact with other substances, corrosive or toxic when ingested.

In case you didn’t know, it’s not just chemical plants or other types of factories that are responsible for this kind of waste. Individual consumers, as well as some of the most common types of businesses, massively produce such waste - dry cleaners, car repair shops, hospitals, your local photo printing center!

Below are five of the most common ways in which you, or your local business, can do away with potentially dangerous waste.

1. Recycling

Recycling is the best and most cost-effective method for hazardous waste disposal when it comes to day-to-day items, such as lead-acid batteries or computer motherboards. Both these items are loaded with heavy metals, immensely damaging for the environment, but also ideal candidates for use in new products.

Major waste producers, such as coal-fired power plants, will also produce their fair share of dangerous waste. Fly and bottom ash can be reused as pavement filling, while, otherwise, they are highly dangerous, due to the increased level of chemicals they contain.

2. Portland Cement

This method of hazardous waste disposal essentially buries the refuse under a solid and heavy layer of cement. There are five types of such cement, classified according to strength and components. Sludge is one type of waste that can be turned into Portland cement. Prior to this type of recycling, sludge is adjusted and cured, so that the level of contaminants it contains is reduced.

3. Neutralization

Basically, neutralization is a process you learned all about while in junior high, during chemistry classes. Neutralization will actually produce hazardous waste disposal by turning a given quantity of a potentially damaging type of refuse into a completely harmless one. Examples include neutralizing a corrosive acid by using a base, or adjusting the pH of a given substance and thereby reducing its leaching activity.

4. Incineration, Destruction, Waste-to-Energy

Used oils or chemical solvents are the best candidates for turning waste into energy. They are usually burned in cement kilns. The process does away with the waste, while the gases released in the atmosphere during the actual burning constitute the energy. This particular hazardous waste disposal method has been contested as producing its own damaging effects, yet advances in modern technology have made the development of more efficient incinerators possible.

5. Landfill

Hazardous waste disposal through landfills entails isolating said waste in an area that cannot be accidentally or voluntarily accessed by human or non-human entities. It does bear risks, but such permanent disposal facilities are sometimes the only solution available for certain types of refuse.

This article was contributed by Paul Estcott on behalf of labwaste.co.uk.

Sometimes it seems that just about everything we buy these days ends up being bad for the environment. I mean, even the clothes we’ve all been buying and wearing for so many years have turned out to be bad for the environment…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that wearing clothes is bad for the environment! The problem lies in the fabrics that are being used to make our modern day clothes. These fabrics tend to be far from eco-friendly. Here are some examples:

• Cotton: The production of (non-organic) cotton destroys farmland and pollutes waterways. The production of a simple T-shirt requires two pounds of pesticide!
• Dyes: Most common dyes that are used in fabrics contain heavy metals that can be harmful to animals, the natural environment, and ourselves.
• Synthetic polyesters and nylons: These are made from petrochemicals via a process of refining crude oil, which creates horrible pollution.
• Silk: Commercial silk is made by boiling the silkworms’ cocoons, then unwinding the single silk strand onto reels. This results in the silkworms being boiled to death in their cocoons.

What’s more, many fabrics cause further environmental problems when they’re dumped in landfill. Fabrics can typically take hundreds of years (or more) to break down in landfill.

But there is hope. Many major clothing companies are recognizing the environmental problems caused by traditional fabrics, and they’re starting to do something about it. These companies are now producing clothes that are made from eco-friendly fabrics.

Unfortunately, eco-friendly clothes still tend to be the exception rather than the norm. That’s why it’s so important for us, as consumers, to start searching for clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics. The more of us that do this, the more commercially viable it will be for companies to use eco-friendly fabrics in their clothing lines. Here’s an example of one major clothing company doing just that.

My post about the environmental impact of plastic bags attracted a fair comment about the impact of paper bags on the environment. It seems that many people are using paper bags in the belief that they are better for the natural environment than plastic bags.

Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true - paper bags are just as bad as plastic bags when it comes to the environment. In fact, some say paper bags are worse than plastic bags.

Some Facts and Figures

Here are some facts and figures according to reusable bags, regarding paper bags vs plastic bags:

• In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone
• Paper bags generate 70% more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags
• Paper bags use 4 times as much energy to construct compared to a plastic bag
• Paper bags use 84 times as much energy to recycle compared to a plastic bag
• Some studies have shown that paper bags generally don’t decompose any faster in landfills than plastic bags. This is apparently due to the lack of water, light and oxygen etc, in landfills.
• Paper bags use more space in landfills than plastic bags

So, according to these figures paper bags are much worse than plastic bags right? Sure does sound like it.

But then, you also need to take into account things such as size differences and usage patterns between the two bags. For example, paper grocery bags are usually larger than their plastic counter parts, so you need less of them. Also, there are different recycling rates between the two, which will affect the actual damage to the environment.

In 1990, Franklin and Associates completed a life-cycle energy analysis to consider all this and still concluded that the plastic bag was the better bag.

OK, so even though the plastic bag was the better bag, we all know how bad the plastic bag really is on the natural environment!

A Much Better Bag

So, the best thing to do is to avoid paper and plastic bags altogether. Instead, opt for a reusable bag made from a natural fiber.

Ideally, your reusable bag would be large enough to fit 5 times the groceries that a plastic bag would. Also, it would be so durable, that you can continue to reuse it for 2 - 3 years without needing to replace it.

Think of how many plastic or paper bags you’d be saving by doing that!

In the US alone, over 18 billion diapers are thrown away each year. Each one of these diapers take 300 years to fully biodegrade! That means that not one diaper has ever naturally biodegraded yet.

When you consider the damage this must be doing to our environment, you’d think that someone might be doing something about it wouldn’t you? I mean, with all the technology we have these days and we can’t even make a 100% biodegradable diaper (well, at least one that can biodegrade within a reasonable time frame!).

Well, I’m happy to announce that all this has changed.

Safeties Nature Nappy is the worlds first 100% biodegradable diaper. The Nature Nappy can biodegrade within 6 months (depending on the soil). Senevens (the company that invented the Nature Nappy), has revolutionized the way diapers are made. They hold many patents on the design of the diaper, as well as the machinery that makes the diapers.

If you’re not from Australia you might be wondering why it’s called Nature Nappy? Well, Senevens is an Australian company and in Australia a “diaper” is called “nappy”. So, call them “diapers” or call them “nappies” - they do the same thing! Of course, Senevens’ nappies do much more for the environment than normal nappies/diapers.

Senevens has just recently listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (under the code SVN) and they are keen to penetrate the nappy/diaper market around the world. They are already selling the Nature Nappy in Australia and New Zealand. I’m hoping the public take notice of this one.

Also see:

• Article on the benefits of biodegradable diapers
• Article on the Nature Nappy