U.S. Waste Management System

The growing consciousness of the human impact on environment was the inspiration of Sustainability as a field- study, which is seen as a future vision based on the fact that all the humankind needs for survival depend on the environmental resources (Iacovidou, Voulvoulis, 2018), and if sustainability is a vision, then effective waste management is one of many strategic goals to achieve that vision (Grenze, 2015).

Waste Management (WM) is concerned with suitable processing of different types of waste, under the roof of environmental regulations. WM practices lay under the umbrella of four main categories, the 4Rs; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover. The core of the framework is applying the 4Rs in the right order to avoid the risk of increasing the waste level; first, reducing the consumption rate to lower waste production. Second, reusing the material items and finding ways to repurposing it. Third, recycling waste and turning it into raw materials for new production processes. Finally, repurposing the unrecyclable waste in generating energy or establishing artificial lands (Reno, 2015).

Waste Management problem in the U.S.:

The United States is the world’s leader in overconsumption; while the United States population is less than 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 33% of the world’s consumption (Grauerholz, Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012). More than 250 million tons of solid waste is generated annually in the U.S., and with a waste landfill rate of 65%, the country should find a fast solution to deal with its two thousand landfills which are running out of space in less than 20 years. The problem is more severe in the Northeast states, like New-Jersey; a combination of high-density of people and lack-of-space, which puts these states in a real battle with time. Additionally, when it comes to recycling; the U.S is not recycling its own solid waste; more than half of U.S solid waste is sold to China to be cycled there (Seeberger, Grandhi, Kim, Mase, Reponen, Ho, Chen, 2016).

Success stories in Waste Management:

After the defeat of Germany and Japan in WWII, many of their industrial plants and infrastructure were demolished, which gave the two nations a serious devotion to rebuilding their capacities (Lenhart, 2018). The outstanding transformation of Germany and Japan into modernism is considered by many to be the ideal standard of nations’ prosperity, and a reason behind both countries being among the five biggest economies in the world, and the leading countries in applying sustainability solutions, especially in WM (Jentsch,2018).

Germany adopted the GreenDot system, which is considered the most successful recycling initiative worldwide. In this system, manufacturers pay fees on their produced goods, where products with thicker paper, glass or plastic have a higher fee collected by the government (Nelles, Grünes, Morscheck, 2015). On the other hand, in Japan, the WM experience was different and more urgent than Germany; lack-of-space puts country in a real challenge to find alternatives for landfill disposal, taking into consideration the high waste production that ranks the country among the first ten countries in producing waste per individual (Chaudhary, Vrat, 2018).

When it comes to waste collection, Germany and Japan use color-coded systems; Germany has one system on a country level, while in Japan, the system complexity varies from one city to another, e.g. Kakimatsu city has more than 40 different categories for waste (Nelles, Grünes, Morscheck, 2015).

While Germany has the highest rate of recycling in the world, Japan’s rate is around 20% only; most of Japan’s waste is thermally treated (Burned). Thermal treatment is one of the cheapest solutions to manage waste in Japan, and it helps in generating energy from the heat created in the process. Additionally, the Japanese government is using solid waste in concrete mixes to build new islands and help in solving the lack-of-space problem in Japan (Chaudhary, Vrat, 2018).

Discussion:

The Waste dilemma is a real threating health-hazard for humankind; it is among the fast-spreading problems around the globe, as a direct result of decreasing the products’ service-life (Chaudhary, Vrat, 2018). Studies show that 60% of the produced waste can be avoided in countries like the UK, and those numbers look much worse for the U.S. (Iacovidou, Voulvoulis, 2018).

Many environmental and social activists are spreading awareness about the waste dilemma in the U.S., representing the problem to be more cultural and political than technological (Reno, 2015). While the U.S. is the main waste producer, its waste management practices are not reflecting a real intension to overcome the challenge (Seeberger, Grandhi, Kim, Mase, Reponen, Ho, Chen, 2016), and not like developing countries, where embracing sophisticated technologies in waste management is still a barrier (Margallo, Ziegler-Rodriguez, Vázquez-Rowe, Aldaco, Irabien, Kahhat, 2019), the real challenge in the U.S. is the effective implementation of preexisting technologies and policies; the country as a whole needs to view waste differently to create a sense of urgency in solving this problem. Such a change can be challenging but not impossible, especially if the U.S. government got involved on a federal level. The City of Francisco started an infinitive “Zero-Waste by 2020” ten years ago, and nowadays, the city is very close to meet that target, making it an American living proof for the possibility of change (Grenze, 2015).

Conclusions and Recommendations:

Consumption behaviors are multi-dimensional; economic, legal, social, environmental; however, consumptions habits are found to be highly dependent on income and age, a reason why specialists advise teaching students about the relationship between sustainability and consumption while their financial resources are still limited (Grauerholz, Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012), in order to minimize their motivation for overconsumption on the long run.

Closed-Cycle economies’ main goal is turning waste into resources, and such ideologies have been adopted in countries like Germany for more than 3 decades, and today, 14% of the raw materials used by Germany is recycled waste, making Closed-Cycle economies a real support in the world’s battle for environment (Nelles, Grünes, Morscheck, 2015).

The GreenDot system is an effective way to achieve a U.S. product-pricing system that reflects the goods’ environmental impact. Additionally, closed-cycle economies give businesses in the U.S. a real opportunity to increase their bottom-line by lowering energy costs, material cost, disposal cost, and storage cost. (Sillar,2000). However, such a change can only be achieved by a supporting political environment, and the involvement of the government on the federal level to unify a vision for the overall sustainability of the country.