IFS (Forest Services) Zoology: Questions 1 of 596

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Examine the cause, effects and solutions for landfills mainly in urban areas. (Examrace Test Series 2017)

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Explanation

Landfills

  • Solid waste management is the challenging issue in urban management.
  • As per eccentric proponents & Gaianists, man has done much damage to disrupt ecosystem functions in this Anthropocene epoch.
  • Landfills, result of these are specific areas where waste materials and garbage is disposed off. Generally, it is located on periphery of a city.
Wastes Types in Image
  • Amount of landfill population Population + Economic Activity.
Waste Materials and Garbage

Causes of Landfills

  • Unsustainable agriculture: Waste materials generated from animal manure crop & form remains. Also since increase in mechanization & pesticide use, the toxicity of waste has increased.
  • Industries and Construction contain wide range of solid by-products & chemical residues. For example, Petroleum hydrocarbon products by oil refineries, pharmaceutical wastes, hides from leather, livestock industry, plastic residue from bottle industry.
  • Urbanization is related to High migration & high economic activity ⇾ Large consumption & waste generation.
  • Absence of proper waste-management module by municipalities. Most of them are suffering from resource (financial) crunch.
  • Use & throw- casual attitude of the population- where people throw their household garbed anywhere
  • Lack of policy guidance for real estate sector for landfills. Most of the waste & concrete rubbles are dumped at the nearly regions.
  • Very few recycling plants for plastics, electronic segments and de-sanitization plants for medical waste.
  • Waste collection architecture is in very nascent stage.
  • The problem of landfill is more acute is developing countries in Asia & Africa, where less than of wastes are recycled compared to developed countries where recycling ratio is nearly .
  • India produce ~ lakh metric tonnes of waste per day, with Mumbai mT & Delhi
Map of Most Polluted Sites

Effects of Landfills

  • Landfills pose serious hindrance to the quality urban way of life.
  • For they destroy the environment by polluting it.
The Quality Urban Way of Life
  • Air pollution: Landfills continuously emit poisonous gases due to decomposition. Methane is important emission, which is a greenhouse gas. It helps continue the fire and burn the dump leading to smoke pollution
  • Health issues: Like – eye irritation, lung problem – inhalation of poisonous gases, skin problems
  • Effect on biodiversity, threatening of species and loss of life
  • Ideal place for growth of bacteria & insectivores
  • Soil and Land Pollution: Contaminates the soil making it unfit for further agricultural use & suffocating for trees.
  • Waste can react to surroundings due to winds (Polythene menace is common) .
  • Pollution of water resource when drained water reaches water channel
  • Flora and Fauna Affected: Hazard for city based animals like dogs & cows. Most cow death is due to ingestion of polythene.
  • Economic Costs: Landfill fires also lead to oil pollution

Solutions for Landfill

  • Have to be pragmatic and proactive.
  • Developing the waste collection model, it can give employment to millions of people in the unorganised sectors. Waste collection is the successful business strategy in western countries and could be led by various initiatives in India
  • Enforcement and penal provisions – waste decomposers can be prosecuted who dump waste illegally
  • Technology and innovations – It is even more interesting that waste can be converted into energy. Further improvements and large-scale adoption with government-support can bring down the recycling cost to more profits. Recently energy generation from cow dung (animal waste) was considered but India uses only 1.4% and has ample future prospects with around 1.7 GW potential.
  • Land management regarding landfills in urban are to be developed. As most of the landfills are due to municipal vehicles dumping the city waste into outskirts of city.
  • Storage into impermeable pit to present Groundwater contamination (Eg: Plastic Lining) .
  • Use of Heat compressor, and depolymerisation for treating non-biodegradable wastes (Plastic & Pharma) .
  • Using GIS methods to select optimum landfill sites [Eg:- used in Canada, UK etc] , and also study of watershed & aquifers needed.
  • Segregation of waste at source & (Reduce- reuse- recycle) & use bio-organic fertilizers.
  • Recycle, Reuse, Reduce: Recycling system for electronic waste, plastic, paper, metal, glass, will reduce landfill effects. Both toxicity and volume for waste decreases.

Additional Information

  • Solid waste management including the landfill are on the way for proposed urban landscape development and bring improvement in lifestyle.
  • In India, efforts like Hazardous and e-waste management rules have been launched. Solid waste management is a priority under AMRUT.
  • Now we have solid waste management rules (2016) for segregation of waste.
  • A case study of prevention and reduction of landfills caused due to food items is explained in the diagram below.
  • We first work with the principles of 3R՚s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) , then we move forward with waste to energy and finally the rest to landfills (this amount is very small) after efforts at different hierarchical levels.
Different Hierarchical Levels

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