Waste Management

Until the 1970s, municipal solid waste (MSW) was picked up without any kind of separation and it was mainly disposed in non-controlled dumps. As an alternative, garbage was heat treated or burned.

Over the last few decades, the concept of recycling and recovery of materials through the separate collection have begun to spread all over the world thanks to the enforcement of laws that regulate waste disposal.

It is important to remember that every process garbage undergoes leads to somekind of transformation and/or to its transfer from one place to another and is not completely eliminated (law of the conservation of mass).

Thus, the most eco-frindly attitude that man can take up is the upstream decrease and the recycling of materials (as occured in the past).

In order to achieve these goals it is fundamental to make citizens and producers aware.

the Disposal Society

A big change took place during the second half of XIX century.

The Industial Revolution gave the green light to the intensive exploitation of resources: the industry began to manufacture items on a massive scale, making them less expensive than those produced by craftsmen and, as a consequence, they were affordable.

Human beings soon changed their lifestyle going from a frugal and agricultural society to an industrial and consumer one, which uses disposal objects for everyday life.

Today, objects are not repaired or reused because other new products can replace them. The result of this attitude has been an overproduction of waste that in the majority of the cases is not disposed of properly and becomes the negative symbol of prosperity and wealth.

The industrial age also changed the nature of waste: the use of glass, metal and organic waste have increased drammatically and other non-degradable materials, like plastic, have started to accumulate in the evinronment.

The Waste Age

The concept of waste does not exist in nature. In the biological cycles, in fact, the waste from one organism becomes a fundamental resource for other living beings, a nutrient for something else in the same system, so that everything is converted.

Dead organisms, such as manure or vegetable remains, are broken down and converted by other specific living beings, called decomposers.

Instead, every man-managed activity is based on a model forseeing that when substances or energy are exracted to produce consumer goods, the quantity of waste that derives from work processes are dumped into the environment itself.

In fact, over the centuries man has had to face the very big problem of where to dump waste. What could not be recycled or reused was burned or buried and stockpiled outside the residential areas, giving rise to the first garbage dumps.

In ancient times, such as the Middle Ages, the Reinassance and during the French Revolution, until the beginning of the industrial society, what was thrown away by the rich, became precious for the poor : before becoming garbage the objects went from one owner to another.

Furthermore, the farming culture still gave back to the soil what had been produced by the soil itself.