Municipal Solid Waste on Climate Change

By : Harry Rialdi NPM : 1006773875 Environmental Engineering Universitas Indonesia Written as an assigment for Perubahan Iklim Global dan Rekayasa Lingkungan class.

Municipal solid waste, more commonly known as trash, rubbish, or garbage, is a waste type that consists of everyday items that discarded by people from their activies at homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses. These consist of everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. What are the connection between municipal solid waste and climate change? Are municipal solid waste also have their influence on climate change? This writings goals are to provide answers to those questions. The most influence that municipal solid waste has on climate change are on their final disposal by using landfill method. Landfill method is the way to dispose materials by burial. This is the most common method used and most environmentally friendly as final disposal way for municipal solid waste at many areas. These landfill of municipal solid waste can emit gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and various others as the results from the decomposition of materials in the landfill.These gases that emit from landfill includes some of the most known green house gases (GHGs) that have the most influental effects on climate change. One of them are Nitrous Oxide (N2O) that have the highest ozone depletion potential or GWP, 300 times higher than carbon dioxides (CO2) GWP. CH4 are also the biggest green house gases that emit from landfills. The other sources of GHGs from solid waste management comes from incineration. Incineration or burning of solid waste are often used as a way to reduce the volume of the municipal solid waste piling on final disposal site. This incineration can cause emissions of CO2 that are the biggest GHGs at the atmosphere. And now the question is : What can we do to reduce these influences municipal solid waste has on climate change? There is one thing that we can do is reduce the generation of solid waste by prevention or recycle. Reducing the generation of solid wastes it means that we can reduce the amount of solid waste landfills that emit GHGs. To reduce the amount of solid

waste generated it means that we also reduce the amount of incineration process that can emit those GHGs. To prevent the generation of waste can be done by using materials more effective and efficiently.

REFERENCE :
Herwitch, E. G.; Peters, G. P. Carboon Footprint of Nations : A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 64146420. US EPA. Climate Change and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). (Internet). Accessed on November 2nd, 2013 at 11.50 pm.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/tools/payt/tools/factfin.htm