HOW CAN WASTE BE TREATED?

Waste must be recycled or disposed of without damaging people’s health or the environment.

That can be achieved as follows:

• Recycling: waste is turned into materials that can be reused;
• Incineration: waste is turned into electrical and thermal energy;
• Landfill: it’s the place where non-recyclable and non-reusable waste is disposed of.

 

Recycling

The recycling process starts with the separate collection of waste, which many Municipalities have promoted in the last few years. The collected material is turned into raw materials and reused to produce new goods. In industrialized countries that is also used to reduce energy consumption and industrial costs.

Incineration

Incineration brings about the complete oxidation of the combustible part of waste and that’s done in the so-called waste-to-energy plants (incinerators).

That kind of process reduces the volume of incinerated waste.

At present, not many incinerators exist because they have high building and maintainance costs and they require a landfill to deposit slags.