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Waste
Waste, rubbish,
or garbage is unwanted or undesired material.Waste is something which has lost its apparent value to its owner. It is a misplaced resource.
Waste can exist in any phase of matter (solid, liquid, or gas). When released in the latter two states, gas especially, the wastes are referred to as emissions. It is usually strongly linked with pollution.
A short history of British rubbish
Sources of waste
Human waste
See also
A short history of British rubbish
The Cretans got there first. The first recorded landfill sites were in Knossos. Historically, Britain's waste was dumped in the street or countryside, but as the population grew so did waste problems. In the Middle Ages, "rakers" were employed in each London ward to load rubbish into carts to be sold as compost or dumped in the Essex Marshes.
Modern waste regulation really began with the Public Health Act of 1818, prompted by the burgeoning mountains of rubbish made by the Industrial Revolution, Garbage was collected by private contractors and sorted into scrap and raw materials for industries such as soap-making, road-building and paper manufacture. The first bottle banks were introduced in the Seventies and the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee was created in 1985.
But recycling has only been a growing theme in British waste strategy since the early Nineties, when Margaret Thatcher, in a sudden attack of environmentalism, proclaimed that 50% of household waste could be recycled.
Sources of waste
Sources of waste for European Environment
Agency countries, 1992-1997.Waste produced in the wild is reintegrated through natural recycling processes, such as dry leaves in a forest decomposing into soil.
Outside of the wild these wastes may become problematic, such as dry leaves in an urban environment. The highest volume of waste, outside of nature, comes from human industrial activity: mining, industrial manufacturing, consumer use, and so on.
Almost all manufactured products are destined to become waste at some point in time, with a volume of waste production roughly similar to the volume of resource consumption.
Post-consumer waste is the waste produced by the end-user (the rubbish one puts outside in the rubbish bin). This is the waste people usually think of. But though the most visible, this is very small compared to the waste created in the process of mining and production.
Melbourne Organic Waste
Collection Truck
Human waste is a term in the English language usually used to refer to byproducts of digestion, such as feces and urine. Human waste can be a serious health hazard, as it is a good vector for both viral and bacterial diseases. A major accomplishment of human civilization has been the reduction of disease transmission via human waste through the practice of hygiene and sanitation, including the development of theories of sewage systems and plumbing. Human waste can be reduced and reused through use of greywater, waterless urinals and humanure systems. In very rural places without sewage systems, small populations allow for the continued use of honey buckets and sewage lagoons without the threat of disease presented by places with more dense populations.
See also
Pollution
Great Smog of 1952
The Great stink
Waste Management
Britain’s Domestic Waste
Radioactive waste
Nuclear waste’s final resting place
Gagging a report on toxic waste dumping in Africa