We will practice waste inventory and then producing a Waste
Reducation Plan by utilzing our own environmental footprint from our
household environment. First we must find out what is our waste or
elements of our footprint. Just like factories or job sites we have
fuels/utilities that are used. For our household environment we may have
natural gas or propane, electricity, water, sewage, etc. We could
categorize these as Utility/Fuels—-or divide between resources (fuels,
electricity, etc) and Utilities like water/sewage. We usually have
monthly bills that show use and cost. We can measure our use over the
next month by what is reported on our bill—millions of cubic feet of
natural gas for example, or gallons of water.
Now in our garbage we might have paper/cardboard, plastic bottles,
glass, food, etc. Now we can measure specifically, but we might count
all of this as “household” waste and then measure it by weight or by
volume—lets be practical and measure by number of 13 gallon bags (so
we dont weigh) We can track our use over the next month.
Now we can research how to reduce our footprint. We use the three
R’s—-reduce, recycle, reuse. We can plan for water reduction by
planning to replace a drippin gfaucet for example. We can reduce fuel
use in vehicles by using nitrogen on our tires, or using more efficeint
air filters. We can plan to recycle cardboard.
Now this is simple—-but the concept is the same in an industrial
setting. It gets more complicated and we can discuss in the DB. Zero
Landfill means that we reduce our wastes by 90% percent that go to
landfill. So mapping our wastestreams is important. In industry we try
to find an alternate market for what would otherwise be “waste”. We can
sell as a “byproduct” and avoid counting it as a waste. Example: in the
olden days we used “creosote” on our fence posts. Not e real friendly
substance. So paint producers like PPG were dealing with sludges and
residuals when they cleaned out tanks of various paint colors. Rather
this being a waste, they collected it, mixed it, and it is a byproduct
that is used as a fence coating (buy in Tractor Supply) If you look at
it closely it has flakes of various colors in it, but hwne mixed are
black overall.
So our project that we may submit after a month of tracking and
chance to get a utility bill will be to use the inventory sheet design
from the power point and the reduction plan to practice this. Idealy we
would then track the results of our plan and show the difference over
time.
In industry sometimes this is hidden in cost reduction committees.
For example one year we replaced our large bay doors with ones that
would raise and lower very fast. We tracked the reduction of natural as
used in the winter for heat and a way to measure reduction of
footprint.
Intro to Waste Management Mid Term Project.pptx
Fill out and turn in the spreadsheet
