LANDFILL WASTE: THE GARBAGE AND BULK WASTE COLLECTION IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

CORRELATED WITH THE POPULATION

Objectives
1. To determine the garbage collection within 36 weeks in Austin, Texas.
2. To determine the amount of bulk waste collected within weeks in Austin, Texas.
3. To determine the relationship between the garbage, bulk waste collection and the population in United
States.
4. To investigate modern waste management from the correlation of of garbage and bulk waste collection with
the population in United States.
 
Introduction
Based on an estimate that the global population will reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost
three planets could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles. Limiting
inadvertent climate change and ecological degradation requires that we urgently reduce our ecological footprint by
changing the way we produce and consume goods and resources. Austin,Texas act as our targeted country by
observing how the population of United States affecting the amount of garbage and bulk wastes collected. The
Austin Community Landfill currently accepts approximately 2,000 tons of waste each day, the majority of which
comes from Travis County residents and businesses.Approximately 1.8 million people resided in the 10-county
Capital Area in 2009. According to data compiled by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, each
resident generates more than 6.5 pounds of trash every day. Given Travis County’s population of more than 1
million residents and businesses generate, on average, nearly 3,500 tons of waste every day. Landfill problems in
Austin,Texas call in an emergency in order to raise the awareness of  the water contamination by leachate and toxic
gas released caused air pollution. Landfill disposal items classified into multitudinous categories , however, garbage
wastes and bulk wastes were our major concern. Garbage wastes include food wastes, plastics, paper, glass, leather,
cardboard, metals, yard wastes, ashes and special wastes like bulky wastes like electronics, tires, batteries, old
mattresses and used oil produced from household, industrial , commercial ,institutional, municipal wastes and etc.
The landfill disposal is the most popular solid waste disposal method used nowadays. Garbage is basically spread
out in thin layers, compressed and covered with soil or plastic foam. Modern landfills are designed in such a way
that the bottom of the landfill is covered with an impervious liner which is usually made of several layers of thick
plastic and sand. This liner protects the ground water from being contaminated because of leaching or percolation.
When the landfill is full, it is covered with layers of sand, clay, topsoil and gravel to prevent seepage of water.

The garbage and bulk wastes collection in Austin, Texas correlated with population greatly fit in the SDG
12:Responsible consumption and production. SDG 12  aims at “doing more and better with less”, increasing net
welfare gains from economic activities by reducing resource use, degradation and pollution. SDG 12 calls for action
on all fronts: adoption of sustainable practices and sustainability reporting by businesses and  environmentally-
aware lifestyles of consumers. The food industry, specifically, accounts for approximately 30% of the total energy
consumption in the world and also contributes 22% to greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, the 12th Sustainable
Development Goal can only be achieved when every country makes sure that their production and consumption
patterns are not undermining the environmental boundaries of the planet, and also the economic and social
conditions in the other countries.

According to a recently completed study of Austin’s trash, nearly half of everything we throw away is
organic matter.Austin discarded wastes were categorized into 12 category which shown in pie chart in appendix. If
you include food soiled paper a majority of what we waste today could be composted. For over two years now the
City of Austin has had a pilot program offering over 14,000 households a third bin–an organics cart right next to
your trash and recycling. These households have been able to divert more of their discards away from landfills while
creating a valuable soil product for Austin area gardeners, farmers, and parks. In 2005, the City of Austin, Texas,
signed the Urban Environmental Accords , which committed the city to achieve zero waste by 2040. In 2009, the
city adopted the first Zero Waste Strategic Plan in the state of Texas. The Zero Waste Strategic Plan indicated that
the value of materials sent to landfill and lost to the local economy was over $40 million annually(table 1 in
appendix).In December 2011, the City Council adopted the Austin Resource Recovery Master Plan to help
implement the Zero Waste Strategic Plan. The Master Plan calls for the City to move from 38% waste diversion to
75% by 2020 and 90% by 2030. This ambitious goal is being implemented in collaboration with residents and
businesses, including many local private hauling, recycling, and composting service providers.

Methodology
A main datasets created by Austin city government and hosted on Google Cloud Platform can be obtained
from https://www.kaggle.com/tsansom/eda-of-austin-waste/data. Based on the datasets, information about how
much trash is Austin generating can be known from year 2004 to 2017 included drop off site, time load, weight of
loads and so on ca be known and analysed. In this cases, only garbage collection and bulk at  drop-off site of TDS
landfill in Austin was interested and extracted from the datasets. In order to undergo comparison and correlation, a
dataset of population number at united state data was also extracted as Austin was a country under United States.
After filtration of data and analysing of data by converting dates to week , data set was imported into matlab using
the function of “import data’ at “Home” and the output was chosen in “column vector” so that it can separated into
different variables.

In section 1, polynomial fitting method was used to analyse data and evaluate the value of unknown point.
First at all, load weight of garbage collection was analyzed with together with week garbage loaded. Thus, x axis
should be in week, “x=week” while y-axis in load weight, “y=load_weight”. In order to undergo polynomial fitting,
function of polyval and polyfit were used to determine the order of equation. Polynomial of order 1 was used first
which fitted into a linear graph by applying “ p1_1=polyfit(x,y,1)” and newy was obtained continue using
“polyval(p1_1,x)”. A simple tried and error methods were used first to roughly observed the validity of order 1. If
not valid, order 2,3,4 and so on will used to replace order 1 in order to determine the best fitting line. Next, to having
a further confirmation, r for each polynomial were calculated, order 1 was using “rsq_1 = 1 - sum((y -
2

polyval(p1_1,x)).^2)/sum((y - mean(y)).^2)” and vice versa to other order by just changing the “polyval(p1_1,x)”.
Based on fitting accuracy and r , degree of polynomial can be selected and graph was plotted using “plot(x,y,'bx')”
2

and “plot(x,v1_3,'r-')” together with title, x-axis and y-axis label. In section 3, relationship between load weight of
bulk and week bulk loaded were also analysed. The methods analysed were just same as the ways analysed load
weight of garbages but just the x variable changed from week to “x= weekbulk” and y variables changed from load
weight of garbages collection to “y=load weight of bulk” and graph were also plotted.

In section 2, population of United States was analysed together with year from 1960 to 2016. For
population datasets, a large amounts of datas were imported into matlab which contained other countries except
United States. Thus in order to select data from large amount of datasets, name of United States was labelled as
country in matlab, “country={'United States'}” then element or collection of particular country can be get using find
function “idx1=find(CountryName==country)” where CountryName is the title of column. Since the data of United
States will automatically found, thus year for x-axis and population value for y-axis can be found just key in
“x2=Year(idx1)” and “y2=Value(idx1)” respectively where year and value is title of column also. After get x and y
value, polyfit and polyval can be used same as in section 1 and 3 and graph plotted also after degree of polynomial
was selected.

Last but not least, finite difference differentiation using forward, backward and central differences were
done to solve differential equations. Through derivation of function,

Results
In figure 1, the graph was plotted as load weight for garbage collection against weeks in Austin
TDS landfill. From the graph, it shows that the majority of garbage collection is between the range of 0
kg to 50000 kg. It indicates that the garbage collected weekly in Austin are about 27500 kg in average.
The best fit was plotted with corresponding order of polynomial and hence r was calculated to determine
2

the validity of the best order of polynomial selected. In the graph of load weight of garbage collection
against weeks, with the increasing of number of order, the r value increased from 0.0030107 (first order)
2

until 0.0052681(third order) and then it decreased to 0.0030107 (forth order). Therefore, the order of
polynomial selected which giving out the best fitting lines was third order with highest r value which was
2

0.0052681. In figure 2, the graph was plotted as population value of United States from year 1960 to
2015. From the graph, the population in United States could be concluded as increasing linearly with
years. It reached the value of 3.22x10^8 in year 2015 which differs for about 1.42x10^8 from year 1960.
The best fitting was plotted in the graph as well and the most appropriate order of polynomial was
validated by determining the value of r . The r value increased with the number of order and it stopped
2 2

increasing at second order as the r value of second order obtained is the same as third order. In figure 3,
2

the graph of load weight for bulk waste against weeks in Austin TDS Landfill. From the graph, it shows
that majority of the load weight of bulk was
Discussion
Conclusion
Appendix