SUSTAINING THE EARTH | G. TYLER MILLER | SCOTT E.

SPOOLMAN
MILLER/SPOOLMAN
11e

Urbanization and Solid

and Hazardous Waste

Chapter 13

© Cengage Learning 2015

 What Are the Major Population Trends and
Problems in Urban Areas?
• Half of the world’s people live in urban
areas.

• Urbanization: the creation and growth of

urban and suburban areas
• Urban growth: The rate of increase of
urban populations

• Challenges and problems of urban growth

• Proportion of the global population living in
urban areas is increasing
• Numbers and sizes are mushrooming
• Poverty increases-slums
Major urban areas
throughout the world
are revealed in these
satellite images of
the earth at night,
showing city lights.

Question: Why do you think that most urban areas are found along the continental coasts?
 Urban Sprawl Gobbles Up the Countryside

• Factors contributing to urban sprawl (the growth of low density

development on the edges of cities and towns) in the United States

• Affordable land
• Automobiles
• Cheap gasoline
• Little or no urban planning
Undesirable impacts of urban sprawl
 Urbanization Has Advantages Urbanization Brings Challenges
• Economic: Centers of innovation, education, jobs, etc. • Characteristics of cities
• Health: Access to better medical care, family planning, • Huge ecological footprints
social services, etc. • Lack vegetation
• Environmental: Higher funding for recycling programs • Water problems
• Preserves biodiversity
• Concentrated pollution and health problems
• Excessive noise
• Localized climate effects and light pollution

Natural capital
degradation: Urban areas
are rarely sustainable
systems. The typical city
depends on large nonurban
areas for huge inputs of
matter and energy
resources, while it
generates large outputs of
waste matter and heat.
Life Is a Desperate Struggle for the Urban
Poor in Less-Developed Countries
• Slums (poor neighborhoods)
• Squatter settlements and shantytowns
• Terrible living conditions
• Lack basic water and sanitation
• High levels of pollution
• What can governments do to help?
• Example:
• Brazil and Peru legally recognize existing slums and grant legal titles to the land
• The citizens can then become productive working citizens who contribute to
tax revenues that will ultimately pay for government programs to assist the
poor.
How Does Transportation Affect Urban
Environmental Impacts?
• Cities can grow outward or upward
• Compact cities-upward
• Hong Kong, China, and Tokyo, Japan
• Can get around by walking, biking, or mass transit
• Dispersed cities-outward
• United States, Canada, and Australia
• Motor vehicles for transit
Use of Motor Vehicles Has Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Advantages
• Mobility, convenience, and comfort
• Economic benefits through associated jobs
• Disadvantages
• Accidents kill 1.3 million people and 50 million animals per year
• Largest source of outdoor air pollution :
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heqd7IH7ZTA
• Contributed to urban sprawl
• Traffic congestion
Reducing Automobile Use Is Not Easy, but It
Can Be Done
• Full-cost pricing: high gasoline
taxes
• Raise parking fees
• Charge tolls on roads, tunnels,
and bridges leading into cities
• Encourage and develop other
transportation alternatives
• Bicycles, buses, mass-transit rail,
and rapid rail
How Can Cities Become
More Sustainable and
Livable?
• Smart growth works
• Reduces dependence on cars
• Controls and directs sprawl
• Reduces wasteful resource use
The Eco-City Concept/new Urbanism: Cities
Built for People, Not for Cars
• Use solar and other locally available renewable energy
resources
• Design buildings to be heated and cooled as much as
possible by nature
• Use energy and matter resources efficiently
• Mixed use neighbourhoods to minimize journeys
• Reuse, recycle, and compost municipal solid waste
• Protect and encourage biodiversity
• Preserve undeveloped land and protect and restore natural
systems and wetlands
• Promote urban gardens, farmers markets, and
community-supported agriculture
What Are Solid Waste and
Hazardous Waste, and Why
Are They Problems?
• Solid waste = waste which is not liquid or gas
• We throw away huge amounts of useful things and
hazardous materials

• Solid waste categories

• Industrial solid waste: largest amount of solid
waste produced in the United States
• Municipal solid waste (MSW): Second largest
amount of solid waste in the united states.
• Hazardous waste: waste that is poisonous,
dangerously chemically reactive, corrosive, or
flammable

• Reasons to reduce solid wastes

• Unnecessary waste of the earth's resources
• Cause air/water pollution and greenhouse gases
 Electronic Waste (E-Waste) is a Growing Problem
• Fastest-growing solid waste problem worldwide

• Ex., TVs, computer monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards,

mice, cables, circuit boards, lamps, clocks, flashlight,
calculators, phones, answering machines, digital/video
cameras, radios, VCRs, DVD players, MP3 and CD players.

• International Basel Convention

• Bans hazardous waste transfer from
more-developed to less-developed countries
• Ratified by 179 countries

• European Union (EU) More about E-waste and what can you do:
• Leading the way in dealing with e-waste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmJFVmtWf-I
• Cradle-to-grave responsibility laws: require companies to take back
consumer products they sell
 What Should We Do With Solid Waste?
• We can burn or bury solid waste, or produce less of it
• Waste management: Reduce harm, but not amounts
• Landfill – can pollute groundwater
• Incineration – produces toxic ash and emissions, unsustainable
• Waste reduction:
• Use less
• Reuse, recycle, or compost
• Integrated waste management: Uses a variety of strategies

Integrated waste
management: The U.S.
National Academy of
Sciences suggests
these priorities for
dealing with solid waste.
We Can Cut Solid Wastes by Reducing, Reusing,
and Recycling
• Strategies for industries and communities
• Redesign manufacturing processes and
products to use less material and energy
• Develop products that are easy to repair,
reuse, remanufacture, compost, or recycle
• Eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging
• Use fee-per-bag waste collection systems
• Establish cradle-to grave responsibility
• Restructure urban transportation systems

Individuals matter: You can save resources by reducing

your output of solid waste and pollution.
 Case Study: We Can Use Refillable
Containers and Other Items
• Reuse and recycle
• Refillable glass beverage bottles
• Refillable soft drink bottles made
of polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) plastic
• Bottle deposits create jobs and
reduce litter and landfill amounts
• Paper, plastic, or reusable cloth
bags
• Pros
• Cons

Individuals matter: Some ways to reuse the

items we purchase.
There Are Two Types of Recycling
• Primary, closed-loop recycling
• Materials recycled into same type:
aluminum cans
• Secondary recycling
• Materials converted to other products:
tires
• Types of wastes that can be recycled
• Preconsumer: generated in
manufacturing (over 75% of the total
waste distinguished as recyclable)
• Postconsumer: generated by end users
We Can Mix or Separate Household Solid
Wastes for Recycling
• Materials-recovery facilities (MRFs)
• Separate mixed waste to extract recyclables
• Residual waste burned in an incinerator to provide heat/power
• Can emit Co2 and toxic chemicals
• Toxic ash
• Can encourage increased trash production (needs ongoing supply of garbage)
• Source separation approach
• Usually involves consumers separating trash into four collections: glass, paper,
plastic, and metal
• Less air and water pollution
• Implementation costs less than for MRFs
 Recycling Has Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Economic considerations
• Support through taxes
• Employment opportunities
• Environmental and health
factors

Recycling solid waste has

advantages and disadvantages.
How Can We Make the Transition to a More
Sustainable Low-Waste Society?
• Grassroots action has led to better solid and hazardous waste
management
• “Not in my backyard” (an approach which calls for drastically reducing the
production of wastes)
• Produce less waste
• Environmental Justice
• Everyone is entitled to protection from environmental hazards
• Environmental discrimination exists
We Can Make the Transition to
Low-Waste Societies
• Key principles
• Everything is connected
• No away, i.e., throw away, for
wastes
• Polluters and producers should
pay for the wastes produced
• Pollution prevention offers best
and cheapest method of dealing
with wastes
• We ought to mimic nature by
reusing, recycling, or composting
 Case Study ─ Industrial Ecosystems: Copying
Nature
• https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=nSKjY9yhFjI
• Reuse or recycle most minerals
and chemicals
• Interact through resource
exchange webs
• Develop an ecoindustrial parks
(industrial ecosystems)
• Follow biomimicry practices
• Observe how natural
systems respond
• Adapt to human industrial
systems

Solutions: This industrial ecosystem in

Kalundborg, Denmark, reduces waste production
by mimicking a natural ecosystem’s food web.
The wastes of one business become the raw
materials for another, thus mimicking the way
that nature recycles chemicals.
Three Big Ideas
1. Most expanding urban areas are unsustainable with their large and
growing ecological footprints and high levels of poverty, but most
urban areas can be made more sustainable and livable.
2. The order of priorities for dealing with solid and hazardous wastes
should be to produce less of them, reuse and recycle as much of
them as possible, convert hazardous material to less hazardous
material, and safely store or dispose of what is left.
3. We need to view solid wastes as wasted resources and hazardous
wastes as materials that we should not be producing in the first
place.
 A sustainable world will be powered by the sun;
constructed from materials that
circulate repeatedly; made mobile by trains, buses,
and bicycles; populated at sustainable levels;
and centered around just, equitable,
and tight-knit communities.
Gary Gardner
Final Exam
• 40% of total grade
• 80 questions
• Format: MCQ and true/false
• Date: Saturday 25th November
• Time: 8.30-10.30am
• Location: G2_0025
• Requires Respondus lockdown browser and Respondus
monitor
Chapter 8: Water Resources and Water
Pollution
You are especially recommended to study:
• Water cycle (see textbook)
• Desalination
• How most water is wasted
• Groundwater pollution (causes/consequences)
• Environmental costs of bottled water
• Types of aquifer
• Aral Sea disaster
• Definition of water table (see textbook)
• Main users of water
• Sources and types of water pollution
• Eutrophication (definition)
• Stages of sewerage treatment
Chapter 9: Non-Renewable Energy Sources
You are especially recommended to study
• Advantages and disadvantages of each source of non-renewable
energy
• Net energy and potential future resource for each
• Location of main reserves for each
• Types of coal
Chapter 10: Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy
You are recommended to study
• Advantages and disadvantages of each source of renewable energy
• Net energy and potential future resource for each
• Fukushima nuclear disaster
• Features of energy-efficient building design
• Improving energy efficiency of cars
• What is co-generation?
• What is a smart grid?
Chapter 13: Urbanization and Solid and
Hazardous Waste
You are recommended to study
• Advantages and disadvantages of Materials Recovery Facilities
• Definition of hazardous waste
• Definition and sources of solid waste
• Primary v. secondary recycling
• Resource exchange webs
• Cradle to grave responsibility laws
• Basle convention on e-waste
• Ecocities/new urbanism (definition and characteristics)
• Waste reduction hierarchy (reduce, reuse, recycle)
• Environmental impacts of landfill
• Use of car-sharing (textbook)