Chapter 16 - Waste Disposal Flashcards
What is the source of more than half of solid waste in the U.S?
Agricultural activities
What kind of solid waste does the mineral industry produce?
Spoils, tailings, and slags
What is a long-established method for solid-waste disposal that is cheap and easy?
Open dumps.
What are some drawbacks to open dumps?
They are unsanitary, attract pests, they are a fire hazard, and they are responsible for pollution in general.
How do sanitary-landfills work?
A layer of compacted trash covered with a layer of earth.
What is a risk of poorly designed sanitary landfills?
They can be accountable for pollution of groundwater through percolation.
What is leachate?
It is what occurs if the soil above or bellow a sanitary-landfill is permeable, causing the infiltrating water to pick up chemicals from the waste.
Why is incineration an imperfect solution?
Due to the fact that burning waste contributes to air pollution.
What are dredge spoils?
They are sediments dredged from the reservoirs and waterways to enlarge capacity or improve navigation.
What is a way of putting organic mater to good use?
Through the process of composting.
What is known as source separation?
It is when trash generators (homeowners, businesses ,etc) must sort their own trash into categories.
What are waste exchanges?
It is when one industries discarded waste is given to another as raw materials.
What is e-cycling?
The recycling of electronics waste.
What is the dilute-and-disperse approached based on?
It is based on the assumption that if toxic substances are sufficiently diluted they could be rendered harmless.
What is the opposite of the dilute-and-disperse approach to toxic waste management?
Concentrate-and-contain
