Impacts Of Increasing Waste Generation Flashcards
1
• The costs of collecting and treating waste are high.
In lower-income countries, solid waste management
is usually a city’s single largest budgetary item and it
is common for urban authorities to spend 20-50 per
cent of their budget on solid waste management.
• Environmentally, waste is a large source of methane.
a powerful greenhouse gas. Waste also contributes
to water, ground and air pollution.
• Untreated or uncollected waste can lead to health
problems such as respiratory ailments, diarrhoea
cholera and dengue fever.
• Many city authorities are struggling to collect
increasing quantities of urban waste. The 2012 World
Bank report on waste found that 30-60 per cent
of urban solid waste in lower-income countries is
uncollected. Egypt generates about 80 million tonnes
of solid rubbish per year, according to government
figures. The country’s inadequate waste infrastructure
is supplemented by the Zabaleen, Cairo’s informal waste collectors
2
Cities are running out of landfill space. The Borj
Hammoud landfill site in Beirut, Lebanon, was planned to be shut down by 2019. This has been
delayed because of a nearly 30 per cent reduction in daily waste production following mass protests
and the COVID-19 lockdown. In fact, permission has been granted to raise it by a further 2 m Following a waste crisis in 2015, when rubbish
was left piled up in the streets, the government has proposed expanding existing sites.
Local residents
fear that the odours being emitted by the site are toxic pollutants. Long-term exposure to these strong odors can be linked to respiratory diseases
allergies and the spread of bacteria. In addition water that has leached out from the present site is being dumped into the sea, polluting the water and
making the sea in surrounding areas dangerous to swim in
