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Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
by Susan Strasser(back of book) Susan Strasser's pathbreaking histories of housework and the rise of the mass market have become classics in the literature of consumer culture. Here she turns to an essential but neglected part of that culture - the trash it produces - and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning. Before the twentieth century, streets and bodies stank, but trash was nearly nonexistent. With goods and money scarce, everything possible was reused. Strasser paints a vivid picture of an America where scavenger pigs roamed the streets, "swill children" collected kitchen garbage, and itinerant peddlers traded manufactured goods for rags and bones. In the last hundred years, that way of life has been replaced by mass consumption, disposable goods, and waste on a previously unimaginable scale. Strasser charts the triumph of "disposable" goods - paper cups, toilet paper, packaged food - those signature products of modern life. And she shows how Americans became hooked on convenience, fashion, and constant technological change - as the mountains of garbage rose higher and higher. Lively and colorful, Waste and Want recaptures a hidden part of our social history, vividly illustrating that what counts as trash depends on who's counting, and that what we throw away defines us as much as what we keep.
Waste Forms Technology and Performance: Final Report
by The National Academy of SciencesThe Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) is responsible for cleaning up radioactive waste and environmental contamination resulting from five decades of nuclear weapons production and testing. A major focus of this program involves the retrieval, processing, and immobilization of waste into stable, solid waste forms for disposal. Waste Forms Technology and Performance, a report requested by DOE-EM, examines requirements for waste form technology and performance in the cleanup program. The report provides information to DOE-EM to support improvements in methods for processing waste and selecting and fabricating waste forms. Waste Forms Technology and Performanceplaces particular emphasis on processing technologies for high-level radioactive waste, DOE's most expensive and arguably most difficult cleanup challenge. The report's key messages are presented in ten findings and one recommendation.
Waste Incineration & Public Health
by National Research CouncilIncineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical waste--but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human health--along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions.The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: A Potential Solution for the Disposal of Transuranic Waste
by Committee on the Waste Isolation Pilot PlantThis volume discusses the readiness of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico, to serve as a geological repository for transuranic radioactive waste. WIPP is located in a Permian-age bedded salt deposit 658 meters below the surface. The committee has long reviewed DOE's readiness efforts, now aimed at demonstrating compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Site characterization studies and performance assessment modeling are among the topics considered in this volume.
The Waste Land: 75th Anniversary Edition (Longman Literature Guides)
by T. S. EliotFamous for juxtaposing Eastern cultures with Western literary references, The Waste Land has been celebrated for its eloquence, depth of meaning, and numerous subtleties. Rich with allusions to the religious texts of Hinduism and Buddhism, ancient literature, and Eliot’s own life, the poem continues to be admired and studied in higher education English literature courses. Quickly ascending to the status of literary classic, The Waste Land is widely considered to be Eliot’s finest work, representing maturity in his style and confidence in both expression and research. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Waste Location: Spatial Aspects of Waste Management, Hazards and Disposal (Routledge Revivals)
by Michael Clark; Denis Smith; Andrew BlowersFirst published in 1992, Waste Location seeks to widen and integrate the debate on the intrinsically spatial nature of waste disposal. The political and industrial significance of the new environmentalism of the 1980s came from the recognition of growing public pressure for environmental quality and product reliability. Attention was turned to waste as the product of consumption. As the political economy of waste was explored, new issues were raised: new technologies, recycling, pollution havens, waste minimization, location of landfill sites and incinerator facilities, and environmental crime, responsibility and planning. The 1990s sees the advocates of ‘cradle to grave’ responsibility still battling the promoters of market forces. One of the major developments in the study of waste collection and disposal was the new forms of data collection and handling technology. The contributors consider both geotechnics and geographical information systems within this context. The focus on the geography of the UK is set within the broader framework of political economy and the international trade in pollution exports. The case studies presented range from bin analysis through a Bayesian perspective on risk to the global politics of international waste streams. Together, the contributors provide a comprehensive overview of the waste location debate in the early 1990s. Students of environment and climate change will find this book particularly enlightening.
The Waste Makers
by Bill Mckibben Vance PackardAn exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals," The Waste Makers is Vance Packard's pioneering 1960 work on how the rapid growth of disposable consumer goods was degrading the environmental, financial, and spiritual character of American society. The Waste Makers was the first book to probe the increasing commercialization of American life--the development of consumption for consumption's sake. Packard outlines the ways manufacturers and advertisers persuade consumers to buy things they don't need and didn't know they wanted, including the two-of-a-kind of everything syndrome--"two refrigerators in every home"--and appeals to purchase something because it is more expensive, or because it is painted in a new color. The book also brought attention to the concept of planned obsolescence, in which a "death date" is built into products so that they wear out quickly and need to be replaced. By manipulating the public into mindless consumerism, Packard believed that business was making us "more wasteful, imprudent, and carefree in our consuming habits," which was using up our natural resources at an alarming rate. A prescient book that predicted the rise of American consumer culture, this all new edition of The Waste Makers features an introduction by best-selling author Bill McKibben. Vance Packard (1914-1996) was an American journalist, social critic, and best-selling author. Among his other books were The Hidden Persuaders, about how advertisers use psychological methods to get people to buy the products they sell; The Status Seekers, which describes American social stratification and behavior; and The Naked Society, about the threats to privacy posed by new technologies.
Waste Management and Sustainable Consumption: Reflections on consumer waste
by Karin M. EkströmThe accelerated pace of global consumption over the past decades has meant that governments across the world are now faced with significant challenges in dealing with the dramatically increased volume of waste. While research on waste management has previously focused on finding technological solutions to the problem, this book uniquely examines the social and cultural views of waste, shedding new light on the topic by emphasising the consumer perspective throughout. Drawing on a wide variety of disciplines including environmental, economic, social and cultural theories, the book presents philosophical reflections, practical examples and potential solutions to the problem of increasing waste. It analyses and compares case studies from countries such as Sweden, Japan, the USA, India, Nigeria and Qatar, bringing out valuable insights for the international community and generating a critical discussion on how we can move towards a more sustainable society. This book will be of great interest to post-graduate students and researchers in environmental policy, waste management, social marketing and consumer behaviour, as well as policymakers and practitioners in consumer issues and business.
Waste Management Practices: Municipal, Hazardous, and Industrial, Second Edition
by John PichtelWaste Management Practices: Municipal, Hazardous, and Industrial, Second Edition addresses the three main categories of wastes (hazardous, municipal, and "special" wastes) covered under federal regulation outlined in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), an established framework for managing the generation, transportation, treat
Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes
by Nikole BouchardFor thousands of years humans have experimented with various methods of waste disposal—from burning and burying to simply packing up and moving in search of an unscathed environment. Habits of disposal are deeply ingrained in our daily lives, so casual and continual that we rarely ever stop to ponder the big-picture effects on social, spatial and ecological orders. Rethinking the ways in which we produce, collect, discard and reuse our waste, whether it’s materials, spaces or places, is essential to ensure a more feasible future. Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes presents a series of historical and contemporary design ideas that reimagine a range of repurposed materials at diverse scales and in various contexts by exploring methods of hacking, disassembly, reassembly, recycling, adaptive reuse and preservation of the built environment. Waste Matters will inspire designers to sample and rearrange bits of artifacts from the past and present to produce culturally relevant and ecologically sensitive materials, objects, architecture and environments.
Waste Matters: Urban margins in contemporary literature (Routledge Environmental Humanities)
by Sarah K. HarrisonHow do those pushed to the margins survive in contemporary cities? What role do they play in today’s increasingly complex urban ecosystems? Faced with stark disparities in human and environmental wellbeing, what form might more equitable cities take? Waste Matters argues that contemporary literature and film offer an insightful and timely response to these questions through their formal and thematic revaluation of urban waste. In their creation of a new urban imaginary which centres on discarded things, degraded places and devalued people, authors and artists such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Chris Abani, Dinaw Mengestu, Suketu Mehta and Vik Muniz suggest opportunities for an inclusive urban politics that demands systematic analysis. Waste Matters assesses the utopian promise and pragmatic limitations of their as yet under-examined work in light of today’s pressing urban challenges. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of English Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Urban Studies, Environmental Humanities and Film Studies.
Waste Prevention Policy and Behaviour: New Approaches to Reducing Waste Generation and its Environmental Impacts (Routledge Studies in Waste Management and Policy)
by Ana Paula BortoletoAs prosperity levels rise, so too does the number of products and services being consumed. For policy makers in waste management facing a growing challenge, it is vital to understand the complex relationship between waste prevention policies and individual behaviour regarding waste generation. This book examines that interplay, taking a close look at the role of motivation, difficulties, values and constraints. The first part of the book explores the theoretical framework, policy, barriers and facilitators for waste prevention behaviour. The second part presents in-depth case studies from three cities (Sao Paulo, Sheffield and Tokyo) examining the contextual factors, behavioural variations among them and the role of motivation and constraints in their populations. The book provides a detailed picture of how waste prevention policies enter the private, domestic sphere, offering insights for generating behavioural change at the household level and thus moving larger communities towards sustainable waste management. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental policy, management, sociology, psychology, geography, technology and waste studies.
Waste Trading among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation
by Kate O'NeillIn Waste Trading among Rich Nations, Kate O'Neill asks why some industrialized nation voluntarily imports such wastes in the absence of pressing economic need. She focuses on Britain as an importer and Germany as an exporter and also looks at France, Australia, and Japan.
Wasted: Fatbergs, Space Junk, Plastic and a load of other Rubbish
by Clive GiffordAimed at readers aged 9 and up, this book takes a look at the pollution and damage caused to our planet and the solar system through the lens of extreme waste manifestations, such as toxic smogs, grotesque fatbergs, mountainous landfills, marine garbage patches and space junk. It explores these human-created phenomena, uncovering their causes and impact, and asks what is being done to deal with them and prevent their recurrence. Real-life photographs are included, bringing home the extreme awfulness and scale of the problem.
Wasted: Counting the costs of global consumption (Sustainable Development Set Ser.)
by Michael RedcliftSustainable development cannot be achieved solely at the international level. Without the creation of more sustainable livelihoods, it will remain a utopian and elusive goal. Yet given the huge differences in economic development and levels of consumption between North and South, how might this bebrought about?Taking the 1992 Rio Summit as its point of departure, Wasted examines what we now need to know, and what we need to do, to live within sustainable limits. One of the key issues is how we use the environment: converting natural resources into human artifices, commodities and services. In the process of consuming,we also create sinks. Today, these sinks - the empty back pocket in the global biogeographical system - are no longer empty. The fate of the global environment is indissolubly linked to our consumption: particularly in the energy-profligate North.To understand and overcome environmental challenges, we need to build the outcomes of our present consumption rates into our future behaviour: to accept sustainable development as a normative goal for societies; one that is bound up with our everyday social practices and actions. In this absorbing book, Michael Redclift argues that the way we understand and think about the environn1ent conditions our responses, and our ability to meet the challenge, and discusses tangible policies for increased sustainability that are grounded in recent research and practice.MICHAEL RedcliftIs Professor of International Environmental Policy at the Department of Geography, King's College London. He was previously Professor of International Environmental Policy at the University of Keele and before that Professor of Environmental Sociology at Wye College, University of London, and Director of the ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme. He is author and editor of numerous books, including Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions (1987), Social Theory and the Global Environment (1994) and Sustainability: Life Chances and Lifestyles (1999).Originally published in 1996
Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet
by Rob HengeveldAll systems produce waste as part of a cycle--bacteria, humans, combustion engines, even one as large and complex as a city. To some extent, this waste can be absorbed, processed, or recycled--though never completely. In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld reveals how a long history of human consumption has left our world drowning in this waste. This is a compelling and urgent work that traces the related histories of population growth and resource consumption. As Hengeveld explains, human life (and population growth) depends not only on mineral resources but also on energy. People first obtained energy from food and later supplemented this with energy from water, wind, and animals as one source after another fell short of our ever-growing needs. Finally, we turned to fossil energy, which generates atmospheric waste that is the key driver of global climate change. The effects of this climate change are already leading to food shortages and social collapse in some parts of the world. Because all of these problems are interconnected, Hengeveld argues strenuously that measures to counter individual problems cannot work. Instead, we need to tackle their common cause--our staggering population growth. While many scientists agree that population growth is one of the most critical issues pressuring the environment, Hengeveld is unique in his insistence on turning our attention to the waste such growth leaves in its wake and to the increasing demands of our global society. A practical look at the sustainability of our planet from the perspective of a biologist whose expertise is in the abundances and distributions of species, Wasted World presents a fascinating picture of the whole process of using, wasting, and exhausting energy and material resources. And by elucidating the complexity of the causes of our current global state, Hengeveld offers us a way forward.
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future
by Oliver Franklin-WallisNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER, THE GUARDIAN, and KIRKUS REVIEWS An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy—and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple question: what really happens to what we throw away? In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste industry—the secretive multi-billion dollar world that underpins the modern economy, quietly profiting from what we leave behind. In India, he meets the waste-pickers on the front line of the plastic crisis. In the UK, he journeys down sewers to confront our oldest—and newest—waste crisis, and comes face-to-face with nuclear waste. In Ghana, he follows the after-life of our technology and explores the global export network that results in goodwill donations clogging African landfills. From an incinerator to an Oklahoma ghost-town, Franklin-Wallis travels in search of the people and companies that really handle waste—and on the way, meets the innovators and campaigners pushing for a cleaner and less wasteful future. With this mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and occasionally terrifying investigation, Oliver Franklin-Wallis tells a new story of humanity based on what we leave behind, and along the way, he shares a blueprint for building a healthier, more sustainable world—before we&’re all buried in trash.
Wastewater Assessment, Treatment, Reuse and Development in India (Earth and Environmental Sciences Library)
by Shalini Yadav Abdelazim M. Negm Ram Narayan YadavaThis book contains up-to-date information and findings in research on the evaluation, treatment, reusability, and development of wastewater in India. The book covers the assessment for drinking water, including membrane filtration, supervision, and evaluation of wastewater, environmental pollution control, wastewater treatment and recycling, advanced bioremediation techniques and wastewater's impact on India. With this wide range of treatment and technologies of wastewater, this book is a source of invaluable information to guide Indian policy planners and makers to move forward to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 6.
Wastewater Irrigation and Health: Assessing and Mitigating Risk in Low-income Countries
by Pay Drechsel Christopher A. Scott Liqa Raschid-Sally Mark Redwood Akiça BahriIn most developing countries wastewater treatment systems are hardly functioning or have a very low coverage, resulting in large scale water pollution and the use of very poor quality water for crop irrigation especially in the vicinity of urban centres. This can create significant risks to public health, particularly where crops are eaten raw. Wastewater Irrigation and Health approaches this serious problem from a practical and realistic perspective, addressing the issues of health risk assessment and reduction in developing country settings. The book therefore complements other books on the topic of wastewater which focus on high-end treatment options and the use of treated wastewater. This book moves the debate forward by covering also the common reality of untreated wastewater, greywater and excreta use. It presents the state-of-the-art on quantitative risk assessment and low-cost options for health risk reduction, from treatment to on-farm and off-farm measures, in support of the multiple barrier approach of the 2006 guidelines for safe wastewater irrigation published by the World Health Organization. The 38 authors and co-authors are international key experts in the field of wastewater irrigation representing a mix of agronomists, engineers, social scientists and public health experts from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. The chapters highlight experiences across the developing world with reference to various case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Mexico and the Middle East. The book also addresses options for resource recovery and wastewater governance, thus clearly establishes a connection between agriculture, health and sanitation, which is often the missing link in the current discussion on 'making wastewater an asset'.
Wastewater Management Through Aquaculture
by B. B. Jana R. N. Mandal P. JayasankarThis volume provides state-of-the-art information on soil-water interactions in wastewater systems, characterization of wastewater, modes of treatment, safety of wastewater use, water conservation technologies involved in recycling of sewage in fish culture, biogeochemical cycling bacteria and nutrient dynamics, ecosystem resilient driven wastewater reclamation, bioremediation, aquaponics, ecological integrity, culture practices of fish farming, microbial food web phenomena, fish diseases, environmental economics of wastewater, environmental risk assessment, environmental law and regulations. Given its breadth of coverage, the book will be useful to researchers, teachers, students, administrators, planners, farmers and entrepreneurs interested in the profitable use of wastewater in the wastes-into-wealth framework of for the benefit of humanity, and in achieving the targets for sanitation and safe wastewater reuse by 2030, specified in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.Concerns are growing about the quality and quantity of fresh water, as severe crises are expected in the near future. Climate change has further worsened the strain on inland water resources, with its major impacts on ecosystems and human life. It is most urgent to protect and conserve inland water resources to maintain vital ecosystem functions. Despite the immense nutrient potentials of wastewater in terms of phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium and increasingly high rates of urbanization-based wastewater generation, wastewater has traditionally been overlooked as a resource. This produces a threefold loss – environmental degradation, monetary losses from fertilizers, and water. As a result, municipal wastewater offers a win-win strategy for water conservation and environmental protection, while also turning waste into wealth in the form of fish biomass and allied cash crops. Wastewater-fed aquaculture refers to a unique, integrated biosystem in which the wastes generated by the first system are used by the next subsystem. In wastewater-fed aquaculture biosystems, the organic wastes are recycled into fish biomass mediated through a complex microbial/autotrophic/heterotrophic food web mechanism.
Wastewater Treatment: Advanced Processes and Technologies
by R. Senthilkumar D. G. Rao J. Anthony Byrne S. FerozEmphasizing new technologies that produce clean water and energy from the wastewater treatment process, this book presents recent advancements in wastewater treatment by various technologies such as chemical methods, biochemical methods, membrane separation techniques, and nanotechnology. It addresses sustainable water reclamation, biomembrane treatment processes, advanced oxidation processes, and applications of nanotechnology for wastewater treatment. It also includes integrated cost-based design methodologies. Equations, figures, photographs and tables are included within the chapters to aid reader comprehension. Case studies and examples are included as well.
Wastewater Treatment and Reuse, Theory and Design Examples, Volume 1: Principles and Basic Treatment
by Syed R. Qasim Guang ZhuThis book will present the theory involved in wastewater treatment processes, define the important design parameters involved, and provide typical values of these parameters for ready reference; and also provide numerical applications and step-by-step calculation procedures in solved examples. These examples and solutions will help enhance the readers’ comprehension and deeper understanding of the basic concepts, and can be applied by plant designers to design various components of the treatment facilities. It will also examine the actual calculation steps in numerical examples, focusing on practical application of theory and principles into process and water treatment facility design.
Wastewater Treatment and Reuse Theory and Design Examples, Volume 2: Post-Treatment, Reuse, and Disposal
by Syed R. Qasim Guang ZhuThis book will present the theory involved in wastewater treatment processes, define the important design parameters involved, and provide typical values of these parameters for ready reference; and also provide numerical applications and step-by-step calculation procedures in solved examples. These examples and solutions will help enhance the readers’ comprehension and deeper understanding of the basic concepts, and can be applied by plant designers to design various components of the treatment facilities. It will also examine the actual calculation steps in numerical examples, focusing on practical application of theory and principles into process and water treatment facility design.
The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches from a Vanishing World
by Alex ShoumatoffAcclaimed naturalist Alex Shoumatoff issues a worldwide call to protect the drastically endangered rainforests of BorneoIn his eleventh book, but his first in almost two decades, seasoned travel writer Alex Shoumatoff takes readers on a journey from the woods of rural New York to the rain forests of the Amazon and Borneo, documenting both the abundance of life and the threats to these vanishing Edens in a wide-ranging narrative.Alex and his best friend, Davie, spent their formative years in the forest of Bedford, New York. As adults they grew apart, but bonded by the “imaginary jungle” of their childhood, Alex and Davie reunited fifty years later for a trip to a real jungle, in the heart of Borneo. During the intervening years, Alex had become an author and literary journalist, traveling the world to bring to light places, animals, and indigenous cultures in peril. The two reconnect and spend three weeks together on Borneo, one of the most imperiled ecosystems on earth. Insatiable demand for the palm oil ubiquitous in consumer goods is wiping out the world’s most ancient and species-rich rain forest, home to the orangutan and countless other life-forms, including the Penan people, with whom Alex and Davie camp. The Penan have been living in Borneo’s rain forest for millennia, but 90 percent of the lowland rain forest has already been logged and burned to make way for vast oil-palm plantations. Among the most endangered tribal people on earth, the Penan are fighting for their right to exist.Shoumatoff condenses a lifetime of learning about what binds humans to animals, nature, and each other, culminating in a celebration of the Penan and a call for Westerners to address the palm-oil crisis and protect the biodiversity that sustains us all.
Wasting the Rain: Rivers, People and Planning in Africa (Routledge Revivals)
by William M. AdamsFirst published in 1992, this title offers an experienced and constructive evaluation of the ways in which water resources have been developed in Africa. Adams argues that the best hope of productive development lies in working and engaging with local people and using local knowledge of the environment effectively. Modern, large-scale developments that have largely been ineffective are examined, and emphasis is placed on the importance of using the skills and concerns of those affected, such as small farmers, to develop ingenious water projects – an approach that can be applied worldwide. This is an interesting and relevant title, which will be of particular value to those with an interest in the developments in water resource conservation over the past two decades.