Waste Management at home

                                         WASTE MANAGEMENT AT HOME

 “Ammi I’m going to burn all this rubbish”

“Oh! Such a lot of polythene bags”.

“Wait, I also have some broken plastic things to burn. Some old

 plastic basins and broken buckets, I wanted to get rid of these

 because I don’t have enough space to keep them”.

“Yes!  By burning, we can easily get rid of all these unwanted

 polythene and plastic things”.

Actually, almost all the housewives in our country face this problem

 and as a solution, they burn or bury these plastics and polythene.

 Though it harms the environment people think that burning is the

 easiest way of getting rid of synthetic things. So, people get used to

 burning these things. Polythene and plastics could not be decomposed

 by naturally found microbial decomposers like bacteria and fungi.

 So if we bury they will not decay and mix with the soil.

                              The burning of these things will lead to air

 pollution and may cause health problems to the living beings. The

 other way of getting rid of these plastics and polythene is by burying

 them. When polythene is buried it changes the texture and fertility of

 the soil. These polythene and plastics prevent the entering of water into

 the deeper layers of soil. Sometimes; pieces of polythene get stuck

 with the root system and prevent the absorption of water. Water is

 absorbed by the plants by root hairs. These are microscopic in size.

 Small pieces of polythene among soil particles will prevent the

 entering of water into the delicate root hairs because polythene is

 impermeable to the entry of water. Therefore polythene changes the

 quality of the soil. The texture of the soil is also greatly changed

 when mixed with polythene. When polythene is mixed with soil, the

 amount of soil air, soil water, and microbial content may be

 decreased. Vegetation will be greatly affected by these changes.

            Some people do not bury or burn polythene but throw them

 away here and there. With rainwater, they flow to the water streams and water bodies.

This polythene will block the drainage systems and it results in sudden 

floods in towns even when there are no heavy rains. Sometime

s water is collected on them and leaves breeding places for mosquitoes.

What are the unwanted things we daily throw away from our houses?

 Some of them are polythene bags, paper, polythene with the aluminium coating (milk powder packets), tin (canned foods), glass, etc.

 Almost all the housewives in Sri- Lanka follow 3 ways to get rid of these.

1. Buried in the ground.
2. Burn in the open air
3. Kept in a bag and hang at the gate to be taken by the trucks of the municipal council. 

The first and second ways will lead to land and air pollution. In Sri-

L,anka there is no proper way to collect and dispose of garbage so the

 third way also ultimately causes land pollution. We can prove it by

 showing lorry loads of rubbish which was dumped in famous places.

 In the year 2017, 300 ft. of garbage dump collapsed and killed about

 19 people and destroyed about 145 houses in Colombo.

                      Actually, like housewives, we have to think about the

 things which we can do with our household rubbish. First, we have

 to sort out the things which we have as rubbish. To do this sorting

 out we want to know the nature of the household rubbish.

Household rubbish can be categorized into two main groups.

Bio-Degradable things,

Non-Bio-degradable things

Bio-degradable things means the things which able to decompose

 in the natural environment by biological means in a moderate amount of

 time.  Organic wastes such as paper and food remains can be taken

 as Bio-degradable things. These things can be digested by

 decomposers such as bacteria and fungi and can convert into

 compost. Moisture and slightly increased temperature will increase

 the function of microbes hence the rate of decomposing. So if we

 provide the above factors to household organic rubbish we will be

 able to get compost. Therefore, we should separately collect our

 household rubbish. We can keep a separate bag to put daily food

 remains and other organic waste of the house. We can collect the

 garden rubbish dry leaves etc. at the corner of the garden. With these

 things, we can make compost which can be used to enrich the soil

l fertility.

                           We can make compost on a selected area of land or

 inside a vessel. First, we can discuss the method by which we can make compost on land.

First, we have to select a place for making compost. Then we have to

 collect household bio-degradable rubbish, such as food remains, 

rotten vegetables, unwanted parts of fish, etc. Then dry and raw

 leaves especially leave of leguminacea plants, early prepared

 compost, cow dung, and urea.

Method:

· Make a 5cm height layer of dried leaves on the ground of the selected place. The area can be decided as your wish.

· Make a layer of raw materials (degradable things) of a thickness of 15 cm. on the layer of dried leaves.

·Then make a solution of old compost, ash, cow dung, and urea by dissolving them in water and pouring them onto the layer of degradable things.

In this method, natural decomposers are activated and they will start

 the breakdown of organic matter. When they are activated heat

 energy is liberated and this heat is needed to increases their

 functions. Therefore the heap should be kept covered.

·  Then again put a layer of bio-degradable things.

 Likewise, add the two things (bio-degradable things and solutions)

 alternately. In the end, the height of the heap should be 1m. The 

sides of the heap should be slanted to avoid falling down. Then the

 the heap should be covered by a polythene cover. After some time, so

 many macro soil organisms like larvae of house flies, coconut 

beetles and earthworms can be found in the heap. These accelerate 

the decaying process so, you can have compost within a few months' time. 

Next, we can discuss the method of making compost in a vessel.

This method can be used by people who lived in highly urbanized areas and will not need much space. This type of vessel can be obtained from the market or can use an empty barrel.

 Special bacteria (methanogenic Bacteria) act on organic wastes such as throwing away vegetables, cow dung, remains of food and produce, Methane gas which can be drawn off and burned as fuels. Biogas generators can be used to obtain this gas and it can use as a fuel to cook food. These generators have been introduced by the Engineering Research and Development Center at Ekala. They will sell these at a rate of Rs.15, 000. Young Inventors Commission of Sri Lanka has introduced biogas generators to some of the government schools. But most of the schools do not use these because they were not able to find necessary organic wastes. If there is some procedure to collect organic wastes of households and vegetable markets and supply them to these schools these generators can be made function. As a bio-degradable waste, we can consider old newspapers. We can sell these to boutiques and they use these as wrapping papers and again these will collect in our houses.

        As a country, we should have a method to recycle these wastes. In recycling, paper is pulped and mixed with wood pulp. After removing the ink of the pulp, it can be converted into new white papers, or after adding colours we can make models of animals or other things with these pulps. Self-employment opportunities can be generated for school leavers. In paper mills, papers are made by using softwood pulps. To grow softwood plants deforestation of natural forests should be done. If we do recycling of papers it will help to save our forests. There is an internationally recognized symbol to identify recycled papers.

 Now we can consider non-Bio-degradable things. To get rid of these and to use them again and again we should do recycling. There are recycling plants in many developed countries. 

 This recycling process is very expensive but when we think about non-renewable resources recycling should be done by every country.

                 There are many household items made up with non-bio-

degradable substances. Some of them are glass, polythene, plastics

 , and metals such as aluminium, tin, stainless steel, cast iron, brass,

 lead, steel, iron, etc. We can sort out these things and keep them separately to be sold. Sometimes we can sell aluminium, brass, and iron-like 

things. There are metal factories in our country and we can sell these

 worn-out metallic things to those factories or there are places in

 towns which buy these things. It is important to recycle metals

 because resources will not last long. Aluminium and iron will run

 out in 2200 and 2160 respectively. Lead, tin, zinc, and mercury will be used up sooner.

                     Plastic is also a non-bio-degradable thing and can be

 recycled. Actually, plastic waste is not recycled it will reduce the

 space on the earth to live because they are large in size and are not

 decompose naturally. Today plastic items are very common. It can

 replace many substances such as wood, metal, ceramic, glass, brass

 , etc. So, we can have many plastic items like tables, chairs, doors,

 plates, cups, accessories of various fittings such as doors and

 windows, etc. Actually, in our country, there are no plastic recycling

 plants but we all, overuse them. If we burn them to get rid of them

 it may cause hazardous effects to the environment. Plastic items can

 be melted down to make new plastics but before doing that different kinds of plastic things have to be separated.

                      Old and wasted glassware also can be recycled. Housewives can sell them. Before recycling glassware, it has to be

 separated according to its colours which are green, amber, and clear.

 Then these can be crushed and melted separately to make new glass

 objects. In our country, there should be some way to collect

 household rubbish separately. This can be done by the municipal councils of each town.

Uses of recycled wastes:     

• Many newspapers around the world are made up of up to 50% recycled paper.
• Glass milk bottles are used again and again.
• Organic waste can be recycled into its basic components (compost) by decomposers and can use to enrich soil fertility.
• Organic wastes can be used to generate methane gas (a fuel)
• Scrap metal of huge machines can be melted and reused.