Environmental Health and Safety

Environmental Health and Safety

The need for waste management is essential in assessing the requirements for properly managed waste in a community. Needs assessment process would involve checking the existing waste management strategies, identifying the areas of importance, focusing on the critical needs, and identifying possible solutions. Waste management involves supervising the gathering, ferrying, processing, discarding and recycling of waste materials formed by human activity. If this waste is not properly managed, it can be a threat to humans and the environment in general. Thus, needs assessment for managing waste would be conducted by observing the methods that can be used to control the negative effects of waste. Waste is classified into four classes namely solid, liquid, gaseous, and radio active. Each of these four classes has its own methods of discarding.

To begin with, observation of how landfills are managed is essential in assessing the need for waste management. Landfill is whereby waste is collected and buried in an isolated piece of land that is relatively far from residential areas such as quarries. The waste is then compacted and covered in order to keep rodents away and keep the waste intact. This is the cheapest method of discarding waste but its effectiveness relies on how the dumping site is planned and run.

There are several problems that are associated with landfills. Lehmann (2008) argues that if the landfill is not planned well, it might attract rodents such as rats and mice and also debris from the dumpsite might be blown by wind into residential areas. Secondly, these dumping sites generate a gas that contains carbon dioxide and methane which is produced by decaying organic matter. This gas has a fowl odor and does not support plants life. This gas can be extracted using perforated pipes and then burnt to generate electricity. Thus, without proper management of landfills in a community, the community is deemed to be affected by waste.

Another method of waste management that can be assessed is incineration. Incineration is the most appropriate method of discarding solid, liquid and gaseous waste. Its best suited for places where land is inadequate. In this method waste is discarded by burning or by exposing the waste matter to high temperatures referred to as thermal treatment. The waste is usually put in a furnace where it is burned to produce gas