Sustainable waste management
Waste management goes beyond discarding garbage. It involves all the activities and processes required to handle waste material. These include collection, diversion, and disposal.
Sustainable waste management generates environmental, social, and economic benefits for all. By enforcing proper waste management practices, communities also contribute to sustainable development by achieving several SDGs.
Connecting waste management and the SDGs
SDG 3: Good health and well-being
SDG 12: Responsible consumption, and production
SDG 13: Climate action
SDG 14: Life below water
SDG 15: Life on land
How do you achieve sustainable resource and waste management?
Waste diversion
The process of redirecting waste from the landfills. This can be achieved though composting organic waste or recycling inorganic waste to ensure minimal waste is incinerated at the landfills.
Waste management hierarchy
Since the rate of resource consumption and waste generation has increased over the years, it has become evident that human actions have had a negative impact on the environment, hence the need for better management.
Introduced by the European Commission in the 1970s, the waste management hierarchy is a framework designed to guide and rank waste management decisions at both the individual and organizational levels. In this hierarchy, waste prevention is the most environmentally friendly, while disposal is the least preferred option for waste management. This concept is more commonly known as the 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.
However, there are five steps within the complete hierarchy. These steps have been adopted by UNB to ensure that more waste is diverted from the landfill than disposed of.
The 3 Rs vs. the 5 Rs
Let's look at the differences between the 3Rs and 5Rs in the waste management hierarchy.
