The Future of Green Waste Management in the World
Now, perhaps more than ever before, we are recognizing that there is a growing need to make waste management far more sustainable.
Many improvements have been made thanks to environmental groups and activists pushing for more eco-friendly legislation, but we still have a long way to go to make waste management truly green.
In the future, however, we might see some growth in how waste is managed. Here are just a few of the methods we are seeing now and might see developed more in the future for how to best conduct green waste management around the world.
Going Digital
More companies are starting to go digital. Since then-President Obama signed a law in 2012 that required the EPA to go completely digital by 2015, businesses have had to report their hazardous waste to the EPA.
Many businesses have since moved over to a digital system since they generate less waste and are more efficient than the previous paper-based systems. We should expect to see more businesses go completely digital in the next few years.
Manufacturing Biodegradable Plastics
The market for biodegradable plastics is expanding at a rate of about 19% each year. Biodegradable resins (as well as bioplastics made from corn starch and recycled plastics) are becoming more popular than the regular plastics we have used throughout the years.
A plastic grocery bag could take up to 500 years to fully degrade, whereas biodegradable plastics could take a fraction of that time. There are increasing initiatives for stores in America and Britain to use fewer plastic grocery bags.
In fact, if you shop at a store in Britain, you will likely get charged a few pence for a plastic shopping bag. Many Brits like to avoid this fee and bring reusable bags and personal shopping carts with them on shopping day.
Creating Energy Out of Organic Waste
At least one American county is serious about turning organic waste into energy. Sacramento County, California has the Sacramento BioDigester, a machine which turns food and other sources of organic biodegradable waste and converts them into energy.
This method is incredibly sustainable and innovative since it processes about 100 tons organic waste material every day. If every major U.S. city had a BioDigester, the amount of organic waste that would get converted is almost unfathomable.
These are just a few of the many methods that are being used as green waste management. We should expect to see more of these methods trending into the future as we continually grow more concerned about the damage we are doing to our planet.
