Waste has always been a problem—a plague that haunts our environment. Despite many efforts to recycle, we still have billions of litres of trash in the ocean and in landfills. The good news is that there is a movement to curb this, and it is called waste management technologies.

Yes, there are people who use science to create new technologies that improve how large manufacturers manage their waste. We shall take a look at these today, and we are hoping that it re-invigorates your passion towards helping save the Earth.

From Waste to Energy

One big leap for humankind is the technology that allows us to use garbage to produce power. Today, we no longer just throw waste into landfills. Instead, we segregate them and use the garbage to produce electricity or gas. The machines that we use here convert garbage into what we call biogas. These machines are called digesters. The great thing about it is that it is not so picky—we can now produce gas from leftover foods, animal waste, agricultural waste, and so much more.

There are several ways that people do this. The most common ones are depolymerization, plasma arc gasification, pyrolysis and gasification. Just to take a peek, gasification refers to the process where you turn carbonaceous substances into carbon dioxide. Some turn it into carbon monoxide. In the process, they generate gas that can be used as an alternative source of energy. From here, we can use the gas to generate heat and electricity.

Recycling of Precious Metals

We use precious metals all the time. A good example of this is gold because it is a good conductor of electricity. Almost all devices have gold in them. The phone you use to access sites like GGBet online has real gold.

The problem is that once we discard our devices, we also discard the gold with them. Electronic chips and boards just pile up in our landfills.

Today, there are machines that we use to separate the gold once again from these boards. The gold is recycled and put into good use once again. It is not only gold that we recycle. There are waste management technologies for other metals like palladium, iridium, platinum and iridium.

Modern Landfills

Landfills are huge—they are the final destination of our garbage. One big problem is that we just fill them out and then move on to another landfill once the capacity is full.

To address this, we now have technologies where garbage disposal in these landfills are modernized. There are solar panels that produce energy in a sustainable way, preventing the further use of fuel and reducing the emission of carbon.

Some materials in landfills will take millions of years to break down. They have limited capacity. Apart from technology, we cap the landfill and then rehabilitate it. They are maintained for up to 30 years, and some of them are turned into green spaces, like community parks.

Large-scale Plastic Recycling

Plastic causes drastic problems not just for the atmosphere but in the ocean. We all have seen images of turtles with plastic straws caught in their noses, and this prompted people to act. We dispose of 400 million tonnes of plastic every year, and yet only 15% of that is recycled.

One technology that we are using now to recycle plastic is called pyrolysis. The plastic is converted into liquid hydrocarbon and then used to create new products. In pyrolysis, the plastic is broken down back to its original state as raw materials. The product of this process is a liquid that looks like crude oil. You can burn it as fuel or use it as a chemical base to produce new plastic items.

The journey to eradicating plastics is young. Today, there are only a few companies that do pyrolysis. At that, only a few thousand tonnes of plastic wastes go through recycling. This is a small number, but it is a good start.

Waste management technologies are in transition. Soon, we can expect that there would be machines that we can buy—machines that we can use at home, so we also manage our waste properly. For now, the least thing that we can do is to segregate our garbage between biodegradable and non-biodegradable. Also, we highly encourage you to recycle things—do not throw coffee jars. Instead, re-use them. Use paper bags when you do your grocery or always have a reusable bag with you instead of using plastic.