1. A ‘waste’ is ‘a resource remaining unutilized’ or ‘a resource out of place’.  

For example, out of the food that we consume, only a part is ‘utilized’ by the body system and the balance is thrown out as ‘waste’. The part ‘utilized’ is converted into useful components such as blood, bones, flesh, nerves, and so on, or looked at in another way, into cells and microorganisms constituting the body, and these too, in turn are thrown out as ‘waste’. Finally, the body itself, on death, becomes a ‘waste’.  

Another example: to run a 1 million tonne steel mill, nearly 5 million tonnes of raw materials---mostly iron ore, limestone and coal/coke---are needed, the extraction of which leaves behind huge mineral and allied wastes. Most of these raw materials themselves are released as wastes from the mill. Steel ingots are sent to rolling mills, which release their own wastes. The rolled sections are utilized in manufacturing and construction industries which release the concomitant wastes. 

After the manufactured equipment and structures have lived their life, these too are junked mostly as wastes.   The ‘wastes’ may be solid, liquid, gaseous, or radioactive; hazardous and nonhazardous, or, toxic and non-toxic.  

2. ‘Wastes’ and ‘Waste Management’

How a society manages its ‘wastes’ has critical socio-economic-healthenvironmental implications, because; 

• A ‘waste’, like any other product, represents inputs  of valuable and scarce material and energy resources, and, hence, appears as a loss of these resources. 

• A ‘waste’ generally causes environmental pollution and damage---of land, water, air and living environment---being beyond the capacity of the environment to absorb and recycle it through natural processes, and, in most cases, is also a human health hazard. For example, polluted drinking water alone is likely to kill around 1.6 million people in the world this year. 

• A ‘waste’ requires to be collected, transported, and disposed off, often after being suitably treated, and the collection-cum-disposal systems are themselves becoming increasingly costly and cumbersome.  In the process, these may themselves require large inputs of energy, material, land and labour resources, and cause widespread environmental distress. The term ‘Waste Management’ includes all issues and processes associated with the generation, processing, and disposal of all categories of wastes produced by human activities or related to human existence; it includes, therefore, the stages of production and minimization, collection, handling and transportation, reuse and recycling, and treatment and disposal of all such wastes. It is undertaken mainly to minimize the effect of wastes on resource loss and conservation, health, environment, costs, and aesthetics. It incurs financial and social and other costs including ‘external’ costs. The term includes the issue of ‘regulation’ of the various aspects of management of wastes.  The responsibility for the management of specific wastes may lie with governments, local bodies, and/or waste generators.For example,

 a) The Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) concept promotes the integration of all costs associated with a product throughout its life-cycle (including the packaging and the end of life waste disposal costs) into the market price of the product; and 

b) the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) is another concept to make the polluter bear all the incidental costs of environmental pollution. 

3. Hierarchy of Options and Stages in Waste Management

Important options and stages in ‘Waste Management’ are listed below in a broad hierarchical order:

• Prevention and Reduction: The first option should be to prevent the generation itself of a waste, and since that may not be mostly possibly, to minimize its generation. 

• Reuse:  Once produced, the best option would be to ‘reuse’ (‘salvage’ or ‘repair’) it to the maximum extent possible. 

• Recycling:  Whatever waste remains after ‘reuse’, should be ‘recycled’ through suitable treatment processes for recovery of usable products (resources including energy). 

• Treatment and Disposal: Whatever waste remains after ‘reuse’ and ‘recycling’, should be treated for being disposed off in a suitable and, to the extent possible, socially useful manner. Many wastes,  such as human waste, garbage, and e-waste, due to their highly polluting, health-hazardous or toxic nature require extensive physical, and/or chemical---biological ‘treatment’ before being safely disposed of into land, water or air.  Thus, a Waste Management System (WMS) may involve four primary stages or  processes: Minimization of Waste Generation, Efficient Waste Collection, Optimal Waste Reuse and Recycling, and Effective Waste Treatment and Disposal. (see Paras 4 to 6 below) 

4. Minimization of Waste Generation

Both material and energy resources go into the formation of all products which in stages end up as ‘wastes’. Even the processes of reuse, recycling, treatment and disposal of wastes, along with the processes of waste  collection, handling, transportation, and storage, involve significant material, energy, environmental, and financial inputs. All un-recovered energy inputs finally end up degraded as low grade heat and are lost. Conventional energy resources, being mostly nonrenewable, are getting scarce, particularly in India, where 75% of its hydrocarbon energy resources are imported at exorbitant costs, and other fossil fuels too are not plentiful. Material resources, particularly mineral resources, too are becoming increasingly scarce in the scenario of growing population and fast economic growth. Therefore, the growing use of energy and material resources is becoming more and more unsustainable. 

Hence, the greatest challenge in Waste Management is how to minimize the loss of these resources through ‘prevention’ and ‘reduction’ of waste generation. There is a large-scale scope for ‘prevention’ of waste generation by avoidance of production and consumption of obviously superfluous, non-essential, non-utilitarian products and services. Easily preventable waste generation occurs when such goods and services are patronized. Lifestyles and social attitudes that encourage tendencies such as consumerism, shop-alcoholism, and display of enticing advertisements, encourage generation of easily avoidable wastes in a society. It particularly happens in societies where large disparities exist in purchasing power, consumption of socially unaffordable goods and services becomes increasingly respectable, and economic growth itself is partly measured in terms of such a consumption pattern. All this happens because of the growing dichotomy between individual and social perspectives. This also costs heavily in terms of scarce energy and material resources while a large part of society still awaits satisfaction of basic needs.  

Promotion of waste ‘prevention’ in society will require extensive and on-going studies and research, documentation, and propagation and advocacy of illeffects of avoidable production and consumption of goods and services. Obviously, there are limits to such a ‘preventive’ approach for minimization of waste generation and an equal emphasis is needed on ‘reduction’ of waste generation without materially affecting the consumption and life styles. It may be done, say, by increasing the efficiency of processes of production and the durability of products, improving their maintainability, instituting performance standards, minimizing packaging, storage and transportation requirements, improving ‘repair’ and upgradation services, and discouraging the ‘throwaway’ tendencies. Adoption of the principle of  Swadeshi, as was done during the freedom struggle of India, to encourage use of local resources and products and self-reliance as important bases of economic growth, can also help in minimizing transport, packaging and energy costs and curbing socially undesirable consumerist tendencies, apart from providing an ideological support towards resource conservation and social concern.