Waste Management System

Waste Management System

Waste management is the "generation, prevention, characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse and residual disposition of solid wastes". There are various types of solid waste including municipal (residential, institutional, commercial), agricultural, and special (health care, household hazardous wastes, sewage sludge). The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and the process is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics.

Sewage treatment may also be referred to as waste treatment, although the latter is a broader term which can also be applied to purely industrial wastes. Surface runoff and effluents from small-scale industries or pre-treated industrial wastes are sometimes routed through municipal sewage treatment plants when the environmental advantages of treatment outweigh the disadvantages of reduced treatment efficiency. Dilution of sewage by stormwater runoff or industrial waste with low biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) decreases the efficiency of secondary treatment; because secondary treatment ecosystems require a minimum concentration of biologically decomposable waste to sustain the ecosystem population.