Impacts of Biowaste with Mitigation Efforts in Cities: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Jessie Wu and Version 1 by Prakash Kumar Sarangi.

In many cities, huge quantities of biowaste solid matterials are generated, making it a big challenge to keep our cities smart/clean without creating health issues. The second challenge is to mitigate solid biowastes from municipalities, and it needs systematic valorization/conversion approaches to transform/generate them into clean/least carbon-emitting fuel sources. This effort can help make smart cities with additional amounts of energy generation that can be used by each citizen for their daily energy needs. In the cities, biowastes are reported as food waste (from domestic kitchens and restaurant/hotel), green plant residues (from parks and other cleaning activities), and other miscellaneous sources.

  • biowastes
  • conversion
  • environment
  • fuels
  • municipal
  • smart cities
  • sustainable way

1. Introduction

In the coming years, in many cities, various types of organic and inorganic wastes will be generated from different sources like household, industrial, academic, and hospital activities, and these wastes, including e-waste in landfills, can impact surface and groundwater sources due to the presence of harmful chemicals that leach from landfills into surface water sources [62][1]. Further, toxic byproducts of improper e-waste recycling tasks can be reached through sewers and city drains. These products in different waste streams can be contaminated with surface water by entering local waterways. It has been discussed for plastic influences, and then systematic plastic waste management can be started at the household and individual levels [61,62][1][2]. Some case studies were conducted in Jamaica City. In this restudyearch, it was started by environmental wardens in the country by sensitizing their neighbors to community cleanliness and disposing of waste in a safe way, and eco-friendly manner [63][3]. People have talked about community members, and these were employed through world bank-supported projects. These projects can help spread awareness about systematic management, and then they can keep the communities clean and healthy [60,63][3][4]. Normally, communities and school people (including young students) can be found as effective parts of the projects, and these can be involved via collecting the several waste types with sorting types for separate waste like plastic bottles/e-waste. These can be utilized for several wastes, like plastic and metals, by effective recyclers. And remaining wastes can be removed from them (including litter or clogging) [64][5]. Based on systematic solid municipal waste strategies, people need to be involved in adequate collection and disposal systems in many places in cities, and then they need to apply the necessary steps for cities with proper insurance of all types of waste management in an eco-friendly or sound way. For smart cities, it needs to pursue sufficient interventions like the ban on certain types of plastic use/burning [58,64][5][6].

2. A Case Study on Plastic Waste Accumulation

In California, plastic materials are now banned, and this effort has resulted in a 72% decrease in plastic litter on local beaches from 2010 to 2017. Further, a plastic ban by itself cannot solve the issue of plastic mismanagement. In many cities, there have been many attempts to implement plastic materials ban rules without proper incentives and management structures [65][7]. These can struggle to achieve meaningful results due to noncompliance, black markets, and continued littering of plastics. It needs an adequate disposal system for several wastes, including plastic material. Further, efforts are required for plastic policies with proper support from an effective waste management system, and government authority capability is also needed to enforce such policies [66][8].
In the coming period, in many cities, plastic pollution/waste will be a major concern, and it can cause the accumulation of plastic objects like bottles and any other products in the city environment with high chances of adverse influences on wildlife habitat and human health. Due to plastic material accumulation, it has entered three-quarters (via the recycling process) of the environment, like the ocean and also our ecosystems, with more destruction and pollution [65,66][7][8]. In less developed countries or their cities, the majority of plastic waste can end up in the ocean ecosystem, affecting marine animals. In recent years, the utilization of many products made of plastic materials, like plastic bottles and food containers, has been reported, and is due to inexpensive and highly durable materials [67][9]. Plastic materials showed slow degradation (nearly 400 years/more for partial/complete forms). It is also due to its chemical structures, and now it has become a big challenge for many cities/also for the world. Due to huge populations and product packaging tasks, plastic waste is generated in developing countries, and it can end up in open, unregulated dump sites or be thrown directly into rivers and streams, creating a threat to aquatic life [68][10]. Dumping sites of plastic materials can result in the blowing of wind into water bodies like rivers, and then, with the help of river water medium, plastic materials can be carried out to sea locations. Another issue is the volume of plastic material that can be exported to developing nations from Europe, the U.S., Japan, and similar countries [67,68][9][10]. Recycling standards for developing countries and developed nations in the world are found to be different, and they can affect the environment by causing significant environmental damage [69,70,71][11][12][13]. Next, due to the significant quantity of plastic waste, an adequate recycling process has not yet been performed, which can result in more plastic being thrown into unregulated dump sites in landfills in the developing world. In the UK, over 5 million tons of plastic waste (due to plastic packaged consumer products each year) are sent in three parts to landfills and one part to recycling processing [72,73][14][15].

3. Trends in Waste Generation in Worldwide Cities

In recent years, post-consumer waste generation trends have been found to more than double quantities at the city level worldwide over the last thirty years. Due to more population growth in the MSW generation, an exponential trend was found from 1980 onwards and still continues to grow steadily in many European countries, like the North [74][16]. In Western Europe and North America, the average MSW rate was found to be between 1.4 and 1.8 kg/capita/day in the last decade. But, now, due to huge population growth in many large cities in the global South, it is now reaching a value between 1 and 1.4 kg/capita/day. The urban lifestyle can contribute to high quantities of waste generation from people’s homes and also from outside sources [75][17]. Food service industries can also thrive on disposable options with people’s increased food consumption on the streets and their habits of leaving consumable foods in disposable waste bins in public [76,77][18][19]. In 2012, urban residents at the global level generated nearly 1.2 kg/capita/day of MSW, compared to 0.6 kg/capita/day in 2002. In Brazil, the average daily MSW quantity generation/person is about 1.1 kg. But in major cities in Africa, MSW generation can be estimated at 0.3 to 1.4 kg/capita/day [78][20]. Differences in waste generation can be found at large ranges, with the quantity of waste generation in the range of 0.5 kg/capita/day in Bamenda and Yaoundé cities and 0.8 kg/capita/day in the city of Cameroon. Further studies on waste generation quantities are performed, and they are based on population size and growth rates of people with influences on MSW management tasks. There is a positive correlation between population size and the rate of waste production, with % of households involved in regular waste collection activity [73,77,78][15][19][20].

4. Waste Generation with City Development Trends

In the current era, industrial production of consumer goods is characterized by a reduction in product life spans, growing product variety, material component diversity, and increased packaging trends in product safety and convenience tasks. These are responsible for generating huge waste quantities and producing water, soil, and air contaminants [79][21]. Further, the rise in solid waste material can be linked to increased levels of urbanization and wealth. It was found that between 1997 and 2007, GDP (gross domestic product) in India increased at a rate of 7%. However, the estimation of the rise in MSW over 10 years is found to be nearly 45%, from 40 to 70 million tons [80][22]. And this figure for Brazil also found a similar relationship between wealth and MSW generation capacity. From 2009 to 2010, GDP rose by 7.5%, with an increase in MSW generation of 6.8%. Reports on population growth are discussed, along with increased product consumption and waste generation trends. And more affluent segments of the population consume more, leading to the generation of waste with larger impacts on the environment [79,80][21][22]. Some countries like China, Brazil, and India have added nearly 509 million new consumer items between 1990 and 2000, with an average purchasing power of 839 billion USD. Normally, new consumers can be found as people with typically four-member households with at least a purchasing power parity ~PPP of $10,000/year (USD). And these PPP dollars can be found between 1.3 and 5.3 times higher than conventional dollars in twenty countries (out of which seventeen are developing and three are transitional countries) [81][23]. Further, increased income can make people more able to purchase household appliances, electronics, cars, and other items, and it can indicate high lifestyles for the consumption of more packaged food items and meats [82][24]. In the current situation, waste generation practices are characterized by an exponential increase in volume and material diversification of discarded objects and substances [83][25]. And it is due to the increase in packaging, shorter product durability, programmed obsolescence, economic growth logic, consumerism, and mass consumption. All these factors can be responsible for driving the MSW generation in cities, and then in cities, there is a chance of copying large quantities of MSW [82,83][24][25].

5. Household Waste Composition in Cities

It has been discussed that different waste compositions can come from household locations with changes due to cultural and technological activities and can vary across different continents and regions with time. In household waste, changes can depend on many technical aspects involved in the creation of a more sustainable and equitable waste management service [84][26]. Different ashes come from heating and cooking tasks, and they could be found as larger components of household waste in some cities, like North America, until the middle of the last century. Urban waste in the global North in the current period can contain more recyclable goods and electronics, with a higher chance of MSW generation [85][27]. MSW can contain larger portions of biodegradable waste with the least portion of non-recyclable material fractions [74,86][16][28]. Among various kinds of valuable materials, it was reclaimed by households or by informal recyclers for reuse in trading tasks. In American cities, household waste can have high fractions of organic compounds/matter, and it can be found up to 70% or more [87][29]. Household waste compositions in Brazil are reported to have larger fractions of organic matter up to 51.4%, and these are highly recyclable type wastes (32%), like metals, papers, cardboard, plastics, or glass, with lesser/smaller proportions (i.e., 17%) of non-recyclable materials [88][30]. Further, the number of electronic waste items is now growing at a high rate due to increased demand for e-waste recycling trends. MSW generation is now rising from 2017 to 2018, and it is due to the EPA enhancing its food measurement methodology with a full account for waste food management throughout the food system [87,88][29][30].

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