Historical Research on Waste Management

Historical Research on Waste Management
Sean Depkin
Jones International University
Abstract
Waste management is a necessary industry and has been traced back to 3000 B.C. It originally started off garbage dumps or landfills and has progressed to recycling facilities and incinerators that produce both heat and energy from the burned waste. It has been influenced by both motorized transportation and the advances in technology. The most influential person in the waste management industry in the U.S. has been Wayne Huizenga, who saw how to take smaller, independent companies and acquire them into the largest company in the industry. He was able to do that by using stock in his company to make the acquisitions instead of taking out loans from the banks. Waste management and corruption have always been associated with one another because of mafia ownership and even accounting debacles. It is a business that really did not take much to get into other than some capital and transportation. With the decline of available resources and the demand for fewer issues with hazardous waste, an advanced college degree has been necessary to get into management or in the design of the facilities and treatment of waste. Some countries such as Denmark have even advanced as far as to only use their landfills for about 6% of their waste, recycling and incinerating the rest (Buch-Andersen, 2005). Because of booming populations and economies, as well as the planet running out of room for landfills, we must learn to improve our waste management and teach future generations the importance and impact of it.

Almost everything we do produces waste in one form or another, yet rarely do we think of how that waste is handled other than to be put in the garbage and taken away by sanitation workers. Waste management is defined as “the processes involved in dealing with the waste of humans and organisms, including minimization, handling, processing, storage, recycling, transport, and final disposal” (Dictionary.com 's 21st Century Lexicon). The methods of disposal are landfill, incineration, recycling, biological reprocessing (composting), and energy recovery. Waste management can be traced back as early as 3000 B.C., Knossos, Crete, where large holes were dug for refuse, garbage dumped, and then filled with dirt. 2000 B.C., the Chinese had developed methods of recycling bronze for later use. In 500 B.C., the Greeks started waste management regulation by requiring that all rubbish be dumped at least one mile from the city. The effects of waste can be witnessed by looking at the Bubonic Plague, cholera, and typhoid fever, all of which were brought on and continued by filth and contaminated water supplies. Early Europeans used to throw their garbage, and sometimes human waste, in the streets, figuring that stray dogs would consume it.
Waste management has been effected by transportation as early as 1407 when Britain passed a law that waste be stored inside until rakers, who would walk around with a rake and cart, would remove it. By the late 1400’s, German cities required farm carts that brought foodstuffs into the city carry out the waste to the country. The first garbage trucks appeared soon after the invention of motorized transportation (History of refuse collection (or the garbage truck)).
The technological impacts on waste management go back to 1874, when “The Destructor” provides the first organized incineration of garbage in Nottingham, England. Prior to this time, much of the burning had been a secondary result of the production of methane as the waste decomposed (History of waste management). In 1938, the Garwood Load Packer changed the industry because it was the first truck to use hydraulic blades to push and pack the garbage in the truck, thereby allowing the truck to carry more trash before having to dump. PakMor developed a side-opening cylindrical truck for garbage. A hydraulic ram or panel pushes the rubbish in the direction of the rear and into the body. Once packed, the ram or panel doubles as an ejector, permitting the contents to be expelled horizontally (another first for this industry). This removed the issues of instability when a vehicle tips its body to eject a load (Side loaders).
The agricultural history of waste management can be seen as early as pre-industrial times; garbage was mainly comprised of ash from fires, timber, carcasses, and vegetable rubbish. It was placed in the soil where it would work as fertilizer and help to improve the top soil (History of solid waste management). In the 1900s, pig farming was used to consume raw or cooked waste. But after an outbreak of vesicular exanthema of swine virus, waste had to be cooked before feeding it to pigs.
The person who has influenced waste management the most is Wayne Huizenga. Waste management has been in Wayne’s family’s blood with his grandfather Ham hauling garbage at $1.25 a wagon in Chicago (Waste Management, Inc.). Wayne started in waste management by getting a loan for $5,000 from his father and buying a used snub-nosed truck and a small customer base in 1962 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He would work his route from early in the morning, picking up rubbish, and taking it to the garbage dump until early afternoon. He would then wash up, put on a dress suit, and solicit business for his company from homeowners, supermarkets, and retail stores (H. Wayne Huizenga the billionaire garbageman). By 1968 Wayne owned 20 trucks and had a customer base as far south as Key West. Wayne learned that there were considerable profits to be made by consolidating fragmented industry. He merged his company with that of a relative, Dean Buntrock, and together they formed Waste Management.
Dean had envisioned taking the business nationwide. Wayne and Dean set out to fulfill that goal and acquired 90 waste management companies in a nine month time period in 1972. Wayne used Waste Management stock in order to make the buyouts, thereby diluting ownership stakes rather than taking on burdensome interest payments that could destroy the company in an economic slump. They also usually kept the previous owners on as managers, having confidence in that if their companies were suitable enough to obtain, so was their knowledge (H. Wayne Huizenga the billionaire garbageman). His approach was to go after the good ones first; the ones with good management and that were growing. Another key criterion was whether or not the firm had its own disposal site. Getting a permit for a disposal site is a difficult process. They did acquire firms that did not own the site outright, but had part ownership in one (Sexton, 2001). With earnings escalating with each pooled purchase, the share price kept rising, allowing him to continue acquiring (Picker, 1997). Over the next ten years, Waste Management Inc., emerged as the leader in their industry.
Wayne has learned a lesson that escaped the conglomerateurs of old: when to sell. He pulled out of Waste Management before lawsuits and diversification difficulties sank the stock (Picker, 1997). His style has always been the same, to work with a small and loyal group of senior managers and investors (Picker, 1997). He has carried over this same approach in his other, later companies, Blockbuster Video and AutoNation.
There are no formal education requirements to start off as a garbage collector, but if someone would like to be a supervisor or in management, then they should get a bachelor’s degree in waste management or environment science. Success in the industry also means continuing education and certifications so that one is up-to-date on the latest rules, regulations, and laws (Waste management education and training). There is more to waste management than just dumping garbage in a landfill; there are interactions between soils, pesticides/fertilizers, and water. There are the regulations, economics, and public policy that must be considered (Richardson & Mustian, 1993).
Because there is now more of a focus on environmental sustainability, college degrees in biotechnology, environmental science, engineering, and waste-management and clean-product technologies are leading to careers in waste management (EERC ~ Waste Management Research and Education Institute). Biotechnologists are examining and identifying the microbes found in waste water treatment plant sludge. As populations increase and budgets decrease, they must find ways to process more with fewer problems at a decreased cost (EERC ~ Waste Management Research and Education Institute). There are now more toxic and hazardous wastes to treat and dispose of, such as household hazardous waste, agricultural pesticides, animal waste, and industrial sludge. There is also the collection and recycling of materials that can be reused (Richardson & Mustian, 1993).
The waste management industry is also educating communities and schools, K-12, in behavior that is environmentally responsible and on solid waste (EERC ~ Waste Management Research and Education Institute). They have the children visit landfills in order to show them the importance of recycling. They teach them of modern waste management technologies and practices and their impact on the environment (Environmental education).
Ethical issues in waste management have been around for years and are more than just dumping hazardous wastes into a landfill. Other ethical issues range from mafia ties to “cooking” the books, examples of which are not recording expenses to write off the costs of unsuccessful landfill projects, inflating liabilities when making acquisitions so that excess capital can be used to avoid recording operating expenses, and inappropriately capitalizing expenses (Waste Management, Inc.). They are not just limited to the United States as they have been found to occur around the world in Italy, Taiwan, and Georgia, the country (Tsai, 2008).
In Naples, Italy, the Camorra, a local mafia, are involved in almost every aspect of waste management there, from collection, to transporting and storing, to treating it. It has been said that their waste management business is more lucrative than their drug trade business (Smoltczyk, 2008). Toxic and hazardous waste, from both industrial and household, were either burned or dumped causing both air and soil pollution (Andreani, 2008).
The basics of a mafia or mob controlling the waste management boils down to this: it is a business that is lucrative and easy to get in to, usually just needing trucks to collect and transport the waste. They get into a waste management business and use price fixing, bid rigging, and control territories so that customers can’t pick who will collect their garbage (Tsai, 2008). They then prevent the competition from driving down prices through strong arm tactics such as arson, harassment, violence, and extortion (Natta Jr., 1996).
Waste Management Inc. has not been a stranger to its share of ethical issues. In between the years of 1992 and 1997, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission accused top executives of inflating profits to meet earnings targets and defrauding investors (Newkirk, 2002). They bypassed depreciation expenses, did not record expenses to write off the costs of unsuccessful landfill projects, and incorrectly capitalized expenses (Newkirk, 2002). They were assisted in covering their scheme by Arthur Andersen, LLP, their long-time auditor (Newkirk, 2002).
As economic development rates increase in Europe so does total waste generation (European Environment Agency, 2010). Some countries have taken a progressive approach to waste management and have been doing more than required by the European Union, while others have done minimal efforts. Several countries, including Denmark, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands have almost completely done away with using landfills, by using assorted methods of waste management, including recycling, composting, and incineration (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 2012). According to its government, 62% of Danish household waste was incinerated, 31% recycled, and 6% remaining went into landfills (Buch-Andersen, 2005).
Denmark has taken an approach different than its European neighbors and tries to get as much heat and power out of its incinerated waste as possible (Ministry of Environment and Energy, Denmark - Danish Environmental Protection Agency, 1999). Denmark tries to prevent the generation of waste by considering waste treatment while designing products and using environmentally friendly products. Denmark has a hierarchy for waste management with recycling first, incineration with energy recovery next and using landfills last (Ministry of Environment and Energy, Denmark - Danish Environmental Protection Agency, 1999). There is a state tax on waste, with using landfills as the most expensive, incineration less expensive, and recycling is free or tax exempt.
Denmark was the first European country to ban putting waste in landfills that could be incinerated (RenoSam and Ramboll, 2006). Through cooperation between district heating companies, municipalities, and waste management companies, it has achieved ideal utilization of waste as a resource. The generation of power and heat based on waste has priority over other types of fuels. Incinerating waste for energy and heat created 3% of all electrical production and 18% of all heat produced in 2003 (RenoSam and Ramboll, 2006).
The Danish attitude towards waste management leans heavily on recycling, using waste as a resource, while preventing waste and loss of resources (European Environment Agency, 2010).
Greece, on the other hand, because of complicated social, legal, political, and environmental issues, has some of the most difficult waste management issues (European Environment Agency, 2010). This has been caused by changing of consumption habits, ascent of living standards, increase in tourism, and growth in urban areas (European Environment Agency, 2010). Greece ranks last in terms of collection, sorting, and the treatment of their waste, in the 27 members of the European Union. This was based on criteria such as total waste being recycled, availability to collection services, and violations of the applicable European legal system (Kontogiannis, 2012). Greece failed on 16 out of the 18 criteria, only passing on the accessibility to waste collection services (Kontogiannis, 2012).
While most other European countries have moved away from using landfills by using waste-to-energy treatment plants, Greece depends on landfills so much that they run 24 hours a day, seven days a week (Byrne). Greece has been resistant to use waste-to-energy treatment facilities because the citizens do not like being able to see waste sites from their homes, fear of pollution and emissions effects on their personal health, and also the impact on tourism, which some residents rely on for income (Byrne).
Recycling in Greece is done by communal collection points in the main towns, collected by a collection vehicle, co-mingled, and then dropped off to a recovery facility for sorting (Byrne). There is no regular collection from rural areas and villages. One-fifth of all the waste produced in Greece is plastic, but only 1% is recycled (Galpin, 2005). In a strange twist of fate, the largest recycling treatment facility in Europe, located in Athens, has been unable to be used because it was damaged when a mountain of garbage fell on top of it (Galpin, 2005).
Although this all sounds bad, the Greeks are still on track to meeting the EU Landfill Directive requirements (Byrne). They have reduced biodegradable waste from landfills, and are moving forward to meet their recycling goals, once the proper treatment facilities are in place. They must still educate their citizens on the importance of recycling, but all countries had to go through some sort of learning curve before recycling and ecological and environmental waste management took hold.
The future of waste management will continue to use technological advances to improve upon using waste for power and heat from incineration. It will also be dependent on manufacturers using environmentally friendly materials in the construction of their products. These will either be biodegradable, so that landfills do not become full of waste that will not decompose, or products that when manufactured do not cause harm to the environment with hazardous waste materials by-products from construction. I do see an increase in advanced technological degrees in the field of waste management because of the need to have fewer issues with the treatment of waste, both household and industrial, and the need to keep our environment clean. Each generation becomes more concerned with recycling and reducing the materials going into landfills and then passes this concern down to the next generation. As long as this cycle continues, each generation should help reduce the drain of natural resources and improve our waste management system.
Waste management has been around from the times that people first became organized into communities. It has been affected by both the advent of motorized transportation and technological advances. One of the biggest influences on the United States waste management industry was Wayne Huizenga, who consolidated the fragmented industry into one large conglomerate. Although there are no formal education requirements to start in the waste management industry, advanced college degrees are necessary for those who want to be in management or supervisory roles. There have been ethical issues in waste management from mafia ties to accounting fiascos. They are not limited to the United States as corruption in waste management has been found all over Europe and even the Far East. With the population and manufacturing increasing and the decline of available space for landfills, other methods for waste management must be considered. These include relying more on recycling and using incineration of waste for energy and heat production. Whether we want to think about it or not, waste management and its impact on the environment must be kept forefront if we want to have a cleaner healthier world for us and future generations. What we do with waste now will impact our world for years to come.

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