Waste management : Classification of wastes

Waste management

 Human activities related to livelihood and welfare generate waste. All wastes are pollutants and they create pollution in one way or other. Fundamentally air, land and water pollution results mostly due to improper disposal of wastes.

Classification of wastes

1. Bio - degradable waste

These are wastes capable of being removed or degraded by biological or microbial action. Waste from agricultural products, animal wastes and waste from food processing, leather, fibre, paper and wood etc. come under this group.

2. Non bio-degradable waste

The substances which are normally not acted upon and decomposed by microbes are non-bio degradable wastes. It includes mineral waste, mining waste and industrial waste and non-degradable metallic and plastics substances.

3. Mixture of biodegradable and non-biodegraded wastes

It includes municipal waste and industrial waste. Municipal waste contains household garbage, piles of food scrapes, old newspaper, discarded and throw away materials, glass, cans, old appliances, broken materials, leather shoes, fibres, plastics and others. Construction waste materials, packaging materials, sewage, hospital waste, junk and vehicles are varied types of urban wastes. All these wastes are found in the form of semisolid, solid, semiliquid, sludge and in fly ash form.