Introduction

In humans, the Solid Waste management is all those activities and action required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes amongst other things, collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and regulation. It also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that relates to waste management encompassing guidance on recycling etc.
The term usually relates to all kinds of waste, whether generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, or other human activities, including municipal (residential, institutional, commercial), agricultural, and special (health care, household hazardous wastes, sewage sludge). Waste management is intended to reduce adverse effects of waste on health, environment or aesthetics.

Solid waste management is a polite term for garbage management. As long as humans have been living in settled communities, solid waste, or garbage, has been an issue, and modern societies generate far more solid waste than early humans ever did.
Daily life in industrialized nations can generate several pounds of solid waste per consumer, not only directly in the home, but indirectly in factories that manufacture goods purchased by consumers.
Garbage: many broad categories of garbage are:

1. Organic waste: kitchen waste, vegetables, flowers, leaves, fruits.
2. Toxic waste: old medicines, paints, chemicals, bulbs, spray cans, fertilizer and pesticide containers, batteries, shoe polish.
3. Recyclable: paper, glass, metals, plastics.
4. Hospital waste such as cloth with blood

Effects of Solid Waste Pollution:

Municipal solid wastes heap up on the roads due to improper disposal system. People clean their own houses and litter their immediate surroundings which affects the community including themselves.

This type of dumping allows biodegradable materials to decompose under uncontrolled and unhygienic conditions. This produces foul smell and breeds various types of insects and infectious organisms besides spoiling the aesthetics of the site. Industrial solid wastes are sources of toxic metals and hazardous wastes, which may spread on land and can cause changes in physicochemical and biological characteristics thereby affecting productivity of soils.

Toxic substances may leach or percolate to contaminate the ground water. In refuse mixing, the hazardous wastes are mixed with garbage and other combustible wastes. This makes segregation and disposal all the more difficult.

Methods of Waste Disposal

Landfill

The Landfill is the most popularly used method of waste disposal used today. This process of waste disposal focuses attention on burying the waste in the land. Landfills are found in all areas. There is a process used that eliminates the odors and dangers of waste before it is placed into the ground. While it is true this is the most popular form of waste disposal it is certainly far from the only procedure and one that may also bring with it an assortment of space.

This method is becoming less these days although, thanks to  the lack of space available and the strong presence of methane and other landfill gases, both of which can  cause numerous contamination problems. Many areas are reconsidering the use of landfills.

Incineration/Combustion

Incineration or combustion is a type disposal method in which municipal solid wastes are burned at high temperatures so as to convert them into residue and gaseous products. The biggest advantage of this type of method is that it can reduce the volume of solid waste to 20 to 30 percent of the original volume, decreases the space they take up and reduce the stress on landfills. This process is also known as thermal treatment where solid waste materials are converted by Incinerators into heat, gas, steam and ash. Incineration is something that is very in countries where landfill space is no longer available, which includes Japan

Recovery and Recycling

Resource recovery is the process of taking useful discarded items for a specific next use. These discarded items are then processed to extract or recover materials and resources or convert them to energy in the form of useable heat, electricity or fuel.

Recycling is the process of converting waste products into new products to prevent energy usage and consumption of fresh raw materials. Recycling is the third component of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle waste hierarchy. The idea behind recycling is to reduce energy usage, reduce volume of landfills, reduce air and water pollution, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve natural resources for future use.