Impacts of waste at Higher Level: The same statement as SL, with different real cases: the waste sector's emissions, CopenHill, the Payatas collapse, San Francisco's composting law and Malaysia's returned containers. At HL, ask who gains and who pays.
Practise this as you read
- Compare the impacts of two ways of treating waste.
- Explain why waste moved abroad is unjust.
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Harm at every stage: Waste causes harm long before it reaches a bin: making the goods has impacts too.
Making, treating, managing
- Waste has impacts at three stages: making goods, treating waste and managing it.
- Making goods uses resources and energy and releases greenhouse gases.
- For many goods the production stage has the biggest carbon impact.
- Landfill and incineration add to the impact; recycling lowers it (a bar below zero).
- Overall impact = production + landfill + incineration - savings from recycling.
- Metal has a lower overall impact than paper: metal is recycled more; paper is landfilled and rots.
Real example: the World Bank estimated that treating and disposing of waste released 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2016, about 5% of the world's emissions, rising to 2.6 billion tonnes by 2050 if nothing changes.
Read what differs: Explaining why metal's overall impact is lower than paper's? If their production bars are equal, production is not the reason: look at recycling and landfill.
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Each way of treating waste has its own impacts. The papers often ask you to compare two of them.
Impacts of treating waste
- Landfill: rotting waste gives off methane and leachate, a toxic liquid, and takes up land.
- Incineration: releases CO2 and toxic gases, leaves toxic ash, but cuts volume and makes electricity.
- Open dumps and burning: smoke, rats and mosquitoes, blocked drains and floods.
- Discarded plastic: litter, enters rivers and seas, eaten by animals or tangles them.
- Comparing two methods? Give an impact of each, or only one mark counts.
Plastic thrown away
- Fills landfill space
- Washes into rivers and seas
- Eaten by animals or tangles them
- Litter spoils beaches and tourism
Plastic incinerated
- Releases CO2 and toxic gases
- Leaves toxic ash for landfill
- Volume much smaller
- Heat can make electricity
Real example: CopenHill in Copenhagen burns the city's waste to make electricity and heat homes, and has a ski slope on its roof. It still releases CO2 and leaves ash that must be landfilled.
Remember it as: Landfill rots, incineration burns, dumping spreads.
Waste and people: Social impacts are the effects on people: their health, safety, income and quality of life.
Social impacts
- Health: smoke, toxic metals and disease near dumps, landfills and burning sites.
- Safety: badly managed dumps can collapse onto homes.
- Jobs and income: millions of waste pickers earn a living sorting waste, often unprotected.
- Quality of life: smell, noise, pests, lower house prices, lost tourism.
- The poorest people usually live closest to the waste.
Real example: in July 2000, after two weeks of typhoon rain, a mound of waste at the Payatas dump in Manila collapsed and caught fire, killing more than 200 people. The Philippines then passed a law to close open dumps.
Environmental or social?: Environmental impacts harm ecosystems (soil, water, air, wildlife). Social impacts harm people. Say which one you are giving.
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Good management cuts these impacts. A seven-mark question asks how management protects soil, water or wildlife: each strategy, linked to the harm it stops, earns a mark.
Managing waste to cut the harm
- Reduce, reuse, recycle: fewer toxins and less plastic reach the soil.
- Sort out hazardous items (batteries, fluorescent lamps, tyres, spray cans) before landfill.
- Lined landfills stop leachate soaking into soil and groundwater.
- Incineration breaks down some toxins; composting returns nutrients to the soil.
- Laws, fines and education make people use proper collection points.
- Fewer toxins protect the soil organisms that keep soil fertile.
Separate
- Since 2009 homes and businesses must put food scraps in a separate bin
Collect
- Trucks take the scraps to a composting site outside the city
Compost
- The scraps rot with air into compost over several weeks
Return
- Farms and vineyards spread the compost, returning nutrients to the soil
Seven marks, seven links: Each paragraph: one strategy, then how it keeps toxins or plastic out of the soil, water or wildlife.
Somebody else's waste: The impacts of waste are often felt far from where it was made.
Impacts in another place
- Waste is often shipped from high-income to low-income countries.
- Old electronics are sent as second-hand goods; many are broken and become e-waste.
- Plastic sent 'for recycling' is often burnt or dumped where it lands.
- People who did not make the waste suffer its impacts: environmental injustice.
- Rules: the Basel Convention (1989) controls shipping hazardous waste; plastic was added in 2021.
Real example: after China stopped taking most plastic waste in January 2018, much of it went to Malaysia, where some was burnt or dumped. In January 2020 Malaysia sent 150 containers of plastic waste back to 13 mainly rich countries, including France, the UK and the USA.
Environmental injustice: Rich consumers get the goods; poorer communities far away get the smoke, toxins and health risks. That unfair sharing of harm is environmental injustice.
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How this comes up: Paper 2, Section B (b): a seven-mark Explain on how managing waste protects part of the environment.
Old phones, laptops and batteries contain lead, mercury and cadmium. If dumped, these can wash into rivers and groundwater.
Explain how strategies for managing e-waste may help to protect water quality.
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