According To One Report, Massachusetts May Only Have One Landfill By The Year 2021

Waste disposal in Massachusetts reduced slightly to 5.51 million tonnes in 2015, while exports climbed and total disposal capacity fell, according to a new annual report from Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

To reach 1.38 million metric tonnes, garbage exports rose by 16 percent in 2015. Maine, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island trailed closely behind New Hampshire and Ohio as the most popular vacation spots. The amount of waste imported into the United States increased slightly to 500,000 tonnes.

As of 2015, more than 70% of the garbage that was disposed of in the state was sent to the seven operating waste-to-energy combustion plants. Although the state’s nine active landfills might decrease to just one by 2021 if disposal rate aren’t lowered and expansion licences aren’t granted, it’s still possible that the number of landfills will continue to grow.

According to a long-term strategy, the DEP plans on reducing waste disposal from 6.55 million tonnes to 4.55 million tonnes by 2020 as part of the plan. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has announced that it would no longer publish on trash reduction and recycling diversion rates in order to better concentrate on its primary goal of reducing the amount of garbage being disposed of. Waste exports may be at record lows, and the DEP may point to the fact that management hasn’t risen to keep pace with GDP growth, but it’s apparent that more effort is required to meet the government’s next objective.

It is possible that even if the objective is met, the state will still be short of internal disposal capacity, and exporting prices may increase. New landfill space has very modest public support, as shown by Casella’s continuing attempts in the municipality of Southbridge to expand a site, and compliance costs might potentially rise at any sites that enlarge. New WTE facilities are likewise unlikely to be built in Massachusetts.

Efforts to legislate per capita waste reductions have been ineffective, and more municipalities have adopted pay-as-you-throw schemes as a result. The state’s restriction on the discharge of organic waste from commercial generators since 2014 has also been beneficial. However, redirecting home organics would need a more sophisticated and expensive combination of elements than the present commercial strategy, which might lessen the requirement for disposal capacity.

It has evaluated the possible risks to health & the environment posed by chemical discharges from landfills and other municipal solid waste processing plants (MSW). Due to the widespread, long-standing, and continuous requirement to handle MSW disposal, there are many such sites and facilities. It is common for the MSW business to employ landfills and combustion (usually waste-to-energy) plants. There is a distinct section devoted to waste-to-energy risk assessment, which includes an examination of numerous exposure paths that track toxins across the ecosystem and food chain.

Environmental and health risks associated with landfills may be reduced by the use of new technologies. With little regard for the environment in the past, landfills were started on accessible land or in abandoned quarries. Many of these landfills became Superfund sites because they were unlined, uncapped, or indiscriminately accepted any trash (including industrial chemicals), which poisoned watersheds with salts, metals, or organic compounds. Properly planned and managed sanitary landfills avoid contamination leaching but increase landfill gas production, which may lead to nuisance smells and raise worries about possibly harmful elements if the gas is released. There are a number of places where landfill gas is collected. Air pollution is emitted as a result of treatment methods that entail burning.

Landfills, disposal sites, recycling facilities, compost operations, or other MSW management facilities, depending on their age and growth, all have the potential to discharge toxins into the environment. It is essential to identify and characterise pollutant emissions, estimate exposure levels along relevant routes, and evaluate toxicological relevance of such exposure in order to determine possible threats to human and environmental health. When doing a risk assessment, it is critical to take all of these variables into account.

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What Happens To Leftover Food At Restaurants?

Every restaurant has to deal with leftovers at some point. It builds up during the day and often is discarded at the conclusion of the workday. Instead of being reused or recycled, this food waste would be disposed of in a landfill. If you don’t want to throw away your food, where do you put it? So what can you do to the food that doesn’t make it to the landfill?

Restaurants Were Left With A Limited Selection Of Menu Items

A lot of restaurants cook using fresh ingredients, and yet what they don’t use is typically kept for the next day or sold to the other restaurants at a reduced price. Employees may be given them to guarantee that the food isn’t thrown away. Restaurant employees and owners will be able to create a better relationship with each other as a result of this strategy.

Because they can’t be given or sold to other restaurants, sauces and gravies that are no longer needed will need to be thrown away. When it comes to customer leftovers, things become more complicated. These can’t be given away or used for a different dish. Instead of over-ordering meals, eateries are urging customers to order just what they can consume.

How Food Donation And Food Waste Aren’t The Same Thing

Unused food from most restaurants is given to food banks, homeless shelters, and food recovery programmes. The food may also be donated to non-profit organisations that help those in need. In an effort to reduce food waste, supermarkets are now doing the same. This, in turn, benefits the environment.

But other restaurants refuse to take advantage of the chance because they would not want to risk somebody developing an allergic response or contracting a disease. You can get a court summons, which is extremely expensive. Consequently, they throw away all of the leftover food rather than reusing it.

Alternatively, restaurants may donate excess fresh food waste to local allotments, where it can be used as compost to help grow and nurture more fresh produce. Food consumption and production may therefore be maintained in an environmentally friendly manner.

In The Kitchen, How May Food Waste Effect Cleanliness?

As quickly as possible, all food waste will be eliminated from the kitchen for safety purpose. When it comes to ensuring client safety and happiness, many restaurants start from fresh each day. Then, their company will be able to continue.

As an example, you can’t store an unconsumed dinner in the freezer and then offer it to a client the following day since it puts them at danger. Depending on the circumstances, the restaurant might be fined, sent to court, or even forced to shut its doors if it is discovered that they were responsible for the customer’s food illness.

There are several ways in which leftover food may be used to save money rather than squandering it, which some businesses do not realise The food waste issue may begin to correct itself if restaurant operators begin to think creatively about food waste.

How can restaurants still make money while dealing with excess waste?
It is more cost-effective to repurpose ingredients than than tossing them in the trash. If restaurant owners can take advantage of this innovative method of utilising food waste towards their advantage, they may wind up making a good profit or, at the the least, they’ll break even and not lose any money at all.

The following just are a few examples of how restaurants may repurpose their food waste. One way to attract more guests to your restaurant is by touting its low carbon footprint as an attractive selling factor.

Repurposed Ingredients Are Used In A New Recipe

For health and safety concerns, you should not prepare, dish, and serve food that has been sitting in the fridge for a long time. However, if you chop up a broccoli and end up with the stem, you may cut it into strips & cook it in a stir fry instead of tossing it away. This is still considered a fresh component, although it’s made from a previously discarded item. Arbor, a Bournemouth-based eco-friendly restaurant, recycles food waste on a regular basis. Read also The Best Things To Do In Boston At Night.

Cocktail Menus Are Often Re-Imagined…

Garnish fresh drinks with fruit and vegetable remnants. Orange and lemon peels, for example, have the power to modify the aesthetic of a cocktail as well as give an idea of what the drink will taste like.

When a drink looks good, more people will photograph it and share it on social media, tying it to your institution. As an added bonus, you’re generating revenue as well as serving as free advertising for your business.

Sell It At A Discount To Allotment Owners

The allotment community is constantly in need of environmentally friendly compost and fertiliser, and you’ll be supplying it. As long as your business is doing well, you might give some of your profits to them. In order to at least break even, you should sell it at a significant discount. You may even consider exchanging one bag of potatoes for one bag of compost.

What Can Be Done With Food Waste?

Even if a restaurant can afford it, it may not have the time to reconsider recipes, make drinks, or sell off vegetables and fruit to allotments.

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In Hotels, There Are 5 Ways To Reduce & Manage Food Waste

Food & Agriculture Organization of United Nations estimates that a third of all food is thrown away or spoils before it is used. Contrast that with the 800 million people who go hungry every day throughout the globe. It gets worse: 19 % of all landfill trash that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions is food waste.

Food waste is a problem that affects many industries, including hotels. It has recently been shown that only over 50 per cent of the food served at buffets gets consumed, which is not only bad for the environment but also contributes to the foodservice industry’s already tight profit margins by throwing out the remaining 40 per cent.

The following are five suggestions for cutting down on food waste and improving hotel food production management. See Here to Read About Air Pollution.

Perform A Waste Food Audit

A restaurant’s amount of food waste and the number of customers are the two most important things to consider while measuring food waste. Managers will have a better notion of where the most waste is generated as a result of this information. There are two ways to keep track of this data. A food log system maintains track of what has been thrown out, why, and how much. A daily track of the hotel’s traffic, the weather, and other relevant data is kept in a traffic log system to aid with future visitor traffic planning and meal ordering.

Do Not Throw Away Ingredients That Haven’t Been Prepared Yet

Review the hotel’s inventory to see whether food has been sitting around for an excessive amount of time and to ensure that the restaurant is not ordering too much to get the most out of perishable items. With the support of the hotel chef, train personnel to be more waste-conscious & efficient, and devise solutions to reduce food waste such as reusing foods.

Plan For Leftovers In Advance

Observe the meal sizes supplied to visitors by staff members. To keep customers happy, make sure that the foods you serve are precisely what you promised when you placed the order. Keep tabs on the most popular dishes and adjust your menu appropriately. Make it easy for customers to take any leftovers home with them. Also, think about providing lunches for the workers or giving the leftovers.

Involve F&B Teams And Create Awareness

Educate the hotel staff on the difficulties of adopting a food waste reduction plan. Create a culture shift in the kitchen by educating the staff about the issue of food waste & implementing tactics to combat it. For a plan to be put into effect, teamwork is essential. In addition, given the high rate of worker turnover in the foodservice business, it is critical to provide new hires with food waste management training.

Compost

Composting on-site or via a third party is an option for hotels with food waste. Monitor food waste on a regular basis and make adjustments if required.

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There Is A Lot Of Pollution In The Air

Even if we don’t recognise it, it has an impact on us all. We’ve taken the air that we breathe at granted for the longest time. There was a mixture of cold and hot air, as well as a mixture of air and scents.

Even Nevertheless, new research has begun to shine light on some fairly alarming features of the air we breathe and how it impacts our bodies. Moreover, as we study, the more we recognise that this crucial source for the world need some serious attention. There is no life without air, yet inhaling dirty air is a death sentence.

We have no justification not to take action now that we are aware of the dangers of air pollution. Listed below are five reasons why we should all do our part to decrease and eradicate air pollution.

A Public Health Crisis Is Being Exacerbated By Smoggy Air

Today, polluted air is a worldwide public health crisis, and there is no mistake about it. Pregnant people as well as toddlers and women preparing over open flames are all at danger from this deadly disease.

Asthma, other respiratory ailments, and heart disease are just a few of the health problems that may be exacerbated by breathing dirty air, regardless of where it comes from.

As many as 800 people are killed by air pollution every hour, or 13 per minute, per the World Health Organization. Although many additional risk factors contribute to mortality, air pollution is the leading cause of death in the United States.

The Most Vulnerable Are Children

93% of the world’s youngsters breathe air that is more polluted than what the World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe for human health, globally. As a consequence, air pollution claims the lives of 600,000 youngsters each year. As if that weren’t bad enough, breathing polluted air impairs children’s brain development and increases their chance of developing chronic diseases later in life.

Women and children are especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of household air pollution because of their traditional duties in the home in many cultures. And over half of all pneumonia fatalities in children under the age of five may be ascribed to indoor air pollution, which accounts for 60 percent of all home air pollution-related mortality worldwide.

Poverty And Pollution Are Intertwined

As a matter of social justice & global inequity, impoverished people are most affected by air pollution.

Air pollution in the house is mostly caused by the use of fuels & high-emitting cooking and heating equipment. Low-income households are unable to afford clean cooking & heating fuels and technology, therefore polluting options are the norm. Solid fuels, such as wood and kerosene, are used by almost 3 billion people, but 3.8 million of people die each year as a result of their exposure to toxins. A lack of understanding of the dangers of inhaling filthy air, and the high expense and difficulty of obtaining medical treatment, contribute to the issue.

In densely populated urban areas and heavily travelled suburbs, outdoor air pollution levels are particularly high. World Health Organization estimates that 97 percent of poor and middle-income cities with a population of over 100,000 do not fulfil the World Health Organization’s minimal air quality standards. As many as 4 million individuals in the Asia-Pacific area die each year from air pollution-related ailments.

29 percent of cities in high-income nations do not satisfy the standards set by the United Nations. These nations also have impoverished neighbourhoods that are more vulnerable to environmental hazards, such as power plants, industries, incinerators, and busy roadways.  Read also 5 Ways To Reduce & Manage Food Waste.

Increased Expenses Are Associated With Lower-Priced Fuels

The whole community suffers when individuals are ill. Those who are ill need medical attention and medication, children miss school, and working folks take time off to care for loved ones. The World Bank estimates that air pollution costs the world economy more than $5 trillion in welfare expenditures or $225 billion in lost revenue per year.

An OECD research from 2016 estimates that the yearly global welfare spending of premature mortality caused by outdoor air pollution will be between US$18 and 25 trillion by 2060, with pain and suffering costs estimated at roughly US$2.2 trillion.

In addition to the direct expenditures, there are also indirect costs that impact us all throughout the world. Food insecurity and malnutrition would worsen if ground-level ozone reduces staple crop yields by 26% by 2030. Materials and coatings are also degraded by pollution in the air, resulting in lower usable lives and higher cleaning, maintenance, and replacement expenses.

UN Environment’s 6th Global Environment Outlook predicts that climate mitigation initiatives to meet the Paris Agreement objectives will cost around US$22 trillion. At the same time, we might save $54 trillion in health care costs by lowering air pollution. Acting today to reduce air pollution will save $32 trillion over the course of a century.

A Fundamental Human Right Is The Ability To Breathe Fresh Air

More than 100 nations recognise the right to water as a constitutional right, which is the strongest kind of legal protection. The right to a clean environment is guaranteed by treaties, constitutions, and laws in at least 155 countries.

In addition to the Universal Declaration or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Life, the Sustainable Development Goals—the global roadmap for peace and prosperity—enshrine the right to clean air as well.

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