ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the attention of minimizing the negative impacts on waste disposal in the environment. The waste scenario poses, in general, a technical problem, an economic-management problem, a legal problem, a health problem, and an environmental-regulation problem. In a larger perspective, waste disposal raises legal and geopolitical issues of global proportion. In terms of history it is apparent that increased volumes of waste and the shortage of acceptable space near cities contribute to only a part of the waste disposal problem. In historical context this trend may be attributed to three "advances" in civilization: the industrial revolution; the accelerated manufacture of chemical products; and the harnessing of the atom. A modem municipal waste disposal facility looks more like a factory than a garbage dump. The point has been made that municipal wastes involve large bulk volumes, and the disposal economics related to such wastes discourages long-haul transportation.
