Municipal solid waste

At the start of the 20th century, the majority of domestic waste (53%) in the UK consisted of coal ash from open fires.

[7] The municipal solid waste industry has four components: recycling, composting, disposal, and waste-to-energy via incineration.

The types of means and facilities that are now used for the recovery of waste materials that have been separated at the source include kerbside collection, drop-off, and buy-back centres.

A modern sanitary landfill is not a dump; it is an engineered facility used for disposing of solid wastes on land without creating nuisances or hazards to public health or safety, such as the problems of insects and the contamination of groundwater.

These networks provide a worldwide online registry of unwanted items that would otherwise be thrown away, for individuals and nonprofits to reuse or recycle.

This is the primary method of dumping in the United States because of the low cost and abundance of unused land in North America.

Landfills are regulated in the US by the Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces standards provided in the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, such as requiring liners and groundwater monitoring.

Large amounts of chemical odor eliminating agent are sprayed in the air surrounding landfills to hide the evidence of the rotting waste inside the plant.

[16][17] While older waste incineration plants emitted a lot of pollutants, recent regulatory changes and new technologies have significantly reduced this concern.