ACADEMIA Letters

Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System

Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction
Management, College of design construction and planning, University of Florida

Introduction:
The growing consciousness of the human impact on the environment was the inspiration of
Sustainability as a field- study, which is seen as a future vision based on the fact that all hu-
mankind needs for survival depend on the environmental resources (Iacovidou, Voulvoulis,
2018), and if sustainability is a vision, then effective waste management is one of many strate-
gic goals to achieve that vision (Grenze, 2015).
Waste Management (WM) is concerned with the suitable processing of different types of
waste, under the roof of environmental regulations. WM practices lay under the umbrella
of four main categories, the 4Rs; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover. The core of the
framework is applying the 4Rs in the right order to avoid the risk of increasing the waste
level; first, reducing the consumption rate to lower waste production. Second, reusing the
material items and finding ways to repurposing it. Third, recycling waste and turning it into
raw materials for new production processes. Finally, repurposing the unrecyclable waste in
generating energy or establishing artificial lands (Reno, 2015).

Waste Management problem in the U.S:

The United States is the world’s leader in overconsumption; while the United States popula-
tion is less than 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 33% of the world’s consumption
(Grauerholz, Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012). More than 250 million tons of solid waste is gen-
erated annually in the U.S., and with a waste landfill rate of 65%, the country should find a

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.

1
fast solution to deal with its two thousand landfills which are running out of space in less than
20 years. The problem is more severe in the Northeast states, like New Jersey; a combination
of high-density of people and lack of space, which puts these states in a real battle with time.
Additionally, when it comes to recycling; the U.S is not recycling its own solid waste; more
than half of U.S solid waste is sold to China to be cycled there (Seeberger, Grandhi, Kim,
Mase, Reponen, Ho, Chen, 2016).

Success stories in Waste Management:

After the defeat of Germany and Japan in WWII, many of their industrial plants and infras-
tructure were demolished, which gave the two nations a serious devotion to rebuilding their
capacities (Lenhart, 2018). The outstanding transformation of Germany and Japan into mod-
ernism is considered by many to be the ideal standard of nations’ prosperity, and a reason
behind both countries being among the five biggest economies in the world, and the leading
countries in applying sustainability solutions, especially in WM (Jentsch,2018).
Germany adopted the GreenDot system, which is considered the most successful recycling
initiative worldwide. In this system, manufacturers pay fees on their produced goods, where
products with thicker paper, glass, or plastic have a higher fee collected by the government
(Nelles, Grünes, Morscheck, 2015). On the other hand, in Japan, the WM experience was
different and more urgent than Germany; lack-of-space puts the country in a real challenge to
find alternatives for landfill disposal, taking into consideration the high waste production that
ranks the country among the first ten countries in producing waste per individual (Chaudhary,
Vrat, 2018).
When it comes to waste collection, Germany and Japan use color-coded systems; Germany
has one system on a country level, while in Japan, the system complexity varies from one
city to another, e.g. Kakimatsu city has more than 40 different categories for waste (Nelles,
Grünes, Morscheck, 2015).
While Germany has the highest rate of recycling in the world, Japan’s rate is around 20%
only; most of Japan’s waste is thermally treated (Burned). Thermal treatment is one of the
cheapest solutions to manage waste in Japan, and it helps in generating energy from the heat
created in the process. Additionally, the Japanese government is using solid waste in concrete
mixes to build new islands and help in solving the lack of space problem in Japan (Chaudhary,
Vrat, 2018).

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.

2
Discussion:
The Waste dilemma is a real threat to a health hazard for humankind; it is among the fast-
spreading problems around the globe, as a direct result of decreasing the products’ service-
life (Chaudhary, Vrat, 2018). Studies show that 60% of the produced waste can be avoided in
countries like the UK, and those numbers look much worse for the U.S. (Iacovidou, Voulvoulis,
2018).
Many environmental and social activists are spreading awareness about the waste dilemma
in the U.S., representing the problem to be more cultural and political than technological
(Reno, 2015). While the U.S. is the main waste producer, its waste management practices
are not reflecting a real intention to overcome the challenge (Seeberger, Grandhi, Kim, Mase,
Reponen, Ho, Chen, 2016), and not like developing countries, where embracing sophisticated
technologies in waste management is still a barrier (Margallo, Ziegler-Rodriguez, Vázquez-
Rowe, Aldaco, Irabien, Kahhat, 2019), the real challenge in the U.S. is the effective imple-
mentation of preexisting technologies and policies; the country as a whole needs to view waste
differently to create a sense of urgency in solving this problem. Such a change can be chal-
lenging but not impossible, especially if the U.S. government got involved on a federal level.
The City of Francisco started an infinitive “Zero-Waste by 2020” ten years ago, and nowadays,
the city is very close to meet that target, making it an American living proof for the possibility
of change (Grenze, 2015).

Conclusions and Recommendations:

Consumption behaviors are multi-dimensional; economic, legal, social, environmental; how-
ever, consumptions habits are found to be highly dependent on income and age, a reason why
specialists advise teaching students about the relationship between sustainability and con-
sumption while their financial resources are still limited (Grauerholz, Bubriski-McKenzie,
2012), in order to minimize their motivation for overconsumption on the long run.
Closed-Cycle economies’ main goal is turning waste into resources, and such ideologies
have been adopted in countries like Germany for more than 3 decades, and today, 14% of
the raw materials used by Germany is recycled waste, making Closed-Cycle economies real
support in the world’s battle for the environment (Nelles, Grünes, Morscheck, 2015).
The GreenDot system is an effective way to achieve a U.S. product-pricing system that re-
flects the goods’ environmental impact. Additionally, closed-cycle economies give businesses
in the U.S. a real opportunity to increase their bottom-line by lowering energy costs, material
costs, disposal costs, and storage costs. (Sillar,2000). However, such a change can only be

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.

3
achieved by a supporting political environment, and the involvement of the government on
the federal level to unify a vision for the overall sustainability of the country.

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.

4
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Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.

5
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Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf, amer.abukhalaf@ufl.edu

Citation: Abukhalaf, A.H.I. (2021). Bridging the Gap: U.S Waste Management System. Academia Letters,
Article 1680. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1680.