Vivek Kumar,St. Vincent Pallotti

College of Engineering and

Technology, Nagpur

Sound that is unwanted or disrupts one’s quality of life is called as noise. When there is lot of noise in the environment, it is termed as noise pollution.

Sound becomes undesirable when it disturbs the normal activities such as working, sleeping, and during conversations.

It is an underrated environmental problem because of the fact that we can’t see, smell, or taste it.

World Health Organization stated that “Noise must be recognized as a major threat to human well-being”

According to the USEPA, there are direct links between noise and health. Also, noise pollution adversely affects the lives of millions of people.

Noise pollution can damage physiological and psychological health.

High blood pressure, stress related illness, sleep disruption, hearing loss, and productivity loss are the problems related to noise pollution.

It can also cause memory loss, severe depression, and panic attacks.

Transportation systems are the main source of noise pollution in urban areas.

Construction of buildings, highways, and streets cause a lot of noise, due to the usage of air compressors, bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks, and pavement breakers.

Industrial noise also adds to the already unfavorable state of noise pollution.

Loud speakers, plumbing, boilers, generators, air conditioners, fans, and vacuum cleaners add to the existing noise pollution.

Planting bushes and trees in and around sound generating sources is an effective solution for noise pollution.

Regular servicing and tuning of automobiles can effectively reduce the noise pollution.

Buildings can be designed with suitable noise absorbing material for the walls, windows, and ceilings.

Workers should be provided with equipments such as ear plugs and earmuffs for hearing protection.

Similar to automobiles, lubrication of the machinery and servicing should be done to minimize noise generation.

Soundproof doors and windows can be installed to block unwanted noise from outside.

Regulations should be imposed to restrict the usage of play loudspeakers in crowded areas and public places.

Factories and industries should be located far from the residential areas.

Community development or urban management should be done with long-term planning, along with an aim to reduce noise pollution.

Social awareness programs should be taken up to educate the public about the causes and effects of noise pollution.

Solid Waste Management

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal and monitoring of waste materials.

The two conventional principles of waste management were: ‘Dilute and disperse’ or ‘concentrate and contain’.

The main necessity of waste management is to enrich the resources which are being depleted due to rising population and increasing consumption rates.

Exposure to hazardous waste can affect human health, children being more vulnerable to these pollutants.

Improperly operated incineration plants cause air pollution and improperly managed and designed landfills attract all types of insects and rodents that spread disease.

Direct handling of solid waste results in chronic diseases with the waste workers and the rag pickers being the most vulnerable.

Prevention of waste being created is known as waste reduction which is an important method of waste management.

The modern concepts based on the three ‘R’s are: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Methods of avoidance include reuse of second hand products, designing products to be refillable or reusable, repairing broken items instead of buying new etc.

Integrated solid waste management through the following processes can provide a better reliable solution for the problem of municipal solid waste generation.

WASTE COLLECTION SEGREGATION RECYCLING SHREDDING OR PULVERIZING COMPOSTING

From individual houses, wastes can be collected in person with the help of vehicle.

To minimize the time and cost involved in collecting waste through vehicles, public can be given instruction to dump their house wastes in one place (nearby their street).

Segregation of wastes into degradable and non-degradable wastes is to be done to recover or divert non-degradable wastes (electric items, plastics, tyres etc.) and degradable items (wood, textiles etc.) to its recycling plant and if possible, it can be reused.

It is a tedious process which therefore needs labour. Magnets can also be used to segregate ferrous metals.

This process will help in reducing the amounts of waste going for composting and also earns money (through selling wastes to recycling plant.

The non-degradable and degradable wastes can be recycled very economically in the recyclingplants.

Apart from sending wastes to recycling plant, recycling of some organic waste is possible.

Some of the waste recycling techniques are: Fly ash, Organic wastes, Slag and scrap, Industrial gases, Waste waters, Recovery of silver from photographic films.

This process involves in size reduction of organic wastes before it goes for composting.

This process reduces the overall volume by 40%. ADVANTAGES: It will increase surface area availability for bacterial

activity (decomposition).Facilitates easy handling of moisture content and

aeration.

Aerobic composting is one of the cheapest and easiest methods that are being available for MSW.

Generally, composting can be carried out in three techniques. They are

i) windrow composting ii) Aerated static pile method iii) In vessel method

THANK YOU