Waste treatment and disposal encompasses the engineered processes and systems used to manage solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes to minimize environmental and human health impacts. It includes physical, chemical, and biological treatment methods such as sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, oxidation–reduction, incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion, and advanced thermal or physicochemical processes, often integrated with resource recovery (e.g., energy, nutrients, materials). Disposal refers to the final placement of residuals in landfills, deep-well injection, or other long-term containment systems designed with liners, leachate collection, gas management, and monitoring to control emissions, prevent groundwater contamination, and ensure regulatory compliance.
In many African cities, a broken fridge is rarely thrown away immediately. It may be repaired and resold, dismantled for spare parts or collected for its metal components.
Environment
Oct 21, 2026
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15
Plastics are accumulating in ecosystems around the world, and their tiny fragments can collect and carry chemical pollutants and pathogens into plants, animals and people. When fishermen in Cambodia's Mekong River became ...
Environment
Oct 20, 2026
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7
A new study, led by IIASA researchers and coauthored by UNEP colleagues, finds that if governments fully implement their methane reduction plans, they could reduce global emissions by 11% between 2020 and 2030. This would ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 19, 2026
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14
Wastewater reclamation is increasingly regarded as an alternative water source to mitigate water scarcity in China. However, expanding wastewater treatment capacity alone may not be enough to ease this scarcity, since wastewater ...
Environment
Oct 16, 2026
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8
Agriculture depends on a reliable supply of nutrients. Phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium, for example, are indispensable for agricultural crop production. However, natural reserves are limited, vary greatly in regional availability ...
Ecology
Oct 13, 2026
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10
Federal prosecutors recently described an interstate criminal enterprise with all the trappings of organized crime: clandestine warehouses, money laundering and stolen goods transported across state lines. The mid-September ...
Environment
Sep 30, 2026
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11
For decades, one of the major complaints about nuclear power in the United States has been the argument that, after all this time, we still have not come up with a dependable strategy for sequestering high-level radioactive ...
Environment
Sep 16, 2026
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11
Throwing something away that is urgently needed, expensive and difficult to source sounds crazy. Yet of the 60 metals contained in old electronic devices such as phones, screens and washing machines, only a few are recycled. ...
Environment
Sep 15, 2026
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10
Industrialized countries send millions of metric tonnes of used clothing, electronic equipment and other products to the Global South, along with the environmental and health costs tied to producing, consuming and disposing ...
Environment
Sep 11, 2026
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36
Vaping isn't just annoying to passersby who have to walk through clouds of vapor but may be actively harmful to the environment, a new study says. Discarded nicotine vapes contain extremely high levels of lead and other heavy ...
Environment
Sep 10, 2026
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