Waste-to-Energy or Energy-from-Waste Technologies

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Electricity is a basic necessity that people need to manage day-to-day activities. Science paves the way for continuous development and improvement of different technologies for power generation and distribution worldwide. Science led to the discovery of both the positive and negative effects of power generation on nature and mankind. With the passage of time, experts in the field realized that there are renewable sources of electricity with limited impacts on the environment. The rapid growth of industrialization as well as the increasing reliance of people to manufactured goods and services has significantly contributed to waste problems worldwide. As a result, scientists introduced a number of waste-to-energy (wte) or energy-from-waste (efw) technologies.
An objective of wte technologies is to address global waste management problems, such as the congestion of landfills and difficulties in the proper disposal of garbage or municipal solid waste (MSW). Another is to find a solution to meet an overwhelming increase in demand for electricity worldwide as a result of continuous population growth. The waste management problem and power consumption challenges led to the discovery of wte technologies. Figuratively speaking, wte technologies seemed to have hit two birds with one stone as it helped address two significant global issues with one solution.
Incineration, which is a key process in wte technologies, has been found to also have negative effects on the environment as it leads to the release of potentially harmful gases and other components to the environment. Scientists continuously seek ways on how to limit the negative impacts of incineration to natural resources and humans in line with government mandates and policies. Th...

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...find ways on how to better apply processes in wte technologies that would not harm people and the environment while at the same time supporting economic growth and development. As Otto suggested in his report, wte technologies is capable of encouraging people to recycle and segregate waste for proper disposal. It also benefits the environment by limiting the impacts of climate changes through the control of carbon emissions and other harmful components in the atmosphere. Wte technologies are also generally effective in supporting the economy as it helps address the need to meet increasing demands for electricity. This is especially evident with the growing number of wte plants built in several countries such as the U.S. as well as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Sweden, five European nations with the highest wte usage and recycling rates (Otto, 2013).

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