Persuasive Essay about Garbage – Free Essay Example

This report is for the WRIT 220 research assignment. In this report, I will be focusing on how garbage pollution is bad for the environment and for our health. I will also talk about a solution that involves burning garbage to generate power and heat. It will also talk about some of the benefits of this waste-to-energy solution. Overall I feel that this solution can be really good in solving the problem of garbage pollution.

This report is for the WRIT 220 research assignment. This report will focus on solving the problem of garbage pollution. The problem that will be discussed in this report is garbage pollution. The solution to this problem is essentially burning the trash to create and generate energy. This report will consist of only secondary research. If it weren’t for The New York Times article “In Sweden, Trash Heats Homes, Powers Buses and Fuels Taxi Fleets” this report wouldn’t be possible.

Some people may not really think about where all the garbage they are producing is going. Garbage pollution is an issue that should be taken very seriously as millions of tons of garbage are entering landfills yearly, creating mountains of garbage on land and islands in the ocean. A recent study has shown that an average Canadian produces about 2.7 kg of garbage daily, making those 31 million tons of garbage a year (CRC research, 2018, para 1).

The harm garbage pollution is causing is air pollution and water pollution. Air pollution spreads harmful bacteria and also pollutes the air with carbon dioxide and many other substances (In Waste Management, 2017, para 8). Air pollution is already bad enough but it is also causing our health to be affected. According to Environmental Defence Fund (2019), “Air pollution is one of the world’s largest killers, responsible for 6.4 million deaths per year (1 in 9 deaths), of which 600,000 are children” (para.1). Not only does garbage pollution cause air pollution and harms our overall health but it also causes water pollution because some big companies/corporation dump their waste into the ocean. Water pollution is caused by plastic bags, nets, or cigarette filters being thrown on beaches that end up in the ocean and harm animals (In Waste Management, 2017, para 9). This is a worldwide issue, hundreds of countries around the world have the same issue with their garbage and none of these countries were doing anything to help solve this problem

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place Order

Garbage pollution is a very serious issue and there needs to be something done as soon as possible to help reduce the harm done because of it. Sweden has come up with a plan to solve all of their garbage pollution problems, the solution they have come up with is burning the trash to generate energy and provide heat in the cold seasons.

• Step 1: Garbage bags on a conveyor belt and sorted by a digital sensor that can tell apart the special green bags that are meant for organic waste from the normal garbage bags.
• Step 2: They are then separated by machines onto another conveyor belt to get trucked to a nearby biogas plant(Yee, 2018, p.1).
• Step 3: Then machines rip apart the bags and sort the organic waste and filter it into a giant metal vent.
• Step 4: All of the garbage is sorted to separate the recyclable content like metals, plastics, batteries, and electronics, from the rest of the waste like scrap metal, circuit boards, and agricultural waste to be burned to generate power.
• Step 5: All the trash that is now sorted and sent to be burned is grabbed by a giant claw and is then dropped down a 10-story shaft into a boiler that is hotter than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (Yee, 2018, p.1).
• Step 6: The heat is then transformed into steam that spins turbines to generate electricity just like how most power plants that burn coal and gas do.

This solution has a lot of benefits. According to Avfall Sverige, this system has been so useful in Sweden that in the winter this system provides heat for 1.25 million apartments and electricity for 680,000 homes (Yee, 2018, p.1). Not only do these power plants provide heat and electricity for Sweden but it also “produces methane biogas from 100,000 tons of food and organic waste each year. This biogas runs more than 200 city buses in the county, as well as fleets of garbage collection trucks, and some taxis and private cars” (Yee, 2018, p.1). The best part about this is that now that garbage has a use it won’t be dumped into oceans. According to Avfall Sverige, the Swedish Waste Management and Recycling Association “Less than 1 percent of household waste in this Scandinavian country finds its way to landfills” (Yee, 2018, p.1).

Although waste to energy may seem like a good solution to garbage pollution, it also has some downsides to it. Most of the trash that is being collected from nearby cities to be burned to convert to energy mainly consists of paper, plastic, and glass (Muznik, 2018, p.1). The reason this is a problem is because the waste of energy is discouraging reusing and recycling. Another reason why it is not a good solution is that waste is not a good source of renewable energy. Companies that promote waste to energy often say that it is renewable energy which is completely false because waste does not come from an infinite natural source while wind, solar, and wave energy do (Muznik, 2018, p.1).

I feel that the solution that Sweden has come up with and implemented around their country is a really efficient way to solve the problem of garbage pollution. Not only does it solve so many problems but it is giving garbage a use and generating power and heat. I also feel that this will be really good for the future because no garbage will be dumped into oceans and or take up space in landfills just so that it can take up space. If more countries started to implement this into their countries garbage pollution will soon not be a problem.