When you hear the term "pollution", what is it that you instinctively envision?
My roommate said "air pollution, water pollution...stuff that gets dirty." That is how I viewed pollution before coming to Winona State University and choosing to major in Environmental Geoscience with a minor in Sustainability and Global Studies. As you can tell from my interests that I am concerned for the stress that we have put on the planet by taking more than can be replenished, but I am also concerned about how our actions can affect ourselves indirectly through hazardous waste around the globe. As a senior, I can now say that the various types of hazardous waste is vast. There is electronic waste (which I will definitely go into further detail later on) aka "E-waste", which is simply electrical appliances such as computers, laptops, keyboards, cell phones, fax machines, that are disposed of either because the user doesn't know how to recycle, because there is a newer model available, because there is a defect, etc. For whatever reason, many appliances end up as waste. Other types of waste include: nuclear, animal, mining (aka tailings), agricultural runoff, plastic waste, chemical waste such as paint...
NOTE: Downtown at Winona County Environmental Services, they will take your leftover paint cans, paint thinners, fertilizers, nail polish, etc. Also, if you want some free (limited color) paint they let you go in and pick up as much as you want (speaking from personal experience). I will include more about this fantastic service building in another blog. Below is a link to what household items they accept at the waste facility.
Today we are concerned about how to treat, store, or dispose waste products. With the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December of 1970, many regulations have already been established to lower the amount of toxic waste released into the environment. The US EPA's purpose is to protect humans and the environment as well as provide factual information to citizens about environmental risks or concerns in their area. I will go into more detail about Minnesota and Winona in more detail later.
As this is only the introduction I will lay out a few issues I want to discuss in later blogs.
- electronic waste
- acid mine drainage
- agricultural runoff
- Winona County Environmental Services
- EPA's responsibilities
- Environmental assessment of Winona County
- Superfund
- where our waste ends up
- landfills
- toxic sludge
- alternative options
- and more topics will surely arise as each blog unfolds and new current events occur
Winona County Hazardous Waste Facility
EPA Toxic Release Inventory
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