GARBAGE AND REFUSE DISPOSAL (ME. garbage, entrails of fowls; probably from OF. garbage, tribute paid in sheaves, from garbe, sheaf). A term used in the United States to des ignate kitchen wastes of animal and vegetable origin, incident to the preparation and serving of food. Associated with it there is likely to be more or less inorganic matter, some of which, such as tin cans and bottles, have been in con tact with food materials. It is not uncommon to place all household wastes, other than sewage, in the garbage can or box, including ashes. In England all the wastes named are classed under the general head of refuse, and are placed in a common receptacle, or dust-bin. Aside from household wastes there are various classes of trade and manufacturing refuse, such as paper, rags, and shavings: also green stuff from vege table markets, and the odds and ends from butcher shops, such as bones, scraps of meat, grease, and offal.
Much of the organic matter named, when fresh, is similar to, and generally quite as inoffensive as, the food supplies from which it was rejected, but its unstable character renders it liable to offensive decomposition. Hence it must be re moved promptly from dwellings and other build ings, and so transformed or otherwise disposed of as to give rise to no offense. The most primi tive means of disposal are dumping on land or in water. A slight improvement on these proc esses is the burning of a portion of the wastes in the open air, but this rarely affects more than certain light combustibles, like paper and shav ings, that have been mixed with the garbage proper. As the population of a city and its suburbs increases land disposal becomes intoler able except by burial, and finally impracticable by that means. The dumping of garbage and refuse at sea is expensive at best, besides being likely to cause the fouling of beaches and har bors.
By keeping organic and inorganic wastes in separate receptacles their final disposal is greatly simplified, but the difficulties incident to their storage and prompt removal from the premises of householders is thereby increased. Ashes, as they come from stoves and furnaces, are composed of inert inorganic matter, with no harmful or ob jectionable qualities save those due to dust and dirt. In America, town ashes seem to be of little
use for any purpose except filling, for which they are most excellent. Paper, like many other classes of light, dry household and industrial wastes, is not necessarily offensive, but its un sightliness and possible association with organic wastes make its speedy and complete disposal highly desirable. Occasionally wastes of this na ture are made to yield a revenue sufficient to pay a part of the cost of their collection and dis posal.
Considering the vast quantities of material and large number of cities and towns concerned. the problem of the final scientific disposal of the city wastes is still in its infancy. Their collection, however, is on a far better basis, al though leaving much to be desired. There do not appear to be more than three hundred cities and towns, in all the countries of the world, that have adopted thoroughly modern sanitary meth ods of garbage and refuse disposal; and many of the cities falling within this class have made but a beginning as yet. Great Britain and the United States seem to be far in the lead in mat ters of final disposal. Outside of some of the larger American cities, nearly all the improved processes of disposal employ cremation, or burn ing, in specially designed furnaces. In Europe the practice is to make the refuse consume it self, without extra fuel. In America large quantities of extra fuel are almost always re quired, for reasons explained below. In Great Britain many of the destructors, as they are called, are fitted with boilers, which generate steam for use about the plant, or for electric lighting, a number of combined refuse destruc tors and electric-light plants having been built recently. Besides utilizing the heat, the clinkers from the English furnaces are often put to a variety of uses, being ground up and mixed with cement, for making slabs or tiles for sidewalks, or being used for the foundations of pavements. In the United States nearly all the attempts to recover anything from garbage treatment have aimed to extract grease from the garbage, and to make the tankage, left after separating the grease and water. into a fertilizer base.