Graduation Semester and Year

2021

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Sahadat MD Hossain

Abstract

COVID-19 has appeared and shook all aspects of our life. Starting from panic buying prior lockdown to the availability of vaccine, the whole world has gone through a pandemic situation which bounded people to live a life that never seemed normal before. Lockdown and risk of spreading disease forced people to stay at home and generate more waste, especially plastic waste. The effect on municipal solid waste characteristics due to this shift in the way of living is assessed in this study. In this study, municipal solid waste was collected from the working face of Irving Hunter Ferrell landfill. Waste composition and physical characteristics were assessed to identify the change in waste generation due to pandemic situation. Paper and plastic were found to consist significantly higher percentage among other components of the waste samples. Plastic was found to have significantly higher generation percentage during COVID situation in comparison with national average and previous studies. Volumetric estimation suggests plastic alone occupies 45.9% of total volume of the collected waste and 85% of all other wastes. Further classification of plastics shows that LDPE governs among other types of plastics both in weight basis and volume basis. 14% PETE, 25.6% HDPE, 0.03% PVC, 30% LDPE, 12.3% PP, 14.8% PS and 3.1% Others formed the total volume of plastics collected from the landfill. Volumetric study of plastic waste estimates accumulation of 0.8 million yd3 plastics annually in the Landfill if the trend followed in pandemic situation continues to apply. The change in plastic waste generation was observed to change with the number of infected COVID-19 cases. The increased plastic volume occupies more airspace in landfill and reduces the lifetime of landfill by 15%. The trend in plastic waste generation correlates with the pandemic situation.

Keywords

COVID-19, Pandemic, Plastic waste, MSW

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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