Cart dumpers

Compared to workers in all U.S. private industries, employees who process poultry face a significantly higher risk of injury. In 2016, for instance, the incidence rate for nonfatal injuries and illnesses at work was 2.9 per 100 workers in all industries. Among poultry processors, the rate was 4.2 injuries or illnesses per 100.

Too many sanitation workers end up injured — or worse — on the job. Refuse and recycling collectors have long been listed among the top five most dangerous occupations in the nation, but the problem extends along the entire waste stream.

Community composting provides significant environmental and financial benefits. By diverting waste from landfills and turning it into fertile soil, communities can save money and sustain gardening efforts. This collective project can take place across a whole city, or within a smaller group. People who occupy multi-family communities, whether that's a senior living facility, a university, an apartment complex, or even an office complex, have a unique opportunity to try community composting in their own backyards.

Hospitals and laboratories face complex challenges with safe medical waste management. Besides generating recycling, compost, and landfill garbage, these medical centers produce a more regulated type of trash generally called medical waste.

Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) keep recyclables — including, of course, glass, plastics, and aluminum — out of landfills and put them back into circulation using a fraction of the energy required to make new goods. These eco-friendly centers are a marvel of technology, environmentalism, and collective effort. With Earth Day earlier this week, let's take a look at how MRFs are saving the planet — and how you can help, whether you operate your own MRF or simply wish to be a better recycler in your own home or business.

The global recycling market is changing rapidly, and that can leave municipal plastic recycling programs struggling to find enough end users to stay in business. More than ever, post-consumer plastics are competing with virgin resins. This, in turn, is placing new pressures on materials recovery facilities (MRF) and the municipalities that hire them to produce pristine bales of reclaimed plastics; high levels of contamination are no longer acceptable.

Police, firefighters, EMTs, and other emergency services personnel handle the toughest jobs in our society. They shouldn't have to worry about the risks of waste handling, too. Simply taking out the trash may not seem like a dangerous task, especially for first responders who protect the populace from more direct threats. In fact, though, there are a range of risks that emergency services workers face in the course of day-to-day waste handling.

China's changing national policy on raw recycling imports is creating serious new challenges in the U.S. recyclables market. Bales of paper and plastic scrap, which would typically already be on ships bound to China's many recycling processors, are now building up in stockpiles across the United States. Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) are on a desperate hunt for new end users.