The main contributors of hazardous liquid waste are laboratories, industries, and manufacturing facilities.
Liquid waste can be harmful to both humans and the environment. To dispose of industrial liquid waste, you need to follow the established stringent regulations that guide generation, treatment, storage and transportation of waste.
Failure to solidify liquid waste can result in a number of problems and losses. Below are five ways you stand to lose if you don’t solidify industrial liquid waste.
1. Increases Risk and Liability
In liquid form, waste tends to be extremely bulky and messy to deal with. Solidified, you can reduce its volume by about 20%. Unsolidified liquid waste is not easy to manage. The collection, storage and transportation of liquid waste is a very cumbersome affair. In its liquid state, liquid waste is hazardous and can easily contaminate the water table through leachate. It also has a lot of humidity that can quickly permeate into the atmosphere through evaporation. This exposes people to risks of contracting respiratory diseases.
2. Transportation and Handling Costs Are High
Handling and transporting liquid waste is a very expensive affair. You will need to use special vacuum trucks to transport liquid waste to processing centres. Besides, even with the use of special transportation trucks, the chance of an accident happening, e.g. spillage or evaporation, are very high. When this happens, the damage to the environment and the potential risk of being sued are very high. Besides, spills and hazardous waste infused air could expose many to health risks.
3. Treating and Disposing Liquid Waste Is Very Expensive
Traditionally, vacuum trucks would collect waste and take it to transfer stations for sorting and segregation before transporting it to landfills. This multi-step process was, however, labour intensive and costly. Solidifying liquid waste compacts this process by reducing the volume of liquid waste by up to 20%. If you dispose of waste without solidifying it first, you end up losing a lot of money. Besides, you can solidify liquid waste in a matter of minutes by using reagents that convert it into stackable, dry solid that is easy to handle. If you go the liquid waste disposal route, you will incur huge costs in transportation, labour, and handling.
4. The Impact on Environment Is Severe
For the environment to sustain you, you must protect it first. Disposing of liquid waste without solidifying it first poses severe threats to the environment. Once treated, the contaminants once active in the liquid waste are safely immobilized. Liquid waste endangers both humans, animals and the environment. However, when solidified, this threat is incapacitated and immobilized. Liquid waste can leach into the ground or evaporate into the atmosphere, posing a grave danger to everyone. After solidifying and compacting it, the waste is transported in normal trucks without any danger to humans, animals, and the environment.
5. You Are Likely to Fail Regulation Compliance
Liquid waste disposal is a highly regulated sector. Various jurisdictions have rules and regulations on how industries should manage their hazardous liquid waste. If there is a liquid waste spill, especially during transportation, you will be exposed to lawsuits, company damages and costly cleanups. The bad press you are likely to receive could seriously hurt your brand.
Conventional methods of handling and treating liquid waste have often failed. In its liquid form, waste is bulky, sluggish, and difficult to handle. The solution is to first solidify the waste before transporting it to landfills.
The solidification process involves adding chemical reagents, which react with the liquid waste, compacting it into small manageable, easy-to-handle packs that are safe to transport to waste collection centres or landfills. Solidifying liquid waste also prevents leachate from seeping into water tables, or evaporating into the atmosphere.
