Industrial Waste

Definition of Industrial Wastes

In 21st-century societies all over the world, the extraction or harvesting of materials from nature, and their transformation into finished products, takes place primarily through processes of industrial production. Industrial production differs from other forms of production carried out either by hand [Page 429]or with personalized tools in that it entails relatively large-scale, routine, and automated activities. The unintended material by-products of industrial production are industrial wastes.

In their broadest definition, industrial wastes encompass any by-products that are emitted directly into the atmosphere or released into waterways as well as those temporarily or permanently deposited on or in the ground. Typically, however, airborne emissions are referred to as air pollution, and waterborne releases as wastewater or water pollution. Both are considered separately in policy and discourse from solid or semi-liquid industrial wastes. The latter group of materials is more commonly what is meant by terms such as industrial wastes or industrial solid wastes.

Industrial wastes may arise from mining, petroleum extraction and refining, agriculture, energy production, construction and demolition, transportation, or manufacturing activities. In some cases, industrial wastes, through statutory definition, exclude wastes from agriculture and extractive industries; for example, such wastes are not classified as industrial under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Depending on the agency and jurisdiction, additional categories may be considered as falling under the umbrella definition of industrial wastes. Overall, however, industrial wastes can always be defined by what they exclude: municipal solid wastes and nuclear wastes. No country's definition of industrial wastes includes MSW, which represents instead the discards of human settlements, including households, public institutions, and nonindustrial commercial enterprises such as offices, retail, and food service. Nuclear waste is also excluded from all definitions of the term.

In many industrialized nations, a subset of industrial wastes possessing empirically demonstrated danger to health and safety is referred to as hazardous industrial wastes, hazardous wastes, or toxic wastes. These wastes are considered separately from industrial wastes not deemed hazardous and are subject to state regulations concerning transport and disposal that do not apply to other industrial wastes. The designation of some industrial wastes as hazardous may be made on the basis of rough characteristics such as ignitability or corrosiveness, may reflect intended product use (e.g., as explosives or solvents), or may reflect chemicals constituents that have been demonstrated to pose risks to health and safety.

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