Solid waste management comprises a diverse range of activities encompassing reduction,
recycling, segregation (separation), modification, treatment and disposal at varying levels of
sophistication. The industry finds its origins in waste disposal using simple methods such as
local terrestrial dumping (landfill), dumping into both fresh and marine waters and
72 G. Hamer / Biotechnology Advances 22 (2003) 71–79
uncontrolled burning, none of which offer health-safe and hazard-free waste management
solutions. Historically, disposal was presented as a form of treatment on the grounds that
after disposal the characteristics of deposited wastes frequently changed as a result of
degradation, a phenomenon that greatly increases the polluting potential of many wastes.
The major objective of waste treatment is stabilisation, preferably by accelerated degradation,
so that the final residues produced are either nonnoxious and incapable of further
change, i.e., they are completely mineralised, or able to find ready entry into the various
natural biogeochemical (elemental) cycles that govern materials cycling in the environment,
without causing distortion in any cycle relative to another.