A material good or service that is not essential to a persons life.
What is a luxury?
100
Something that can be purchased or sold and from which one receives non-spiritual pleasure. Examples include televisions, houses, cars, and appliances.
What is a material good?
100
A large, usually lined, hole in the ground used for the long term storage and decomposition of garbage and waste.
What is a landfill?
100
A self sustaining system where wastes can become inputs for new processes.
What is a looped system?
200
A chemical reaction that releases energy in the form of heat (such as the breakdown of garbage in a landfill).
What is exothermic?
200
Materials which cannot be broken down for future use, including Styrofoam, animal waste and plastic coated paper.
What are non-recyclable items?
200
A practice of responsible resource use that ensures long term viability of the planet, its inhabitants and its natural resources.
What is sustainability?
200
The process of collecting and mixing biodegradable plant material and allowing it to break down over time.
What is composting?
200
A system that begins at one point, moves through the various stages and ends at a designated point.
What is a linear system?
300
Chemical substances that can eat through metal are . . .
What is corrosive?
300
The amount of land (in hectares) and resources consumed as a result of the amount of waste a person or community generates.
What is a Garbage Footprint?
300
True or False . . . In the United States, a large portion of municipal solid waste comes from packaging and non-durable goods.
What is TRUE?
300
A Waste-To-Energy (WTE) facility uses this product of landfill decomposition to create energy.
What is methane gas?
300
Our waste system has several loopholes allowing certain groups to dispose of hazardous waste irresponsibly. Which group currently produces the largest amount of hazardous waste?
What is Industries?
400
A liquid that has percolated though a substance (such as garbage) and may transport environmentally harmful substances.
What is leachate?
400
An old dump site for domestic waste, they can contain artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation.
What is a midden?
400
The five steps of the material goods economy.
What is extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal?
400
This type of waste includes old cell phones, discarded laptops and obsolete electronics.
What is E-Waste?
400
This is the largest source of UNREGULATED hazardous waste under our current waste system. This source regularly introduces hazardous waste like cleaning products and antibiotics into our watershed by washing them down the drain.
What is Households?
500
An EPA program and the name of an established abandoned hazardous waste site. There is only one is Nevada: the Carson River Basin from New Empire in Carson City to Stillwater and the Carson Sink.
What is a Superfund Site?
500
This is the largest component of Municipal Solid Waste in the U.S.
What is paper?
500
According to "The Story of Stuff," which two groups are currently in control of our material goods economy?
Who are the Government and large corporations?
500
The three parts of a successful recycling program.
What is collection/processing, use of recyclables by industries and consumer purchase of recycled goods?
500
We learned from the Dandora study that a poor waste management design can have a negative impact on what?