From Atoms to Materials

13.7 Waste disposal at landfills Warm up r landfills 堆填區 Today, a large variety of consumer products are available, which make life convenient. However, huge volumes of materials are used for making these products, and are then disposed of. This leads to many environmental problems. In this section, let’s look at some environmental problems related to the use of metals and plastics, and how these problems can be dealt with. Composition of solid waste (percentage by weight) disposed of at landfills in 2021 textiles (3.6%) wood (2.3%) glass (1.9%) metal (2.3%) food waste (32.4%) plastics (20.5%) paper (19.7%) others (17.3%) A huge volume of waste is disposed of every year in Hong Kong’s landfills*. Many kinds of waste are disposed of. The following data may give you some ideas. What percentages of the waste are metals and plastics? What problems will be caused by their disposal at landfills? Share your ideas with your classmates. 13.7 Environmental problems related to the use of materials © United Prime Educational Publishing (HK) Limited 2024 All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Sample