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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Energy Assessment Of Smithtown, New York, Allyson Murray, David J. Tonjes Jan 2013

Energy Assessment Of Smithtown, New York, Allyson Murray, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Energy management and carbon mitigation plans, often created to address global issues, must be implemented locally. Each specific area has its own needs and problems. For this study, we used publicly available data to create an energy assessment for the Town of Smithtown, a municipality of 116,000 people on the north shore of Long Island (New York). We found that motor vehicles consume the largest amount of energy, followed by space heating for both residential and commercial-industrial purposes. Local policies probably can only modestly affect transportation energy use, although federal policies may have significant effects over the next several decades. …


Cost Effectiveness Of Recycling: A Systems Model, David J. Tonjes, Sreekanth Mallikarjun Jan 2013

Cost Effectiveness Of Recycling: A Systems Model, David J. Tonjes, Sreekanth Mallikarjun

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Financial analytical models of waste management systems have often found that recycling costs exceed direct benefits, and in order to economically justify recycling activities, externalities such as household expenses or environmental impacts must be invoked. Certain more empirically based studies have also found that recycling is more expensive than disposal. Other work, both through models and surveys, have found differently. Here we present an empirical systems model, largely drawn from a suburban Long Island municipality. The model accounts for changes in distribution of effort as recycling tonnages displace disposal tonnages, and the seven different cases examined all show that curbside …


A Classification Methodology For Landfill Leachates, David J. Tonjes Jan 2013

A Classification Methodology For Landfill Leachates, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

A characterization scheme based on landfill leachate chemical signatures could support studies of leachate evolution over time, liner performance, and help confirm or disprove potential leachate contamination of groundwater. Wide variations in single constituents across time, sites, and site practices, and inconsistencies related to common bivariate measures suggest a robust, multivariate analysis could be useful. A variant Stiff diagram approach (a subjective analytical comparison of soluble salts) has been developed, and supports graphical depictions of multiple samples. The hypothesis is that leachates with similar chemistry form clusters, and this was tested using a data set of 652 samples from 26 …


Degradable Plastics And Solid Waste Management Systems, David J. Tonjes, Krista L. Thyberg Jan 2013

Degradable Plastics And Solid Waste Management Systems, David J. Tonjes, Krista L. Thyberg

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Plastics, which are woven into the fabric of modern life, have consequential impacts on the environment. Many of these are associated with end-of-lifetime processes, and include chemical contamination of the environment and effects from litter. Plastics also complicate waste management processes, causing contamination in composting operations, and having poor recovery rates through recycling. Plastics that are not as biologically recalcitrant, that decompose when use is done, have been perceived as solutions to at least some of these problems. The first generation of degradable plastics did not meet marketing claims; some of the more recent formulations, partly as a consequence of …


Municipal Waste Management: Suffolk County Municipal Systems, Services And Infrastructure, Krista L. Greene, Susan Lienau, David J. Tonjes Jan 2013

Municipal Waste Management: Suffolk County Municipal Systems, Services And Infrastructure, Krista L. Greene, Susan Lienau, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

This report describes the municipal waste management systems used by local governments to manage solid waste in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. There are ten Towns that serve as the primary planners for waste systems in Suffolk County. Many of the 33 villages in Suffolk County have established their own waste management programs and policies. All programs tend to follow the same general plan of the approaches used by their respective Towns, however. All programs provide some degree of recycling services, although the scope of the services varies tremendously.