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People who earn their living by collecting and sorting garbage and selling them for recycling, Payatas in Manila, Philippines.

Waste (also known as rubbish, trash, refuse, garbage, junk, and litter) is unwanted or useless materials.

Waste is linked to people development. Litter refers to waste disposed of improperly.

Definitions[link]

[edit] Environment Programme According to the Basel Convention:

"Wastes are materials that are not prime products (that is products produced for the market) for which the generator has no further use in terms of his/her own purposes of production, transformation or consumption, and of which he/she wants to dispose. Wastes may be generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, and other human activities. Residuals recycled or reused at the place of generation are excluded."^[1]

Vegetable waste being dumped in a market in Hyderabad

Under the Waste Framework Directive (European Directive 75/442/EC as amended), the European Union defines waste as an object the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard.

Types[link]

There are many waste types defined by modern systems of waste management, notably including:

Agobox; Bio-medical Waste

• Municipal Waste includes Household waste, Commercial waste, and Demolition waste
• Hazardous Waste includes Industrial waste
• Bio-medical Waste includes Clinical waste
• Special Hazardous waste includes Radioactive waste, explosives waste, and Electronic waste (e-waste)

Reporting[link]

There are many issues that surround reporting waste. It is most commonly measured by size or weight, and there is a stark difference between the two. For example, organic waste is much heavier when it is wet, and plastic or glass bottles can have different weights but be the same size.^[2] On a global scale it is difficult to report waste because countries have different definitions of waste and what falls into waste categories, as well as different ways of reporting. Based on incomplete reports from its parties, the Basel Convention estimated 338 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2001.^[3] For the same year, OECD estimated 4 billion tonnes from its member countries.^[4] Despite these inconsistencies, waste reporting is still useful on a small and large scale to determine key causes and locations, and to find ways of preventing, minimizing, recovering, treating, and disposing waste.

Costs[link]

Environmental costs[link]

Waste attracts rodents and insects which harbour gastrointestinal parasites, yellow fever, worms, the plague and other conditions for humans. Exposure to hazardous wastes, particularly when they are burned, can cause various other diseases including cancers. Waste can contaminate surface water, groundwater, soil, and air which causes more problems for humans, other species, and ecosystems.^[5] Waste treatment and disposal produces significant green house gas (GHG) emissions, notably methane, which are contributing significantly to global climate change.^[3]

Social costs[link]

Waste management is a significant environmental justice issue. Many of the environmental burdens cited above are more often borne by marginalized groups, such as racial minorities, women, and residents of developing nations. NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) is a popular term used to describe the opposition of residents to a proposal for a new development close to them.^[6] However, the need for expansion and siting of waste treatment and disposal facilities is increasing worldwide. There is now a growing market in the transboundary movement of waste, and although most waste that flows between countries goes between developed nations, a significant amount of waste is moved from developed to developing nations.^[7]

Economic costs[link]

The economic costs of managing waste are high, and are often paid for by municipal governments.^[8] Money can often be saved with more efficiently designed collection routes, modifying vehicles, and with public education. Environmental policies such as pay as you throw can reduce the cost of management and reduce waste quantities. Waste recovery (that is, recycling, reuse) can curve economic costs because it avoids extracting raw materials and often cuts transportation costs.^[9] The location of waste treatment and disposal facilities often has an impact on property values due to noise, dust, pollution, unsightliness, and negative stigma. The informal waste sector consists mostly of waste pickers who scavenge for metals, glass, plastic, textiles, and other materials and then trade them for a profit. This sector can significantly alter or reduce waste in a particular system, but other negative economic effects come with the disease, poverty, exploitation, and abuse of its workers.^[10]

Education and awareness[link]

Education and awareness in the area of waste and waste management is increasingly important from a global perspective of resource management. The Talloires Declaration is a declaration for sustainability concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources. Local, regional, and global air pollution; accumulation and distribution of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of "green house" gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the security of nations, and the heritage of future generations. Several universities have implemented the Talloires Declaration by establishing environmental management and waste management programs, e.g. the waste management universityproject. University and vocational education are promoted by various organizations, e.g. WAMITAB and Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.

See also[link]

Environment portal

	Book: Pollution
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Environmental dumping
• Fly-tipping
• Life cycle assessment
• List of waste types
• Litter
• Recycling
• Waste by country
• Waste collection
• Waste collection vehicle
• Waste converter
• Waste management

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Waste

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Waste

Look up waste or wastefulness in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Waste at the Open Directory Project
• Resource Productivity and Waste at the OECD

Jeremy Irons
Irons at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival
Born	Jeremy John Irons (1948-09-19) 19 September 1948 (age 63) Cowes, Isle of Wight, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1971–present
Spouse	Julie Hallam (1969) Sinéad Cusack (1978–present)
Children	Samuel, Max

Jeremy John Irons (born 19 September 1948) is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Godspell and Richard II. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and received a Tony Award for Best Actor.

Irons's first major film role came in the 1981 romantic drama The French Lieutenant's Woman, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. After starring in such films as Moonlighting (1982), Betrayal (1983), and The Mission (1986), he gained critical acclaim for portraying twin gynaecologists in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller Dead Ringers (1988). In 1990, Irons played accused murderer Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, and took home multiple awards including an Academy Award for Best Actor. Other notable films have included The House of the Spirits (1993), The Lion King (1994), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Lolita (1997), The Merchant of Venice (2004), Being Julia (2004), Appaloosa (2008), and Margin Call (2011).

Irons has also made several notable appearances on TV. He earned his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his breakout role in the ITV series Brideshead Revisited (1981). In 2006, Irons starred opposite Helen Mirren in the historical miniseries Elizabeth I, for which he received a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Since 2011, he has been starring in the Showtime historical series The Borgias.

In October 2011, he was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Early life[link]

Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, the son of Barbara Anne Brereton Brymer (Born Sharpe; 1914–1999), a housewife, and Paul Dugan Irons (1913–1983), an accountant.^[1] His Dundee-born paternal great-great-grandfather was one of the first Metropolitan Policemen, and later a chartist; one of his mother's ancestors had been from County Cork, Ireland and had invented the breakdancing move more commonly known as "the worm" (where Irons lives now).^[2] Irons has a brother, Christopher (born 1943), and a sister, Felicity Anne (born 1944). He was educated at the independent Sherborne School in Dorset, (c. 1962–66). He was the drummer and harmonica player (including a rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" on harmonica) in a four-man school band called the Four Pillars of Wisdom. They performed, in a classroom normally used as a physics lab, for the entertainment of boys compulsorily exiled from their houses for two hours on Sunday afternoons. He was also known within Abbey House as half of a comic duo performing skits on Halloween and at end-of-term House Suppers.

Acting career[link]

Irons trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and is now president of its fundraising appeal. He performed a number of plays, and busked on the streets of Bristol, before appearing on the London stage as John the Baptist and Judas opposite David Essex in Godspell, which opened at the Roundhouse on 17 November 1971 before transferring to Wyndham's Theatre playing a total of 1,128 performances.^[3]

Irons was bestowed an Honorary-Life Membership by the University College Dublin Law Society in September 2008, in honour of his contribution to television, film, audio, music and theatre.^[4][5]

Television[link]

He made several appearances on British television, including the children's television series Play Away and as Franz Liszt in the BBC 1974 series Notorious Woman. More significantly he starred in the 13-part adaptation of H.E. Bates' novel Love for Lydia for London Weekend Television (1977), and attracted attention for his key role as the pipe-smoking German student, a romantic pairing with Judi Dench in Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of Aidan Higgins' novel Langrishe, Go Down for BBC television (1978).

The role which brought him fame was that of Charles Ryder in the television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1981). Brideshead reunited him with Anthony Andrews, with whom he had appeared in The Pallisers seven years earlier. In the same year he starred in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman opposite Meryl Streep.

Almost as a 'lap of honour' after these major successes, in 1982 he played the leading role of an exiled Polish building contractor, working in the Twickenham area of South West London, in Jerzy Skolimowski's independent film Moonlighting, widely seen on television, a performance which extended his acting range.

In 2005, Irons won both an Emmy award and a Golden Globe award for his supporting role in the TV mini-series, Elizabeth I. A year later Irons was one of the participants in the third series of the BBC documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?^[6][7] In 2008 he played Lord Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, an adaptation for Sky One.

On 6 November 2008, TV Guide reported he would star as photographer Alfred Stieglitz with Joan Allen as painter Georgia O'Keeffe, in a Lifetime Television O'Keeffe biopic.^[8] Irons also appeared in the documentary for Irish television channel TG4, Faoi Lan Cheoil in which he learned to play the fiddle.

On 12 January 2011, Irons was a guest-star in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit called "Mask". He played Dr. Cap Jackson, a sex therapist.^[9] He reprised the role on an episode titled "Totem" that ran on 30 March 2011.

Irons stars in the 2011 U.S. premium cable network Showtime's series The Borgias, a highly fictionalized account of the Renaissance dynasty of that name. Irons portrays patriarch Rodrigo Borgia, better known to history as Pope Alexander VI.^[10]

Film[link]

Irons made his film debut in Nijinsky in 1980. He appeared sporadically in films during the 1980s, including the Cannes Palme d'Or winner The Mission in 1986, and in the dual role of twin gynecologists in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers in 1988. Other films include Danny the Champion of the World (1989), Reversal of Fortune (1990), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Kafka (1991), Damage (1993), M. Butterfly (1993), The House of the Spirits (1993) appearing again with Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) co-starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996), the 1997 remake of Lolita and as the musketeer Aramis opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1998 film version of The Man in the Iron Mask.

Other roles include the evil wizard Profion in the film Dungeons and Dragons (2000) and Rupert Gould in Longitude (2000). He played the Über-Morlock from the movie The Time Machine (2002). In 2004, Irons played Severus Snape in Comic Relief's Harry Potter parody, "Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan".

In 2005, he appeared in the films Casanova opposite Heath Ledger, and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. He has co-starred with John Malkovich in two movies; The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and Eragon (2006), though they did not have any scenes together in Eragon.

In 2008, Irons co-starred with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen in Appaloosa, directed by Harris. In 2011, Irons appeared alongside Kevin Spacey in the thriller Margin Call.^[11]

Theatre[link]

Irons has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company three times in 1976, 1986–87 and 2010.^[12][13] In 1984, Irons made his New York debut and won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance opposite Glenn Close in The Real Thing.

After an absence from the London stage for 18 years, in 2006 he co-starred with Patrick Malahide in Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of Sándor Márai's novel Embers at the Duke of York's Theatre.^[14]

He made his National Theatre debut playing Harold Macmillan in Never So Good, a new play by Howard Brenton which opened at the Lyttelton on 19 March 2008.^[15][16]

In 2009 Irons appeared on Broadway opposite Joan Allen in the play Impressionism.^[17] The play ran through 10 May 2009 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.^[17]

Other ventures[link]

Audio[link]

Irons read the audio book recording of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, the audio book recording of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (he had also appeared in the 1997 film version of the novel), and the audio book James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

One of his best known film roles has turned out to be lending his distinctive voice to the villain Scar in The Lion King (1994). Irons has since provided voiceovers for three Disney World attractions. He narrated the Spaceship Earth ride, housed in the large geodesic globe at Epcot, from November 1994 to July 2007. He was also the English narrator for the Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic at the Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris. He also voiced H.G. Wells in the English version of the former Disney attraction The Timekeeper. He also played Scar in Fantasmic.

He is also one of the readers in the 4x CD boxed set of The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, produced by Marc Sinden and sold in aid of the Royal Theatrical Fund.^[18][19]

He was originally to star as the Phantom in a 2006 French musical adaptation of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, though the project was canceled.^{[citation needed]} He will be the narrator for Val Kilmer and Bill Pullman's brand-new Lewis and Clark movie from Revolution Studios.^{[citation needed]}

He serves as the English-language version of the audio guide for Westminster Abbey in London.

Irons has served as voice-over in two big cat documentary films by National Geographic: Eye of the Leopard, which was released in 2006,^[20] and The Last Lions, which is a 2011 motion-picture, released on 18 February.^[21]

Music[link]

In 1985, Irons directed a music video for Carly Simon and her heavily promoted single, "Tired of Being Blonde". Although the song was not a hit, the video —featuring the fast cutting, parallel narratives and heavy use of stylized visual effects that were a staple of pop videos at the time— received ample attention on MTV and other outlets.

In 1994 Jeremy Irons had a cameo role in the video for Elastica's hit single "Connection". Irons was one of the many naked men sitting down around Elastica as they performed the song. Irons has since claimed that this three-minute slice of nudity was his most enjoyable work to date.

Irons has contributed to other musical performances, recording William Walton's Façade with Dame Peggy Ashcroft, and in 1987 the songs from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, released on the Decca label.

He sang a selection of Noël Coward at the 1999 Last Night of the Proms in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Coward's birth.

In 2003 he played Fredrik Egerman in a New York revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, and two years later appeared as King Arthur in Lerner and Loewe's Camelot at the Hollywood Bowl.

Jeremy Irons also sang the song "Be Prepared" in the movie The Lion King. However, he actually sang only a section of the song after having vocal problems; Jim Cummings finished the last few lines.

Irons performed the Bob Dylan song "Make You Feel My Love" on the 2006 charity album Unexpected Dreams – Songs From the Stars.

In 2009 Irons appeared on the Touchstone album Wintercoast, recording a narrative introduction to the album.^[22] Recording took place in New York City in February 2009 during rehearsals for his Broadway play Impressionism.

Personal life[link]

Irons married Irish actress Sinéad Cusack in March 1978. They have two sons, Samuel James Brefni Irons (16 September 1978), who works as a photographer, and Maximilian Paul Diarmuid Irons (17 October 1985), also an actor, who appeared in the 2006 Burberry fashion campaign^{[citation needed]} and Red Riding Hood. Both of Irons' sons have appeared in films with their father – Sam as the eponymous hero in Danny, Champion of the World and Max in Being Julia. Irons' wife and children are Catholic; of himself, he has stated, "I don’t go to church much because I don’t like belonging to a club, and I don’t go to confession or anything like that, I don’t believe in it. But I try to be aware of where I fail and I occasionally go to services. I would hate to be a person who didn’t have a spiritual side because there’s nothing to nourish you in life apart from retail therapy."^[23]

He has been the patron since 2002 of the Thomley Activity Centre,^[24] an Oxfordshire non-profit activity centre for disabled children. The charity is near his Watlington, Oxfordshire home. Irons owns Kilcoe Castle (which he had painted a rusty pink) in County Cork, Ireland, and has become involved in local politics there. He also has another Irish residence in The Liberties, Dublin. Irons is a patron of the Chiltern Shakespeare Company.^[25] He is a fan of English football club Portsmouth.^[26]

Activism[link]

Charity work[link]

At the 1991 Tony Awards, Irons was one of the few celebrities to wear the recently created red ribbon to support the fight against AIDS, and he was the first celebrity to wear it onscreen.^[27][28] He supports a number of other charities, including The Prison Phoenix Trust, of which he is an active patron.^[29]

Politics[link]

In 1998, Irons and his wife were named in the list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party, a year after their return to government after 18 years in opposition.^[30] In 2004, he publicly declared his support for the Countryside Alliance, referring to the hunting ban as an "outrageous assault on civil liberties".^[31]

In 2010, Irons starred in a promotional video^[32] for “The 1billionhungry project” – a worldwide drive to attract at least one million signatures to a petition calling on international leaders to move hunger to the top of the political agenda.^[33]

Alternative medicine[link]

He has been criticised in the British Medical Journal for his fundraising activities in support of The College of Medicine, an alternative medicine lobby group in the UK linked to Prince Charles.^[34]

Work[link]

Theatre[link]

Following training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre school Irons initially stayed with the company:

• Florizel in The Winter's Tale, Bristol Old Vic 1969
• Simon in Hay Fever (Noël Coward) Bristol Old Vic 1969
• Nick in What the Butler Saw (Joe Orton) Bristol Old Vic 1969
• Major Barbara (Shaw) Bristol Old Vic 1969
• A Servant of Two Masters (Carlo Goldoni) Bristol Old Vic 1969
• Macbeth, Bristol Old Vic 1969
• The Boy Friend (Sandy Wilson) Bristol Old Vic 1969
• As You Like It, Bristol Old Vic 1970
• Oh! What a Lovely War, Little Theatre Bristol 1970
• The School for Scandal (Sheridan) Little Theatre Bristol 1970
• John/Judas in Godspell, Roundhouse and Wyndham's Theatre, November 1971–1973
• The Madman in The Diary of a Madman (Gogol), Act Inn 1973
• Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, Young Vic
• Mick in The Caretaker (Pinter) Young Vic 1974
• Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, New Shakespeare Company, Roundhouse 1975
• Harry Thunder in Wild Oats (John O'Keefe) RSC Aldwych Theatre, December 1976; RSC Stratford and Piccadilly Theatre 1977
• Jameson in The Rear Column (Simon Gray), Globe Theatre, February 1978 – Clarence Derwent Award
• Henry in The Real Thing (Tom Stoppard) New York 1984 —Tony Award for Best Actor
• Leontes in The Winter's Tale, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford 1986)
• Willmore in The Rover (Aphra Behn) RSC Swan Theatre and Mermaid Theatre 1986
• Richard II in Richard II, RSC Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1986, Barbican Theatre 1987
• Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music (Sondheim) New York, 2003
• Russell in Celebration, a Pinter staged reading, Gate Theatre, Dublin/Albery Theatre, 2005
• Henrik in Embers (Christopher Hampton/Sándor Márai novel) Duke of York's Theatre March 2006
• Harold Macmillan in Never So Good (Howard Brenton) National Theatre Lyttelton, March 2008
• Thomas Buckle in Impressionism (Michael Jacobs) Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre Broadway, March 2009

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeremy Irons

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeremy Irons

• Jeremy Irons at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jeremy Irons at the Internet Movie Database
• Jeremy Irons at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Jeremy Irons Profile by The Daily Telegraph (13 March 2008)

Peter Lehner (born in 1958) is an American lawyer and environmentalist, currently the Executive Director of Natural Resources Defense Council^[1]

As the Executive Director, Lehner manages more than 350 environmental advocates in seven offices across the planet and guides NRDC's policy positions and advocacy strategies. Since Lehner assumed his role as Executive Director in 2006, NRDC has strengthened and rededicated its resources towards curbing global warming, building a clean energy future for America, reviving the world's oceans, saving endangered wild spaces and lands, stemming the tide of toxic chemicals, and accelerating the greening of China. NRDC has opened new offices in Chicago and Beijing, and established a new Center for Market Innovation. He blogs regularly on Huffington Post.^[2]

Early in his career, Lehner created and leaded the environmental prosecution unit for New York City Law Department. Subsequently, he joined NRDC as the Director of NRDC's water program from 1994 to 1999.^[3] He left NRDC to become the Chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office, a job he held for eight years. In that role, he supervised all environmental litigation by New York State, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming, acid rain, and smog-causing emissions from the country's largest electric utility companies. His work at the Attorney General's office, where he led 40 lawyers and 10 scientists, received great acclaim and recognition for furthering the environmental agenda in New York State, the Northeast and nationally.^[4]

In addition to Lehner's leadership at NRDC, he has been involved with a number of other organizations. He teaches law at Columbia Law School, and serves on the boards of the Butler Environmental Protection Fund, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, New York Rivers United, and the Center for Watershed Protection. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the advisory council of Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and is one of the founding members of the Environmental Law Reporter and Environmental Law Institute's Advisory Board.^[5]

Lehner has been honored with the Distinguished Public Service Award by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; the Earth Day Good Government Award by the City of New York; the Environmental Leadership Award by Hudson Riverkeeper; the Region II Environmental Quality Award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and the Environmental Leadership award by Environmental Advocates.

Lehner received AB degrees in Philosophy and Mathematics from Harvard College, and his law degree from Columbia University Law School, where he continues to teach environmental law. He is married to Fritz Beshar and has three daughters: Nadine, Eliza and Marina.

See also[link]

Natural Resources Defense Council

Frances Beinecke, NRDC's President

References[link]