Talk:Waste management

Archives (Index)

2013 and before 2013 2015 2017 2019 2020 2022 2023

This page is archived by ClueBot III.

Wiki Education assignment: Environmental and Climate Justice

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ErBear24 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by ErBear24 (talk) 14:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - FA24 - Sect 200 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2024 and 13 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Qiuyi Y (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Qiuyi Yang (talk) 03:00, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Proposed summary for technical prose

I've been using Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental large language model to create summaries for the most popular articles with {{Technical}} templates. This article, Waste management, has such a template above the entire article. Here is the paragraph summary at grade 5 reading level which Gemini 2.5 Pro suggested:

Waste management is how we handle all our trash and garbage, from the time we make it until we get rid of it. This includes collecting trash, moving it, treating it, and disposing of it safely, like putting it in landfills (big holes in the ground) or burning it. Trash can be solid stuff, liquids, or even gases, and it comes from homes, schools, and businesses. It's important to manage waste the right way to keep people healthy and protect the Earth from getting dirty. Good waste management tries to reduce the bad effects of trash by doing things like recycling, which turns old materials like paper, plastic, and metal into new things, or composting food scraps to make soil. The best ways are to make less trash in the first place and reuse things whenever possible.

While I have read and may have made some modifications to that summary, I am not going to add it to the article because I want other editors to review, revise if appropriate, and add it instead. This is an experiment with a few dozen articles initially to see how these suggestions are received, and after a week or two, I will decide how to proceed. Thank you for your consideration. Cramulator (talk) 12:34, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Cramulator - Please don't use that version. It isn't in encyclopaedic language, it uses first person pronouns, it is written is very american English and is factually wrong. For example, we don't "..make trash"; landfills are not simply "..big holes in the ground"; "..protect the Earth from getting dirty" is a meaningless gross over simplification; composting food waste doesn't make soil. Even on Simple Wikipedia this would not be appropriate. Please also see WP:Using neural network language models on Wikipedia Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   15:31, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I have learned that fifth grade level, which I understood to be World Book Encyclopedia's reading level, is not appropriate on Wikipedia where the target reading level for STEM articles is ninth grade. I've regenerated all 68 of the suggestions at ninth grade reading level here. For this article, it is:

Waste management is the process of handling trash from when it's created until it's finally disposed of. This involves collecting, transporting, treating, and getting rid of various types of waste, such as solids, liquids, gases, household garbage, industrial materials, and electronic waste (e-waste). The main goal is to reduce the harmful effects of waste on people's health, the environment, and natural resources. Common practices include following the "waste hierarchy" (reduce, reuse, recycle are the best options), separating waste types, and using disposal methods like landfills or burning (incineration), sometimes to create energy. While essential for sustainable cities, managing waste properly can be challenging and costly, especially in developing countries, and dealing with issues like e-waste and widespread mismanagement remains a global concern.

Is that more acceptable to you? Cramulator (talk) 16:01, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Use of LLM needs to be discussed by the entire Wikipedia community, not just those interested in one article. You can start at WP:Village pump. Sundayclose (talk) 16:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I am retracting this and the other LLM-generated suggestions due to clear negative consensus at the Village Pump. I will be posting a thorough postmortem report in mid-April to the source code release page. Thanks to all who commented on the suggestions both negatively and positively, and especially to those editors who have manually addressed the overly technical cleanup issue on six, so far, of the 68 articles where suggestions were posted. Cramulator (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Late to the discussion, but contractions have been recognized as unencyclopedically colloquial as long as I've been here. Julietdeltalima (talk) 09:46, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

I've now realized this discussion has been moot for a few months, but I'm leaving this comment in place for the benefit of, uh, anyone who might find it beneficial. Julietdeltalima (talk) 09:52, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Possible AI-generated content

Hi -- I have tagged the section added in this diff as AI-generated. It is generally low quality and unsourced so might just need to be removed, but the section has been added onto since. Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:52, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I propose merging History of waste management into Waste management. History of waste management is only slightly longer than this article's section and does not significantly expand upon the topic. Both the history section on this page and History of waste management only contain a few details that the other does not contain. SnappyDragonPennyroyal (talk) 05:03, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

SnappyDragonPennyroyal, is this something you're still interested in? It's gone without objection, so you should be good to carry out a merge. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:15, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I have taken a break from editing the article because I have been busy; I will merge the two when I have time. SnappyDragonPennyroyal (talk) 05:48, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Since this hasn't gotten any further input, I've removed the merge tags as inactive. It remains unopposed and anyone can carry out a merge. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:20, 3 April 2026 (UTC)