Use of spreadsheets in environmental education: An application for solid waste management

Spreadsheets have gained increasing popularity in engineering applications, used by both students and practicing engineers. In addition to their low cost, they are easy to learn, and provide the user with the flexibility to display different sets of results just upon changing the input data. This paper illustrates the use of an Excel spreadsheet for solid waste management practices. The program, which has been developed as part of the 'Solid Waste Management' course at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, allows the user to determine the chemical composition of the waste and its corresponding gas generation potential which are directly linked to a module that allows the prediction of the temporal distribution of gas and leachate production from landfills. The data representing the waste composition and chemistry, gas and leachate production are then automatically plotted into a series of curves and bar charts that allow the decision maker and designer to point out important characteristics, trends and relationships among various parameters controlling solid waste management control systems and landfill operations.