1. A failure to use something wisely, properly, fully, or to good effect: The waste of food at the restaurant disturbed Alison because she also worked at a Food Bank.
2. Unwanted or unusable items, remains, or household garbage: There were large bins of waste sitting by the side of the road waiting for the disposal truck to pick them up.
3. Contaminated water from domestic, industrial, or mining applications: The waste which supplied the Native Reserve was contaminated by run off from an adjoining mining project.
4. Rocky areas that are mined for a mineral, or ore, with insufficient mineral content to justify further processing: Jim, the old prospector, mined the waste hoping to recover particles of gold.
5. A place or region that has been destroyed or ruined: The city and surrounding suburbs were nothing but waste after the destruction by the bombings of the invaders.

1. To use, to consume, or to expend thoughtlessly or carelessly: Roberta's mother was always cautioning her not to waste food, reminding her daughter about hungry children in other parts of the world.
2. To cause someone to lose energy, strength, or vigor; to exhaust, tire, or enfeeble: The disease that Jim had significantly wasted his body to a deplorable condition.
3. To fail to take advantage of or to use for profit; to lose: It would be a shame to waste an opportunity to go to the Canadian islands for the holidays.
4. Slang: To kill, murder or to destroy completely: The gang leader, Dudley, threatened to waste the other gang if they did not stop stealing cars in his neighborhood.
5. Etymology: from Latin vastare, "to lay waste" from vastus, "empty, desolate, waste" then "devastate, ravage, ruin", from Anglo-French and Old Norse French waster, "to spoil, to ruin" (Old French guaster), altered by the influence of Frankish wostjan.

A tract of gently sloping land by a river that periodically overflows depositing clay, silt, or gravel which has been brought downstream where the water slows down: Mike and his family decided to pitch their tents on the alluvial plain near the river because it was flat and sandy.

The waste plains look desolate and barren, however they may be rich in minerals that have been washed down by the river creating an alluvial plain.

 

Unused water that returns as vapor to the atmosphere before it has been incorporated into an eco-system where it provides benefits for living creatures and plants: Dwight and other climatologists studied the cycle and patterns of consumptive waste, comparing rural and urban water supplies.

A constructive, or contractor, term for two or more fixtures that use a single continuous line as the waste line or the area below the point where the fixture drains into the pipe is the waste line: When designing and building the new home, the architects and contractors were careful to include a system for continuous waste that would drain properly.

Any broken or unwanted electrical or electronic appliances which have become items of concern because of the components are considered toxic and are not biodegradable: The city where Sally lives recently started a recycling program for electronic wastes of cell phones and computers.

Any of the various categories of disposable matter that is generated by manufacturing or commercial processes and which usually indicates some kind of hazardous or toxic materials: The city established a working group to monitor the industrial waste of the company that produced plastic films which was located near the river.

A collective term for substances, including municipal sewage, manure, forestry and agricultural residues and some types of unusable industrial products: The municipal engineers studied the waste biomass to determine what could be recycled into safe products.

The portion of the energy input to a mechanical process that is rejected into the environment: There is something ironic about air conditioners that cool a person's home but which generate a lot of waste heat which is poured out into the environment.

Any system or process that actively captures warmth which would otherwise be discharged into the environment, so that it can be used for other purposes: The use of the heat from exhaust gases to heat water is an example of waste heat recovery.

The first underground repository in the United States licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste left from the research and production of nuclear weapons; located in the Chihuahuan Desert of southeastern New Mexico, USA: As an engineering student, Dallas wanted to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and discovered that he needed special governmental permission to do so.

A process that generates energy from useless, discarded materials; especially, by the incineration of municipal solid wastes or (MSW): The waste-to-energy process utilizes "waste" to generate useful energy; such as, electricity, heat, or both.

This waste-to-energy is possible, and convenient, when the heat generated by burning the "waste" is high enough to warrant satisfactory combustion conditions and to make enough energy available to overcome losses and auxiliary consumption.

Characteristics of waste-to-energy production

• Waste-to-energy is the offspring of the incineration of materials, which were originally introduced to sterilize and to reduce the volume of useless substances by burning it in a furnace.
• Modern waste-to-energy plants allow the export of energy, with very low environmental impact.
• The waste-to-energy plant consists of four basic sections: waste combustor, recovery boiler, flue gas treatment, and steam cycle.

Waste-to-energy is the process in which municipal waste is used to generate useful energy for electricity, heat, or both.

• The design of the combustor varies widely with the waste characteristics: physical state (solid versus liquid), size distribution, heating value, ash and moisture content, etc.
• Municipal solid waste is typically burned on a moving grate, where it is kept 20-30 minutes until it is completely burned.
• The hot gases generated in the combustor go through the recovery boiler to generate steam, which is used directly as a heat carrier or it is sent to a steam turbine to produce power.
• Flue gases are treated by adding reactants called sorbents and by filtering the particulate matter.
• A modern, large plant, treating a half-million tons of municipal solid waste per year, can generate more than 400 million kWh per year, meeting the electricity needs of more than 150,000 families.