The size of agricultural waste

Farmers

• Field waste burning is of particular health concern because it produces significant quantities of dioxins. Dioxins and "dioxin-like" compounds are a group of 30 highly toxic chlorinated organic chemicals.
• Non-exploitation of agricultural waste into a source of profit while increasing the costs of cultivation.
• Over time, the repeated practice of open burning becomes costly to farmers. Successive fires destroy the organic matter that makes soil fertile, causing crop yields to decrease over time and increasing the need for costly fertilizers.

Environment

• Open Agriculture waste burning is responsible for more than a third of all black carbon emissions, a short-lived climate pollutant that contributes to air pollution, climate change, and increased melting in the cryosphere.
• Agricultural waste, containing large quantities of agrochemicals, organic matter, chemical residues, sediments and saline drainage that’s discharged into water bodies. Runs-off from agriculture is a leading source of degradation of water bodies, and are also identified as a major environmental issue by the organization for Economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries.
• The burning of agricultural waste contributes to climate change because biomass burning has a significant impact on the chemistry of the global atmosphere because it provides a large source of CO2, N2O, and hydrocarbons.

Factories

• Agro-industry generates a large amount of waste with diverse characteristics. The accumulation of agricultural waste is in the excess of 2 billion tons worldwide.
• The agro-industrial waste and effluents are usually discharged on land or into water bodies. These have variable chemical characteristics and metal contents that may prove harmful to the environment.
• Uncontrolled burning of agro-industrial waste releases toxic (nitrogen oxides, SO2, respirable particulate matter), carcinogenic (dioxins, furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and greenhouse gases (CH4, N2O) as well as smoke, contributing to significant haze, global warming and detrimental to human health.
• The accumulation of waste inside the factory threatens to maintain the quality inside it.
• The accumulated waste inside the factory causes many health damages to those around it.
• There are 8 major factories for sugarcane mills in upper Egypt, these factories employ more than 35,000 workers.