ENV4351 is the solid waste engineering course in a Florida environmental or civil engineering degree. The Statewide Course Numbering System titles it Solid Waste Management and defines it as "generation of solid wastes. Collection methods, equipment and costs. Disposal methods, costs and methods of financing." The statewide prerequisite is recorded as "prior environmental engineering knowledge."
⚠⚠ Four Florida public universities carry this number and no two of them agree on what it is worth. The credit values run from two to four — the widest spread the project has found on a technical course — and the titles show a genuine difference in scope:
| Institution | Its title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Florida International University | Solid and Hazardous Waste Management | 3 |
| University of Florida | Solid Waste Management | 4 |
| University of South Florida | Solid Waste Engineering | 2 |
| University of West Florida | Solid Waste Engineering | 3 |
See the offering notes below before you assume a credit value — this is the number where that assumption costs the most.
The subject itself is one of the most concretely regulated in engineering. Solid waste is governed by federal statute, state rule and local ordinance simultaneously, and the design of a landfill or a collection system is constrained as much by Subtitle D of RCRA and Florida Administrative Code as by any calculation. Students frequently arrive expecting a technical course and find a regulatory one; the honest description is that it is both, and the engineering only makes sense inside the regulation.
| Institution | Its title | Credits | Contact hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida International University | Solid and Hazardous Waste Management | 3 | not published |
| University of Florida | Solid Waste Management | 4 | not published |
| University of South Florida | Solid Waste Engineering | 2 | not published |
| University of West Florida | Solid Waste Engineering | 3 | not published |
All four are State University System institutions, so statewide numbering guarantees transfer of this course between them.
⚠⚠ Two credits to four is a factor of two, and the transfer guarantee does not close it. The guarantee moves the credit you earned; it does not convert two credits into four. Concretely:
The credit value also tells you what the course is. Two credits cannot cover the same ground as four. Expect the USF version to be a focused treatment and the UF version to include substantial design work or a project. Read your own syllabus rather than this guide's topic list as the definitive scope statement.
⚠ The 45 contact hours at the top of this guide are derived for the three-credit version — the Florida convention for a 3-credit lecture course. No institution publishes an hour figure. The two- and four-credit versions will differ proportionally.
Florida International University titles it "Solid and Hazardous Waste Management." Statewide, hazardous waste is a separate course — ENV4330, Hazardous Waste Control, carried by FIU and UWF.
Hazardous waste is governed by RCRA Subtitle C, a far more demanding regulatory regime than the Subtitle D rules covering municipal solid waste: cradle-to-grave manifesting, generator categories, treatment standards, and personal liability provisions that have no equivalent in municipal waste. A course covering both in one term covers each less deeply.
⚠ The consequence for a student: if you need hazardous waste competence — for a consulting role, a site assessment position, or the environmental PE depth examination — confirm whether your course actually delivered it, and consider taking ENV4330 as well. A transfer evaluator reading "ENV4351" on a transcript will assume the statewide scope, which is solid waste alone.
A senior-level course. The statewide prerequisite is "prior environmental engineering knowledge", which in practice means the introductory course — ENV3001C, ENV3001 or ENV4001 depending on the institution. Fluid mechanics and a chemistry sequence are assumed.
Solid waste appears on the NCEES Fundamentals of Engineering examination in both the Environmental and the Civil disciplines, and more substantially on the PE Environmental examination, where waste management is a full content area. The FE is the first step toward Professional Engineer licensure through the Florida Board of Professional Engineers, which requires four years of qualifying experience before the PE examination. ⚠ Landfill designs are sealed by a licensed engineer and permitted by FDEP, so the standard of care here is external, documented and enforced.
Budget six to nine hours a week for the three-credit version, scaled to your own. The distinctive demand is not mathematical: it is that you must read regulation accurately. Students used to problem sets find rule text slow and imprecise-seeming, and then discover that it is extremely precise and that the imprecision was in their reading. Give it the time.
This course is a particularly instructive case, because the subject is dominated by regulation and regulation is exactly where these tools are least reliable and most confident.
Genuinely useful: explaining an unfamiliar process — how a leachate collection system works, what a MRF optical sorter does; generating practice problems for water balance and gas generation calculations; drafting and tightening report prose, which matters because environmental engineering is a writing-heavy profession; summarising a long technical document as a first pass; and writing spreadsheet routines for capacity and cost calculations.
⚠⚠ Where it fails, and this is the central warning: models state regulatory requirements incorrectly and with total confidence. They cite CFR sections that do not exist, quote superseded versions of rules, conflate federal minimum requirements with stricter state ones, and — most dangerously in Florida — apply the federal baseline where Florida's own rules are more stringent. Florida's high water table means its landfill siting and liner requirements frequently exceed the federal minimum, and a national answer is a wrong answer here.
The coincidence worth naming: this course exists to teach you that the rule text is the authority — that an engineer working from a summary, a memory or a colleague's description of a regulation is working from something that may be wrong. A model's confident paraphrase of a regulation is precisely the artefact the course teaches you to distrust. The discipline is identical whatever the source: go to 40 CFR 258, go to Chapter 62-701 F.A.C., and read the clause. It takes minutes and it is what a permit reviewer will do.
Professional and legal weight: a permit application misstating a requirement is a serious professional failure, and engineering judgements here are sealed by a licensed engineer who is personally responsible. The NSPE Code of Ethics requires objective and truthful statements and work within one's competence. ⚠ Waste facilities are also among the most litigated in environmental practice, and design documents are read years later by people looking for exactly this kind of error.
Academic integrity: read your syllabus. Where the course includes a design project or regulatory analysis, instructor policies differ on tool use and frequently distinguish drafting from analysis.
Generated September 12, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026