Report: policy drivers and the planning and implementation of integrated waste management in Ireland using the regional approach.

Waste management in Ireland has been dramatically transformed over the past 10 years from over 90% reliance on landfill towards a fully integrated approach. According to the latest EPA National Database Report in 2007 our municipal (household and commercial but excluding construction and demolition) recycling rate was 35% in 2005. This has been achieved through the implementation of 10 regional waste management plans all prepared within a new national planning framework in accordance with the Waste Management Act 1996 and Government policy document 'Changing Our Ways', published in 1998 by the Irish Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The principal drivers of the waste management plans and strategies are the EU Waste Framework Directive (recently revised), the EU Packaging Directive and the EU Landfill Directive. In addition, there were substantial political and environmental drivers due to the relatively poor standard of landfills in Ireland. Strict landfill regulation by the Environment Protection Agency commenced in 1997and led to many closures of poor facilities and new standards of siting design and operation. This has led to very high landfill charges that are only now beginning to stabilize. The key to improving public attitudes to the greatly improving waste management system has been the degree and content of stakeholder involvement programmes. These programmes are now consolidated into a national 'Race against Waste' programme (www.raceagainstwaste.ie). The purpose of the programme is to create awareness and deal with many of the misconceptions in the public mind attached to waste treatment methods especially incineration. Waste management is after all about people.     

Critical enablers and inhibitors for economic sustainability in the supply and demand of end-of-life vehicles in Malaysia: a SWOT analysis

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - End-of-life vehicles (ELV) management is essential for sustainable development and waste minimization. However, the ELV recycling companies are...     

Experience with the use of LCA-modelling (EASEWASTE) in waste management.

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) models are becoming the principal decision support tools of waste management systems. This paper describes our experience with the use of EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies), a new computerized LCA-based model for integrated waste management. Our findings provide a quantitative understanding of waste management systems and may reveal consistent approaches to improve their environmental performances. EASEWASTE provides a versatile system modelling facility combined with a complete life-cycle impact assessment and in addition to the traditional impact categories addresses toxicity-related categories. New categories dealing with stored ecotoxicity and spoiled groundwater resources have been introduced. EASEWASTE has been applied in several studies, including full-scale assessments of waste management in Danish municipalities. These studies led to numerous modelling issues: the need of combining process-specific and input-specific emissions, the choice of a meaningful time horizon, the way of accounting for biological carbon emissions, the problem of stored ecotoxicity and aspects of crediting the waste management system with the savings inherent in avoided production of energy and materials. Interpretation of results showed that waste management systems can be designed in an environmentally sustainable manner where energy recovery processes lead to substantial avoidance of emissions and savings of resources.     

Policy options to reduce consumer waste to zero: comparing product stewardship and extended producer responsibility for refrigerator waste.

Today, over-consumption, pollution and resource depletion threaten sustainability. Waste management policies frequently fail to reduce consumption, prevent pollution, conserve resources and foster sustainable products. However, waste policies are changing to focus on lifecycle impacts of products from the cradle to the grave by extending the responsibilities of stakeholders to post-consumer management. Product stewardship and extended producer responsibility are two policies in use, with radically different results when compared for one consumer product, refrigerators. North America has enacted product stewardship policies that fail to require producers to take physical or financial responsibility for recycling or for environmentally sound disposal, so that releases of ozone depleting substances routinely occur, which contribute to the expanding the ozone hole. Conversely, Europe's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive requires extended producer responsibility, whereby producers collect and manage their own post-consumer waste products. WEEE has resulted in high recycling rates of greater than 85%, reduced emissions of ozone-depleting substances and other toxins, greener production methods, such as replacing greenhouse gas refrigerants with environmentally friendly hydrocarbons and more reuse of refrigerators in the EU in comparison with North America.     

Utilizing a 'systems' approach to improve the management of waste from healthcare facilities: best practice case studies from England and Wales.

Changes in environmental legislation and standards governing healthcare waste, such as the Hazardous Waste Regulations are expected to have a significant impact on healthcare waste quantities and costs in England and Wales. This paper presents findings from two award winning case study organizations, the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and the Cornwall NHS Trust on 'systems' they have employed for minimizing waste. The results suggest the need for the development and implementation of a holistic range of systems in order to develop best practice, including waste minimization strategies, key performance indicators, and staff training and awareness. The implications for the sharing of best practice from the two case studies are also discussed.     

Novel and innovative pyrolysis and gasification technologies for energy efficient and environmentally sound MSW disposal

Within the context of European Union (EU) energy policy and sustainibility in waste management, recent EU regulations demand energy efficient and environmentally sound disposal methods of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Currently, landfill with its many drawbacks is the preferred option in the EU and many other industrialised countries. Within the waste management hierarchy thermal disposal especially incineration is a viable and proven alternative. But, the dominating method, mass-burn grate incineration has drawbacks as well particularly hazardous emissions and harmful process residues. In recent years, pyrolysis and gasification technologies have emerged to address these issues and improve the energy output. To keep the many players in the field comprehensively informed and up-to-date, novel and innovative technology approaches emphasising European developments are reviewed.     

Comparison research on waste classification between China and the EU,Japan, and the USA

Waste and waste management have become significant global issues and common challenges that we face. Efficient and effective waste management is an essential part of civilized society. A good waste classification system is the foundation and precondition for efficient waste management. In this paper, in accordance with waste classification principles of systematicness, hierarchy, practical maneuverability and expansibility, waste classification systems in China, the EU, Japan and the USA are reviewed for collection, transportation and treatment sectors. Comparison analysis results show that waste classification methods are diversified and process-oriented classification, substance-oriented and hazardous properties classification principles are widely adopted for waste generation and transportation. For waste treatment process, all the countries and regions adopt similar classification methods based on follow-up treatment process. In general, the EU and Japan all have established their own integrated waste classification system. However, the EU’s macro–micro integration waste classification systems are more suitable for China to learn which process-oriented waste classification is used for declaration and registration at the micro-level and substance-oriented waste classification system for environmental statistics at the macro-level.     

Life-cycle assessment of municipal solid wastes: development of the WASTED model

This paper describes the development of the Waste Analysis Software Tool for Environmental Decisions (WASTED) model. This model provides a comprehensive view of the environmental impacts of municipal solid waste management systems. The model consists of a number of separate submodels that describe a typical waste management process: waste collection, material recovery, composting, energy recovery from waste and landfilling. These submodels are combined to represent a complete waste management system. WASTED uses compensatory systems to account for the avoided environmental impacts derived from energy recovery and material recycling. The model is designed to provide solid waste decision-makers and environmental researchers with a tool to evaluate waste management plans and to improve the environmental performance of solid waste management strategies. The model is user-friendly and compares favourably with other earlier models.     

Waste recycling policy in Hong Kong

The positive non-intervention policy adopted by the Hong Kong Government has successfully led Hong Kong to an economically prosperous stage. Nevertheless, the extension of this policy to the area of waste management and waste recycling is a major reason for the sluggish waste recovery rate in Hong Kong even given the fact that Hong Kong is experiencing perhaps the greatest pressure from waste disposal in the world. The official approach to waste recycling is one of bottom-up promotion and encouragement of recycling through environmental education. While environmental education is indispensable in the course of promoting waste recycling, the use of top-down measures, such as legislation and fiscal policies, may be needed for a sustainable waste management. Waste management in Hong Kong has meant “coping with” the continuous growth in waste volume. However, in other areas of environmental management, such as air, water and noise, economic and regulatory instruments like tax differentiation and legislative control have been employed thus showing that a deviation from the minimal regulation requirement is sometimes considered justifiable. The low priority given to waste management and waste recycling for top-down measures leads to the loss of a lot of precious and non-renewable resources, and detriment to the welfare of future generations.     

Municipal waste management in Sicily: practices and challenges

There are numerous problems yet to be solved in waste management and although efforts towards waste recovery and recycling have been made, landfills are still the most common method used in the EU and many other industrialised countries. Thermal disposal, particularly incineration, is a tested and viable alternative. In 2004, only 11% of the annual waste production of Italy was incinerated. Sicily, with over five million inhabitants, is the second largest region in Italy where waste management is now a critical problem. The use of landfills can no longer be considered a satisfactory environmental solution; therefore, new methods have to be chosen and waste-to-energy plants could provide an answer. This paper gives details of municipal solid waste management in Sicily following a new Waste Management Plan. Four waste-to-energy plants will generate electricity through a steam cycle; the feedstock will become the residue after material recovery, which is calculated as 20-40% weight of the collected municipal solid waste.     

Preliminary study for the management of construction and demolition waste

This paper refers to the management of the construction and demolition (C&D) waste since, according to the EU Waste Strategy, C&D waste is considered to be one of the priority waste streams and appropriate actions need to be taken with respect to its effective management. Initially, the paper presents the state-of-the-art of the problem of C&D waste, including the amount and composition of C&D waste in EU countries, differences in the characteristics of this waste stream depending on its origin, as well as collection and management practices that are applied. A methodology is described for the estimation of the quantities of the waste stream under examination, since in most cases quantitative primary data is not available. Next, the fundamentals for the development of an integrated scheme for the management of C&D waste are presented and discussed, such as appropriate demolition procedures and location of waste management (off-site waste management, on-site waste management, direct on-site recovery, centralized on-site recovery). Finally, taking into consideration all relevant parameters, alternative systems that could be applied for the management of the C&D waste are suggested.     

An analysis of UK waste minimization clubs: key requirements for future cost effective developments

The UK waste strategy is based upon use of the best practicable environmental option (BPEO), by those making waste management decisions. BPEO is supported by the use of the waste hierarchy, with its range of preferable options for dealing with waste, and the proximity principle, where waste is treated/disposed of as close to its point of origin as possible. The national waste strategy emphasizes the key role of waste minimization and encourages industry, commerce and the public to move towards sustainable waste management practice for economic and environmental reasons. Waste minimization clubs have been used, since the early 1990s, to demonstrate to industry/commerce that reducing waste production can lead to significant financial savings. There have been around 75 such clubs in the UK and they receive support from a wide range of agencies, including the Environmental Technology Best Practice Program. The early Demonstration Clubs had significant savings to cost ratios, e.g. Aire and Calder at 8.4, but had very high costs, e.g. Aire and Calder at 400,000 pounds. It is acknowledged that the number of clubs will have to be approximately doubled in the next few years so as to have an adequate coverage of the UK. There are at present, marked regional variations in club development and cognizance needs to be taken, by facilitators, of the need for extensive coverage of the UK. Future clubs will probably have to operate in a financially constrained climate and they need to be designed to deliver significant savings and waste reduction at low cost. To aid future club design, final reports of all projects should report in a standard manner so that cost benefit analysis can be used to inform facilitators about the most effective club type. rights reserved.     

The development and achievements of EU waste policy

While waste amounts are still growing in the EU, there is a clear shift in the waste management options employed to deal with waste. Less waste is landfilled and more is recycled or incinerated with energy recovery. In all, 62% of municipal waste was landfilled in 1995, but that figure had fallen to 40% by 2008. Waste management has a strong influence on the environment by either provoking or preventing impacts; for example, greenhouse gas emissions vary significantly between treatment options. The overall CO2-equivalent impacts from municipal waste management have in the same period been more than halved. The drivers for this change in waste management have been EU and national policies and legislation that have set up clear targets for recycling and recovery of waste. This article gives an overview of the set targets, the achieved results, and the consequences for greenhouse gas emissions of municipal waste management.     

Potential use of feebate systems to foster environmentally sound urban waste management

Waste treatment facilities are often shared among different municipalities as a means of managing wastes more efficiently. Usually, management costs are assigned to each municipality depending on the size of the population or total amount of waste produced, regardless of important environmental aspects such as per capita waste generation or achievements in composting or recycling. This paper presents a feebate (fee+rebate) system aimed to foster urban waste reduction and recovery. The proposal suggests that municipalities achieving better results in their waste management performance (from an ecological viewpoint) be recompensated with a rebate obtained from a fee charged to those municipalities that are less environmentally sound. This is a dynamic and flexible instrument that would positively encourage municipalities to reduce waste whilst increasing the recycling.     

Application of the US decision support tool for materials and waste management

The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) launched the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) in 2002 to help reduce waste and move towards more sustainable resource consumption. The objective of the RCC is to help communities, industries, and the public think in terms of materials management rather than waste disposal. Reducing cost, finding more efficient and effective strategies to manage municipal waste, and thinking in terms of materials management requires a holistic approach that considers life-cycle environmental tradeoffs. The US EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory has led the development of a municipal solid waste decision support tool (MSW-DST). The computer software can be used to calculate life-cycle environmental tradeoffs and full costs of different waste management or materials recovery programs. The environmental methodology is based on the use of life-cycle assessment and the cost methodology is based on the use of full-cost accounting. Life-cycle inventory (LCI) environmental impacts and costs are calculated from the point of collection, handling, transport, treatment, and disposal. For any materials that are recovered for recycling, offsets are calculated to reflect potential emissions savings from use of virgin materials. The use of the MSW-DST provides a standardized format and consistent basis to compare alternatives. This paper provides an illustration of how the MSW-DST can be used by evaluating ten management strategies for a hypothetical medium-sized community to compare the life-cycle environmental and cost tradeoffs. The LCI results from the MSW-DST are then used as inputs into another US EPA tool, the Tool for the reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts, to convert the LCI results into impact indicators. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the MSW-DST can be used to identify and balance multiple criteria (costs and environmental impacts) when evaluating options for materials and waste management. This type of approach is needed in identifying strategies that lead to reduced waste and more sustainable resource consumption. This helps to meet the goals established in the US EPA's Resource Conservation Challenge.     

Research & development methodology for recycling residues as building materials--a proposal

This article presents a proposal of methodology for conducting such research and development. The data/statistics waste collection statistics phase must cover geographical distribution, seasonal variations on production rates, waste management practices, current applications and their related costs and revenues. Waste characterisation must be comprehensive with physical, environmental and chemical aspects, including waste variability and waste contamination from shipping, handling and storage activities. Based on the previous results a broad forecast of potential applications must be developed based on very simple rules like minimisation of transportation distances and energy consumption, etc. Marketing evaluation is a very important step, frequently neglected when choosing the best applications for a particular waste. Other steps are product development and performance evaluation. Environmental evaluation of the new technology is very important because not all recycling is environmentally sound. This evaluation must be based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and has to consider the environmental benefit of avoiding landfill disposal of the waste, and could include leaching or other specific tests or simulations. Also, the technological transference phase must be carefully planned and developed. Each proposed step is discussed, examples are given and needs for further research emphasised.     

Selection criteria for waste management processes in manned space missions

Management of waste produced during manned space exploration missions will be an important function of advanced life support systems. Waste materials can be thrown away or recovered for reuse. The first approach relies totally on external supplies to replace depleted resources while the second approach regenerates resources internally. The selection of appropriate waste management processes will be based upon criteria which include mission and hardware characteristics as well as overall system considerations. Mission characteristics discussed include destination, duration, crew size, operating environment, and transportation costs. Hardware characteristics include power, mass and volume requirements as well as suitability for a given task. Overall system considerations are essential to assure optimization for the entire mission rather than for an individual system. For example, a waste management system designed for a short trip to the Moon will probably not be the best one for an extended mission to Mars. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology to identify and compare viable waste management options for selection of an appropriate waste management system.     

Best management practices for environmental restoration programs

Based on a review of hundreds of environmental restoration program optimization reviews, this article describes management tools found in successful and efficient remediation programs. Projects that consistently struggled to achieve their objectives were observed to be missing certain, or to have inadequately used, these tools. The tools are articulated as best practices because when they are present and actively used, project shortcomings were minimal. Priority objectives for site owners and project managers include improving efficiency and effectiveness through performance management, reducing resource usage and energy consumption, ensuring protectiveness, and reducing uncertainty in management decision making. Restoring environmental resources damaged by historic waste management practices began in earnest in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the broad recognition of the problems caused by environmental discharges and spills when wastes are not managed appropriately. Under new regulations, soil and groundwater remediation projects could be, and were, conducted within a defined framework. The number and variety of restoration projects that were launched resulted in a slew of projects progressing through the stages of characterization, decision, and cleanup, and more were added to the cleanup process each year. In the 1990s, the Department of Defense noted that many cleanup efforts were projected to incur substantial operational, maintenance, and monitoring costs for decades into the future. This was correctly perceived as an opportunity to optimize those systems and programs, minimize costs, and reduce health and environmental risks. The best practices outlined in this article address management tools that were identified in optimization efforts that led to effective and efficient environmental remediation projects. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multiple system modelling of waste management

Due to increased environmental awareness, planning and performance of waste management has become more and more complex. Therefore waste management has early been subject to different types of modelling. Another field with long experience of modelling and systems perspective is energy systems. The two modelling traditions have developed side by side, but so far there are very few attempts to combine them. Waste management systems can be linked together with energy systems through incineration plants. The models for waste management can be modelled on a quite detailed level whereas surrounding systems are modelled in a more simplistic way. This is a problem, as previous studies have shown that assumptions on the surrounding system often tend to be important for the conclusions. In this paper it is shown how two models, one for the district heating system (MARTES) and another one for the waste management system (ORWARE), can be linked together. The strengths and weaknesses with model linking are discussed when compared to simplistic assumptions on effects in the energy and waste management systems. It is concluded that the linking of models will provide a more complete, correct and credible picture of the consequences of different simultaneous changes in the systems. The linking procedure is easy to perform and also leads to activation of project partners. However, the simulation procedure is a bit more complicated and calls for the ability to run both models.     

Contribution to closing the loop on waste materials: valorization of bottom ash from waste-to-energy plants under a life cycle approach

Incineration has undergone several technology improvements, reducing air emissions and increasing the efficiency of energy and material recovery; however, there is still a long way to go. To analyze the environmental impacts of waste incineration, this study assessed 15 waste fractions that compose municipal waste in Spain, which are grouped as non-inert materials (plastics, paper, cardboard and organic matter), unburned materials (glass and Al) and ferrous materials. Additionally, this paper evaluates the valorization of bottom ash (BA) to produce steel, aluminum and cement in these recycled/recoverable waste fractions. The results depend on the input waste composition and the heating value (HHV) and showed that ferrous and unburned materials had the worst environmental performance due to the null HHV. The valorization of BA in steel, Al and cement production significantly reduced the environmental impact and the consumption of resources. BA recycling for secondary steel and Al production would improve the environmental performance of the combustion of unburned materials and ferrous materials, whereas the use of BA in cement production diminished the consumption of NR for non-inert materials. This is of great interest for organic matter and PC, waste with a low energy production and high heavy metal and sulfur content.