Report on hazardous household waste generation in Japan.

Surveys of over 2000 households in Japan were conducted to investigate the characteristics of hazardous household waste (HHW) generation. In Japan, about 2.5 to 4.3 kg of HHW are produced per tonne of the residential waste stream. The percentage of used batteries in HHW was over 50%. Every household using spray (aerosol) cans had more than seven cans on average. The generation of HHW, in terms of both quantities and type of waste produced, appeared to vary with dwelling type. Detached dwelling residents tended to store HHW such as used batteries, whereas apartment residents tended not to store waste. The amounts of discarded HHW were larger at the end of the year in comparison with other months. The data accumulated were used to estimate the quantities of HHW disposed off annually, and the quantities and type of waste that might be received by a typical depot collection programme in Japan.     

Consumer perspectives on household hazardous waste management in Japan

We give an overview of the management systems of household hazardous waste (HHW) in Japan and discuss the management systems and their risks. To get basic information, we conducted a survey of consumers to discover their behavior and awareness of HHW items throughout the entire life cycle, which is made up of the purchase, use, and disposal of a product. The results showed that many people hold end-of-life batteries, fluorescent lamps, empty spray cans, and others in their houses after use. Also, the results showed that a lot of such waste items were discarded in waste streams different from those stipulated by local governments. In particular, many people do not remove NiCd batteries inside products such as shavers or cordless phones before discarding. On the other hand, people’s knowledge of and concern regarding the risks, collection, and recycling of HHW were high. When information about the risks was specifically presented in the questionnaire, people tended to show a more positive intention to participate in a collection and recycling system compared to those who were not presented with such information. Our studies on NiCd batteries and fluorescent lamps showed that it is important to collect and recycle HHW to control the domestic and international flows of cadmium and mercury.     

Safe management of hazardous waste

The size and the health significance of the hazardous waste problem are reviewed. Proper engineering and management practice are discussed, including the elimination, if possible, reduction, changing processes and product lines, treatment and reuuse, and disposal by landfill and incineration. Exports should be drasti cally reduced, also using complex administrative measures. International organizations concerned should encourage good national and international management practices. A siting for collection, treatment and disposal, remote from human habitation, and established under an international agreement, would release countries from managing a difficult problem within their own national borders.     

Characterization of household waste in Greenland

The composition of household waste in Greenland was investigated for the first time. About 2 tonnes of household waste was sampled as every 7th bag collected during 1 week along the scheduled collection routes in Sisimiut, the second largest town in Greenland with about 5400 inhabitants. The collection bags were sorted manually into 10 material fractions. The household waste composition consisted primarily of biowaste (43%) and the combustible fraction (30%), including anything combustible that did not belong to other clean fractions as paper, cardboard and plastic. Paper (8%) (dominated by magazine type paper) and glass (7%) were other important material fractions of the household waste. The remaining approximately 10% constituted of steel (1.5%), aluminum (0.5%), plastic (2.4%), wood (1.0%), non-combustible waste (1.8%) and household hazardous waste (1.2%). The high content of biowaste and the low content of paper make Greenlandic waste much different from Danish household waste. The moisture content, calorific value and chemical composition (55 elements, of which 22 were below detection limits) were determined for each material fraction. These characteristics were similar to what has been found for material fractions in Danish household waste. The chemical composition and the calorific value of the plastic fraction revealed that this fraction was not clean but contained a lot of biowaste. The established waste composition is useful in assessing alternative waste management schemes for household waste in Greenland.     

Management of hazardous medical waste in Croatia

This article provides a review of hazardous medical waste production and its management in Croatia. Even though Croatian regulations define all steps in the waste management chain, implementation of those steps is one of the country's greatest issues. Improper practice is evident from the point of waste production to final disposal. The biggest producers of hazardous medical waste are hospitals that do not implement existing legislation, due to the lack of education and funds. Information on quantities, type and flow of medical waste are inadequate, as is sanitary control. We propose an integrated approach to medical waste management based on a hierarchical structure from the point of generation to its disposal. Priority is given to the reduction of the amounts and potential for harm. Where this is not possible, management includes reduction by sorting and separating, pretreatment on site, safe transportation, final treatment and sanitary disposal. Preferred methods should be the least harmful for human health and the environment. Integrated medical waste management could greatly reduce quantities and consequently financial strains. Landfilling is the predominant route of disposal in Croatia, although the authors believe that incineration is the most appropriate method. In a country such as Croatia, a number of small incinerators would be the most economical solution.     

Household hazardous waste: composition of paint waste.

'Paint waste', a part of the 'household hazardous waste', amounting to approximately 5 tonnes was collected from recycling stations in two Danish cities. Sorting and analyses of the waste showed paint waste comprised approximately 65% of the mass, paint-like waste (cleaners, fillers, etc.) comprised 15-25% and foreign items comprised 10-20%.Water-based paint was the dominant part of the paint waste. The chemical composition of the paint waste and the paint-like waste was characterized by an analysis of 27 substances in seven waste fractions. The content of critical substances was low and the paint waste was less contaminated with heavy metals than was the ordinary household waste. This may suggest that households no longer need to source-segregate their paint if the household waste is incinerated, since the presence of a small quantity of solvent-based paint will not be harmful when incinerated. Allowing household paint waste to be collected with ordinary household waste is expected to reduce the cost of handling household hazardous waste, since paint waste in Denmark comprises the major fraction of household hazardous waste.     

Treatment of hazardous waste incineration wastewater

This article outlines the general design concepts and new chemistry necessary to achieve truly cost-effective management of an important part of the hazardous waste incineration system—i.e., the unit operations needed to treat wastewater generated by rotary kiln incinerators burning wastes containing halogens and heavy metals.     

Inconsistent pathways of household waste

The aim of this study was to provide policy-makers and waste management planners with information about how recycling programs affect the quantities of specific materials recycled and disposed of. Two questions were addressed: which factors influence household waste generation and pathways? and how reliable are official waste data? Household waste flows were studied in 35 Swedish municipalities, and a wide variation in the amount of waste per capita was observed. When evaluating the effect of different waste collection policies, it was found to be important to identify site-specific factors influencing waste generation. Eleven municipal variables were investigated in an attempt to explain the variation. The amount of household waste per resident was higher in populous municipalities and when net commuting was positive. Property-close collection of dry recyclables led to increased delivery of sorted metal, plastic and paper packaging. No difference was seen in the amount of separated recyclables per capita when weight-based billing for the collection of residual waste was applied, but the amount of residual waste was lower. Sixteen sources of error in official waste statistics were identified and the results of the study emphasize the importance of reliable waste generation and composition data to underpin waste management policies.     

Leaching behaviour of hazardous demolition waste

Demolition wastes are generally disposed of in unlined landfills for inert waste. However, demolition wastes are not just inert wastes. Indeed, a small fraction of demolition waste contains components that are hazardous to human health and the environment, e.g., lead-based paint, mercury-contained in fluorescent lamps, treated wood, and asbestos. The objective of this study is to evaluate the release potential of pollutants contained in these hazardous components when they are mixed with inert wastes in unlined landfills. After identification of the different building products which can contain hazardous elements and which can be potentially pollutant in landfill scenario, we performed leaching tests using three different lysimeters: one lysimeter containing only inert wastes and two lysimeters containing inert wastes mixed with hazardous demolition wastes. The leachates from these lysimeters were analysed (heavy metals, chlorides, sulphates fluoride, DOC (Dissolved Organic Carbon), phenol index, and PAH). Finally, we compared concentrations and cumulative releases of elements in leachates with the limits values of European regulation for the acceptance of inert wastes at landfill. Results indicate that limit values are exceeded for some elements. We also performed a percolation column test with only demolition hazardous wastes to evaluate the specific contribution of these wastes in the observed releases.     

Industrial hazardous waste treatment facilities in Thailand

In Thailand, hazardous waste is becoming a major problem, especially toxic chemicals and heavy metal pollutants discharged from factories. The Industrial Works Department (IWD), which has full responsibility for the control of all factory pollution problems, has initiated a joint hazardous waste treatment programme for handling industrial liquid, sludge and solid hazardous wastes from all factories situated in and around Bangkok and the eastern seaboard region. Four industrial hazardous wastes treatment centres are planned. Secure landfills together with research and development centres will also be provided nearby for the ultimate disposal of the inert-salt sludges. The investment, operation and management of the centres is to be handled by private companies which can generate revenue by charging service fees directly to their customers. Since both governmental and private sectors have no experience in this field, a grant system for a pilot centre has been launched by the Government which has reduced the operating costs by providing land, treatment facilities, infrastructure and secured landfills. The first treatment centre which was officially planned in 1985 was put into operation in July 1988 at Samea Dam, Bangkhuntien District, a western suburb of Bangkok. The construction of all necessary facilities was paid for by the Government. The operation and management of the centre is handled by a private contractor, Siam Control Company (SCC) under a 5-year lease. The users will pay service fees directly to the contractor and the Government will receive a rental and royalty fee from the contractor.     

Assessment of sampling and chemical analysis of source-separated organic household waste

The quality of the waste sampling procedure and chemical analysis was evaluated in a research program on characterization of organic waste obtained after disc screening of source-separated organic household waste. The sampling procedures focused on a truckload of waste and involved several steps of subsampling including shredding, mixing, blending, high-speed-blending, drying and milling prior to analysis of the organic waste with respect to ash content, crude fibers, crude fat, crude protein, sugar, starch, enzyme-digestible organic matter, P, N, C, H, S and calorific value. The statistical evaluation of the procedures involved 10 samples of the same truckload of waste obtained by splitting the sample at each level in the procedure according to a staggered, incomplete nested statistical design. Furthermore, one sample was analysed six times over a period of approximately one year. The statistical evaluation showed that no single step in the sampling procedure contributed with excessive variance and that the variance caused by the sampling procedure was approximately the same as the variance in the chemical analysis observed over a year. The variance varied with the analytical parameter but for most parameters the uncertainty was satisfactorily low (of the order of 3-10% expressed as the relative standard deviation, which is considered to be satisfactory for waste characterization).     

Stakeholder coordination analysis in hazardous waste management: a case study in China

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Hazardous waste management (HWM) in chemical industrial parks is an important issue related to sustainable development. Previous researches...     

Influence of assumptions about household waste composition in waste management LCAs

This article takes a detailed look at an uncertainty factor in waste management LCA that has not been widely discussed previously, namely the uncertainty in waste composition. Waste composition is influenced by many factors; it can vary from year to year, seasonally, and with location, for example. The data publicly available at a municipal level can be highly aggregated and sometimes incomplete, and performing composition analysis is technically challenging. Uncertainty is therefore always present in waste composition. This article performs uncertainty analysis on a systematically modified waste composition using a constructed waste management system. In addition the environmental impacts of several waste management strategies are compared when applied to five different cities. We thus discuss the effect of uncertainty in both accounting LCA and comparative LCA. We found the waste composition to be important for the total environmental impact of the system, especially for the global warming, nutrient enrichment and human toxicity via water impact categories.     

An econometric analysis of regional differences in household waste collection: the case of plastic packaging waste in Sweden

The Swedish producer responsibility ordinance mandates producers to collect and recycle packaging materials. This paper investigates the main determinants of collection rates of household plastic packaging waste in Swedish municipalities. This is done by the use of a regression analysis based on cross-sectional data for 252 Swedish municipalities. The results suggest that local policies, geographic/demographic variables, socio-economic factors and environmental preferences all help explain inter-municipality collection rates. For instance, the collection rate appears to be positively affected by increases in the unemployment rate, the share of private houses, and the presence of immigrants (unless newly arrived) in the municipality. The impacts of distance to recycling industry, urbanization rate and population density on collection outcomes turn out, though, to be both statistically and economically insignificant. A reasonable explanation for this is that the monetary compensation from the material companies to the collection entrepreneurs vary depending on region and is typically higher in high-cost regions. This implies that the plastic packaging collection in Sweden may be cost ineffective. Finally, the analysis also shows that municipalities that employ weight-based waste management fees generally experience higher collection rates than those municipalities in which flat and/or volume-based fees are used.     

Chemical fixation,solidification of hazardous waste

Efficient, cost effective measures for the safe disposal of hazardous wastes have been developed to meet the needs of industries in Brisbane and the surrounding area. Liquid hazardous wastes are neutralised, oxidised, or reduced as appropriate, and fixed (solidified) by the addition of fly-ash and cement kiln dust to form a material of the consistency of coarse gravel. Fixation is performed in cells dug in solid clay, holding about 70 tonnes. Fixed material containing pesticides, paints or organic solvents is left in the clay cells, capped with clay; fixed inorganics and waste oils having no toxic contaminants are used for land contouring on the site. Leachate tests on the latter have been uniformly below 10 times USEPA Drinking Water guidelines — that is, 10 times better than the limits nominated by the EP Leach Test (1980). Bores around the site have detected no leachates during the past seven years. A simple but effective management system keeps wastes segregated and confirms the identity of each batch of waste on receipt. All costs are charged to the waste generator including costs of correcting errors.     

An analysis of a European hazardous waste transport registration system (EARS)

In this study a system analysis is presented for a European registration system for hazardous waste shipment notifications. The administrative procedures for the notifications according to the European Community (EC) directives are in use in several Member States, among others the Netherlands and Belgium. The new system should enable efficient notification procedures, without the large number of forms and the delays in obtaining transit and import permissions that are currently observed. Only one form is needed for each hazardous waste transport within the EC, accompanying the transport.The system also allows the generation of compiled information for all EC Member States by using a database structure. Rather than manually administrating the information of the forms, this information is transmitted and stored electronically. With an estimated number of 100,000 transfrontier transports of hazardous waste per year in the European Community, this greatly decreases time and costs for aggregating hazardous waste transport data. This aggregated information is necessary for the implementation, evaluation and further development of a coherent EC waste management policy for hazardous waste treatment and disposal.     

Factors influencing household waste management practices in Zimbabwe

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - The management of household solid waste is a growing concern related to public health and environmental damage. The study examined...     

Chemical composition of material fractions in Danish household waste

The chemical composition of Danish household waste was determined by two approaches: a direct method where the chemical composition (61 substances) of 48 material fractions was determined after hand sorting of about 20 tonnes of waste collected from 2200 households; and an indirect method where batches of 80–1200 tonnes of unsorted household waste was incinerated and the content of the waste determined from the content of the outputs from the incinerator. The indirect method is believed to better represent the small but highly contaminated material fractions (e.g., batteries) than the direct method, because of the larger quantities included and the more homogenous material to sample from. Differences between the direct and the direct methods led to corrections in the of heavy metal concentration of a few fractions.The majority of the energy content of the waste originates from organic waste like paper, cardboard and organic fractions. The single fraction contributing most to the total energy content is the non-recyclable plastic fraction, contributing 21% of the energy content and 60% of the chlorine content, although this fraction comprises less than 7% by weight. Heavy metals originate mainly from inert fractions, primarily batteries.