Effective dialogue: Enhanced public engagement as a legitimising tool for municipal waste management decision-making

The complexity of municipal waste management decision-making has increased in recent years, accompanied by growing scrutiny from stakeholders, including local communities. This complexity reflects a socio-technical framing of the risks and social impacts associated with selecting technologies and sites for waste treatment and disposal facilities. Consequently there is growing pressure on local authorities for stakeholders (including communities) to be given an early opportunity to shape local waste policy in order to encourage swift planning, development and acceptance of the technologies needed to meet statutory targets to divert waste from landfill. This paper presents findings from a research project that explored the use of analytical–deliberative processes as a legitimising tool for waste management decision-making. Adopting a mixed methods approach, the study revealed that communicating the practical benefits of more inclusive forms of engagement is proving difficult even though planning and policy delays are hindering development and implementation of waste management infrastructure. Adopting analytical–deliberative processes at a more strategic level will require local authorities and practitioners to demonstrate how expert-citizen deliberations may foster progress in resolving controversial issues, through change in individuals, communities and institutions. The findings suggest that a significant shift in culture will be necessary for local authorities to realise the potential of more inclusive decision processes. This calls for political actors and civic society to collaborate in institutionalising public involvement in both strategic and local planning structures.     

A systems analysis tool for construction and demolition wastes management

Managing construction and demolition (C&D) wastes has challenged many municipalities with diminishing waste disposal capacity. Facing such challenges, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection proposed a policy restricting the landfill disposal of certain C&D waste materials, if unprocessed. This research is to study the potential economic impact of such restriction on construction contractors and C&D waste processors. A spreadsheet-based systems analysis model has been developed to assist the cost-benefit evaluation for various C&D waste management scenarios. The model, developed based on the mass balance principle, is designed to track a C&D waste stream through the various stages of a waste management system, i.e. generation, source separation, processing, recycling, and final disposal. This model, by incorporating the material flow data with the cost/revenue data associated with each management activity, can then provide an economic analysis for a proposed C&D waste management scenario. A case study illustrating the application of this model for Massachusetts is also presented.     

徐州电厂水务管理现状与设想

通过对徐州发电厂生产及生活用水的现状分析，结合企业的实际情况，论述了为实施废水零排放需要采取的节水措施及注意事项。     

水中VOCs的渗透蒸发分离技术研究进展

介绍了水中VOCs的各种分离方法,重点分析了渗透蒸发分离技术的技术优势;提出了渗透蒸发膜的选择标准;归纳了渗透蒸发过程的传质机理与模型;探讨了原料液浓度、温度、流量,渗透侧压力、添加剂、膜组件型式等因素对渗透蒸发效率的影响;简要预测了渗透蒸发过程的发展趋势与动态。     

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.     

LCA-IWM: a decision support tool for sustainability assessment of waste management systems

The paper outlines the most significant result of the project 'The use of life cycle assessment tools for the development of integrated waste management strategies for cities and regions with rapid growing economies', which was the development of two decision-support tools: a municipal waste prognostic tool and a waste management system assessment tool. The article focuses on the assessment tool, which supports the adequate decision making in the planning of urban waste management systems by allowing the creation and comparison of different scenarios, considering three basic subsystems: (i) temporary storage; (ii) collection and transport and (iii) treatment, disposal and recycling. The design and analysis options, as well as the assumptions made for each subsystem, are shortly introduced, providing an overview of the applied methodologies and technologies. The sustainability assessment methodology used in the project to support the selection of the most adequate scenario is presented with a brief explanation of the procedures, criteria and indicators applied on the evaluation of each of the three sustainability pillars.     

Application of multi-criteria decision-making on strategic municipal solid waste management in Dalmatia, Croatia

The efficiency of providing a waste management system in the coastal part of Croatia consisting of four Dalmatian counties has been modelled. Two multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, PROMETHEE and GAIA, were applied to assist with the systematic analysis and evaluation of the alternatives. The analysis covered two levels; first, the potential number of waste management centres resulting from possible inter-county cooperation; and second, the relative merits of siting of waste management centres in the coastal or hinterland zone was evaluated. The problem was analysed according to several criteria; and ecological, economic, social and functional criteria sets were identified as relevant to the decision-making process. The PROMETHEE and GAIA methods were shown to be efficient tools for analysing the problem considered. Such an approach provided new insights to waste management planning at the strategic level, and gave a reason for rethinking some of the existing strategic waste management documents in Croatia.     

A knowledge acquisition process to analyse operational problems in solid waste management facilities.

The available expertise on managing and operating solid waste management (SWM) facilities varies among countries and among types of facilities. Few experts are willing to record their experience, while few researchers systematically investigate the chains of events that could trigger operational failures in a facility; expertise acquisition and dissemination, in SWM, is neither popular nor easy, despite the great need for it. This paper presents a knowledge acquisition process aimed at capturing, codifying and expanding reliable expertise and propagating it to non-experts. The knowledge engineer (KE), the person performing the acquisition, must identify the events (or causes) that could trigger a failure, determine whether a specific event could trigger more than one failure, and establish how various events are related among themselves and how they are linked to specific operational problems. The proposed process, which utilizes logic diagrams (fault trees) widely used in system safety and reliability analyses, was used for the analysis of 24 common landfill operational problems. The acquired knowledge led to the development of a web-based expert system (Landfill Operation Management Advisor, http://loma.civil.duth.gr), which estimates the occurrence possibility of operational problems, provides advice and suggests solutions.     

超声空化降解水中有机污染物的研究进展

概述了超声空化技术的国内外研究现状，介绍了超声空化机理，研究物系，影响因素，声化学反应器类型，并指出了今后研究的方向。     

The use of relative potential risk as a prioritization tool for household WEEE management in Thailand

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has become one of the major global concerns in solid waste management due to its continuously...     

Model predictive control as a tool for improving the process operation of MSW combustion plants

In this paper a feasibility study is presented on the application of the advanced control strategy called model predictive control (MPC) as a tool for obtaining improved process operation performance for municipal solid waste (MSW) combustion plants. The paper starts with a discussion of the operational objectives and control of such plants, from which a motivation follows for applying MPC to them. This is followed by a discussion on the basic idea behind this advanced control strategy. After that, an MPC-based combustion control system is proposed aimed at tackling a typical MSW combustion control problem and, using this proposed control system, an assessment is made of the improvement in performance that an MPC-based MSW combustion control system can provide in comparison to conventional MSW combustion control systems. This assessment is based on simulations using an experimentally obtained process and disturbance model of a real-life large-scale MSW combustion plant.     

Preliminary environmental impact assessment of PFOS waste treatment in a lab-scale batch subcritical water decomposition operation

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out by SimaPro 7.3 to study the environmental impact of a lab-scale batch subcritical water decomposition operation for a kilogram of Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) waste treatment in this study, a proven process for the decomposition of PFOS pollutants with high concentration. This LCA focuses on not only the main environmental factors from emissions of toxic pollutants, but also the influence from technical characteristics of the iron-induced subcritical water technology including energy and substances consumption during the subcritical water decomposition treatment process. The IMPACT 2002+ environmental model was used to evaluate the 15 midpoint and 4 end-point environmental damages. It was found that the energy consumption to sustain the high temperature (350 °C) and high pressure (23 MPa) in the subcritical water process contributes 99.8 % of the damages. The total negative impact of the SCWD process for 1 kg of PFOS waste treatment to human health, ecological quality, climate change and resources amounts to 1.11 × 10^?3, 8.43 × 10^?5, 9.76 × 10^?4, 9.05 × 10^?4 Pt, respectively. And the improvement of energy efficiency and catalytic effectiveness are two important factors to reduce the environmental impact from the SCWD process for the treatment of PFOS waste.     

Infectious waste management in Japan: a revised regulation and a management process in medical institutions

In Japan, the waste management practice is carried out in accordance with the Waste Disposal Law of 1970. The first rule of infectious waste management was regulated in 1992, and infectious wastes are defined as the waste materials generated in medical institutions as a result of medical care or research which contain pathogens that have the potential to transmit infectious diseases. Revised criteria for infectious waste management were promulgated by the Ministry of Environment in 2004. Infectious waste materials are divided into three categories: the form of waste; the place of waste generation; the kind of infectious diseases. A reduction of infectious waste is expected. We introduce a summary of the revised regulation of infectious waste management in this article.     

上海市餐厨垃圾管理处置现状及建议

结合日常管理工作,梳理了从餐厨垃圾的源头申报、中途收运到末端处置过程中存在的主要问题,如申报量不足、挂靠收运、执法难等,分析了这些问题影响管理推进的主要原因,并从政府管理资源、政策扶持、标准制定、规划布局等方面提出一些建议。     

A new paradigm for waste management

The concept ‘waste' was assessed, and redefined as ‘an emerged quality of a substance'. A substance or object is qualified a waste when it is not used to its full potential'. Under this paradigm, any process can be used for the transformation of waste to remove this quality label, and the necessity of a systemic approach to the resource and waste management becomes obvious. Any substance, labelled waste or resource, is part of at least one material cycle. Material cycle modelling provides a convenient method of abstraction to present the system alternatives to decision-makers and emphasises the interdependence between the availability and fate of all atomic elements in primary production and waste management. The rearrangement and closing of material cycles, for example, opens the way to eliminate landfills of harmful residues and contributes to the conservation of resources. While the adoption of the new paradigm may lead to dramatic technological development, the consideration, appreciation and adoption of such integrated resource and waste systems by decision-makers must be adequately supported by the apt supply of accessible information on system structure, technology options and effects. To determine the scope of the decision support tool, four images of 2030's waste infrastructure were constructed. Public awareness and attitude were identified as the main parameters that determine the future context, apart from technological development, resource scarcity and final abatement of waste processing residues.     

内蒙古工业实现节能减排的对策研究

以资源、能源为依托的工业结构和粗放的增长方式是内蒙古工业的主要特点,也是实现节能减排目标的瓶颈.通过淘汰落后生产能力、加快接续产业发展、推动资源型产业发展高端和集成产品、促进节能减排技术的研发和应用、发展循环经济以及建立配套的政策、法规体系,力促内蒙古工业实现节能减排目标,走出一条资源节约与环境友好的新型发展道路.     

浅谈上海市餐厨垃圾收运处置全程信息化监管设想及建议

针对当前实现餐厨垃圾全程监管的意义与必要性,结合餐厨垃圾产、收、运、处各环节特征,就目前尚在建设并试点的上海市餐厨垃圾收运处置全程信息化监管系统的构成、运行和技术手段等内容提出设想,并就未来信息化系统建设方向提出建议.     

A design tool for planning emulsified oil‐injection systems

Emulsified oils have been used to stimulate anaerobic bioremediation at hundreds of sites contaminated with chlorinated solvents, perchlorate, heavy metals, and nitrate. A simple spreadsheet‐based tool has been developed to assist in the design of injection‐only systems for distributing emulsified oils in barriers and area treatments. This tool allows users to quickly compare the relative costs and performance of different injection alternatives and identify a design that is best suited to site‐specific conditions. Contact efficiency is estimated using results of prior numerical model simulations and dimensionless scaling factors that relate the volume of oil and water injected to treatment‐zone dimensions. Sensitivity analysis results indicate that maximum oil retention is one of the most important factors controlling system performance and cost. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.