Global View of Waste Management by Antonis Mavropoulos

Fashionistas push for waste prevention

2012-01-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Source: fashionindustrynetwork.com

Last 10years we watch a global shift from end of pipe waste management to wasteprevention and reuse concepts. This shift clearly moves us closer to resourcemanagement optimization processes rather than the typical waste managementactivities. It concerns more industrial supply chains than the waste managementindustry and the usual end of pipe solutions.

But at thesame time it provides a new practical view on how we deal with waste. It helpsus a lot to understand waste as an indication of inefficient production andconsumption patterns. In other terms, it helps us to understand that Waste is aChoice, as my friend Maarten Goorhuis (ISWA STC Vice-Chair and Chair of theISWA Working Group on Recycling and Waste Minimization) usually says startinghis presentations about waste prevention.

A goodexample of that way of thinking is given by some initiatives in the textile& clothing manufacturing sector. The real importance of them is that theytry to combine effectiveness in waste prevention by utilizing personal attitudesand behavioral trends. Let’s see more details.

We allknow that rapidly changing fashions increase the production and consumption oftextiles and clothing. And definitely, they also increase the amount of end oflife clothes that are driven to waste, in one or another way. Despiteimprovements in the environmental impacts in the manufacture of textile andclothing over the last 25 years, the overall volume of production andconsumption of these products has increased. The relocation of manufacturingfrom Western countries to Asian nations and more efficient production hasreduced the cost of clothing and textiles, but this has had the unintendedconsequence of increasing consumption and counteracting some of theenvironmental benefits of new manufacturing technologies.

Inaddition, the fast cycles of fashion and deliberately planning products to havea limited lifespan have shortened the life cycle of textiles and clothing.Garments have become cheaper, the quality reduced and clothes are typicallyworn for only a short time before disposal. Although reuse and recycling ofclothing has also increased, this only partly offsets the increased levels oftextile consumption, the proliferation of textile waste, and the environmentaland social impacts, (such as where and how fibres are cultivated) associatedwith higher volumes of textiles and clothing production.

A recentstudy (Niinimäki, K., Hassi, L. (2011) Emerging design strategies insustainable production and consumption of textiles and clothing. Journal of Cleaner Production 19: 1876-1883)provided the suggestion that a more sustainable production and consumption ofclothing could be achieved if consumer values are used to rethink design andbusiness strategies. A good example could be an increased personalization ofclothing that could increase both consumer attachment to products and theiruseful lifetime.

The studyexplored different design strategies that increase the lifespan of textiles andclothing by making the consumer the centre of the innovation processes. Itargues that innovative thinking about how consumers experience and valuetextiles and clothes is needed for more sustainable production and consumption.

Forexample, the use of a product could be extended if it is designed to be personalized.This would allow consumers to develop an emotional attachment with the garmentor textile and can be achieved by mass customization of products using fastdigital manufacturing technologies that enable consumers to select from avariety of styles and colors to design their own look. Digital textileprinters, embroidery and laser cutting machines can design products tailored toan individual’s specifications.

Themanufacture of ‘halfway products’, for example, kits that offer consumers theopportunity to creatively assemble (and repair) the product could also increaseattachment and usage, as could clothing designed with detachable parts that canbe customized by the consumer.
Inaddition, designers can co-create products with consumers to increaseattachment to the product, for example, through the internet, with consumersmaking the final design decisions. Services that focus on consumer needs canalso be used to extend the lifetime use of textiles and clothing and postponeproduct replacement. For example, high-quality garments that can be used inrenting, leasing, lending or sharing schemes; and services that modify thegarments can all be offered. New business opportunities could be found in thisswitch to a services-orientated economy; manufacturers can offer higher qualitygarments, increase customer satisfaction and extend the use of the product.

At least, we hope that this may be a succesful initiative - after all if waste prevention becomes trendy, there will be positive impacts worldwide, especially in the global interconnected cities where fashion plays a crucial role...

ISWA 2012 Congress: the new benchmark for ISWA events

2012-01-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

ISWA 2012 World Solid Waste Congress (see web-site) will take place in Florence, Italy, from September15^th to 19^th. Aslong as I am involved in ISWA I have never seen a more detailed, in-time andefficient preparation and it seems that due to that preparation a verysuccessful event is prepared. I thought that an interview with David Newman,ISWA’s Vice- President and key-person of ISWA 2012 organization, will provideinteresting insights to all of us about that event. And here it is.

“David, we have heard a lot about ISWA 2012 in Florence and I have to say that there areexpectations created both inside and outside ISWA about your conference inmiddle September 2012. Tell us what’s new about your conference? What isdifferent about it?

Well, we started working on it three years ago, this givesus a lot of time to talk to people and understand what themes are mostinteresting to everyone, this means we have elaborated a programme widelyshared around the world, both within ISWA and outside.

Visiting ISWA 2012 web-site, which actually is a veryfunctional and informative one, my interest was directly grabbed by a phrase. Itis written that “The World Solid Waste Congress 2012 will define theeffectiveness of the waste management industry for years to come”. Why is that?What are the expectations for the participation of the solid waste industry toyour conference?

We are facing a crucial moment, as waste production boomsout of control in developing countries. Florence will be an “alarm bell”calling the industry, politicians and authorities to order to affront this hugechallenge. In this the Congress differs from previous years because we expect avery wide participation from developing countries and the participation of UNEPis an indicator of how serious the challenge is.

What is the expected participation from a scientificpoint of view? Could you give us an idea of abstracts submitted and thehighlights of the conference program?

We are overwhelmed by about 650 abstracts, and this hascaused us a delay in peer reviewing and deciding on a final programme. Half ofthese are from academics, a wonderful result. There will be space for 240 speakers so scientists will play asignificant role in the Congress. And of course the ISWA report onGlobalisation will be a strong focus point.

Are there anyparticular events for non-European participants? Because sometimes ISWA’s conferencesin Europe are too much European…

Indeed as I said we expect many non European participantsand have a very low registration fee to help them be present. We have a strongfocus on Latin America, South East Europe, the Mashreq and Mahgreb countries aswell as three sessions dedicated to rapidly developing low income countries. Ithink this year we will see a good balance between first, second and developingworld speakers and attendees.

I suppose that the conference will also have a special rolefor the Italian waste management industry. I would like you to comment on that,especially under the view of the current crisis which seems to create significantimpacts to our industry

We are dedicating some sessions to more domestic issues,like the ongoing Naples situation, waste planning in the host region ofTuscany, waste collection in historic city centers; but of course Italians willbe present in many other sessions bringing their incredible innovative experiencesin terms of management of services and plants as well coming to learn from theexperiences of others. It’s a good mix.

Let’s not forget this is also a time for celebration and inFlorence ISWA will be making three awards, for the best scientific publication,for the best communications campaign, and also for the first time to the bestnewspaper journalist. And a time for fun, to enjoy some Tuscan hospitality andsite seeing. Did you know that Florence alone holds 25% of the World UNESCO heritagesites ? And is the second most loved city in the world for American tourists ?

Thanks a lot David - see you all in Florence!

Marine Litter: not just an environmental threat but an economic catastrophe too

2012-01-22T02:36:00.000-08:00

Source: Ecopaparazzi

I am sure that everyone knows about the problem of ocean plastics. This is one of the most important global waste management problems. Just think about it for a while. Here are some facts:

• The average concentration is estimated around 46.000 plastic pieces/ sq. mile

• There are cases where plastic waste is 6 times more than the plankton

• It is estimated that 10% of the global plastic production ends up in theocean

• It is considered that there are more than 7.000.000 tons of plastic floating around the world

The vast majority of the ocean plastics originates from the land activities and not from the sea transport. And a big part of it is a kind of leak from advanced waste management systems, like the USA and the Japanese one.

Few years ago, during a key-nore lecture in 2009 ISWA's conference in Lisbon, I concluded that the problem of ocean plastics is an indicator of our global inefficiency to manage waste in an environmental sound way even in what we consider advanced waste management systems! And this becomes more and more true, as the time goes by without any actual solution to that problem (for more see the 5gyres website).

But now, there is evidence that ocean plastics and marine litter are not onluy a serious environmentla threat bot also an environmenttal catastrophe!

A recent study (McIlgorm A., Campbell, H.F., Rule, M.J., 2011, Theeconomic cost and control of marine debris damage in the Asia-Pacific region. Ocean & Coastal Management.54: 643-651) has now estimated that marine litter inthe Asia-Pacific region is likely to cost over US$1.26 billion per year indamage to marine industries.

The studyfocused on the economic effects of marine debris in the Asia-Pacific region andcalculated the cost of damage to marine industries for the 21 economies in theregion. Marine industries (shipping, tourism and fishing) are estimated to beworth 3% of GDP for this region and, based on available statistics from Japan,it is believed that 0.3% of marine sector GDP is lost through debris damage.For example, if floating objects become entangled in ship propellers, or enginecooling systems become blocked, time available for fishing is reduced, whilemaintenance and repair costs increase. The tourism industry can also suffer iflittered beaches deter visitors or development.

Based onthese assumptions, the study estimated the cost of damage to marine industriesto be US$1.26billion per year. This is very likely to be an underestimate asdata on marine debris are lacking. However, it clearly highlights thesignificance of the issue. Debris is also harmful to wildlife, and cantherefore reduce ecosystem services - this is another important indirect costto consider, but as there is presently no market value for these services, thestudy did not calculate these costs.

Furthercalculations suggest that the cost of clearing up plastic waste in this region,whether at sea or on beaches, amounts to $1500 per tonne of waste, on average,although costs of individual clean-ups vary considerably ($100-$20,000 pertonne) depending on the type of waste and method.

The costsof damage and clean-ups need to be weighed up against the costs of prevention,say the researchers, and setting a policy target for achieving an optimal level of wasteat sea would be more economically feasible than a zero waste target.

Community-basedvoluntary approaches, such as anti-litter campaigns, are also popular, but thestudy argues that greater efforts are needed to change public behaviour.Market-based instruments are less well used in marine litter prevention, butthe study suggests they could play a role in some cases. Possible instrumentsto reduce overall rates of waste production include deposit-refund schemes,taxes on plastic goods to discourage purchase, and encouragement of recyclablepackaging.

Smart waste management: Power to the people!

2012-01-18T02:44:00.000-08:00

This post is the second one which is dedicated to addressthe issue of waste management in global cities and megacities. In the previousone (see waste management in global cities ) I concluded that we need to apply Complexity Theory techniques inorder to manage waste management systems in global cities. In this one, I amgoing to give some practical views on how to do it.

In a recent lecture I delivered in Brasilia, Brazil, duringthe XII Conferência das Cidades, at November 29 of 2011, I was presentingdifferent possibilities to utilize modern technologies for a better urban wastemanagement. The lecture was really successfuland after the conference I received several invitations to deliver it indifferent audiences.

I closed my lecture saying that “after all, if thecombined use of social media, internet, SMSs and mobile phones delivered thecollapse of Mubarak and other non-democratic regimes during the Arab spring, Iam sure we can use the same tools for a radical improvement of waste managementin our cities”. And this is exactly my point regarding complexity management inglobal cities and megacities.

Few months ago, I was reading an excellent articlein Scientific American, with the title “the Social Nexus”, written by Carlo Rattiand Antony Townsend. In this article I discovered several smart applicationsthat are already applied in different parts of the world and their purpose isto improve, monitor and control the urban environment.

As professor Carlo Ratti put it “ Truly smart—andreal—cities are not like an army regiment marching in lockstep to thecommander’s orders; they are more like a shifting flock of birds or school offish, in which individuals respond to subtle social and behavioral cues fromtheir neighbors about which way to move forward… Rather than focusing on theinstallation and control of network hardware, city governments, technologycompanies and their urban-planning advisers can exploit a more ground-upapproach to creating even smarter cities in which people become the agents ofchange. With proper technical-support structures, the populace can tackleproblems such as energy use, traffic congestion, health care and education moreeffectively than centralized dictates. And residents of wired cities can usetheir distributed intelligence to fashion new community activities, as well asa new kind of citizen activism.”

Then I visited the web-site Trash Track. In this web-siteI discovered some impressive visualizations of an experiment that was done justto demonstrate that for waste management there is a huge potential available if weuse the modern technologies and the interconnected citizens in an appropriate way. Please visit the web-site and you will be impressed as I was, I am sure about it. And allow me to congratulate proffesor Rati and his team from the Senseable City Lab for this excellent initiative which opens new horizons for waste management.

So, as you can imagine, this is more or less my mainidea: to manage the complexity of waste management systems in global cities andmegacities with the power of the already interconnected people. Or in another phrasing, to replace the traditional top-down approaches to planning and infrastructure delivery with a bottom-up approach that is based on crowd-sourcing.

In urban areas, where a lot of people are usingmobile phones, laptops and tablets, where smart phones do release newunimagined possibilities of interaction and rapid information, we can use themin order to have substantial improvements in waste management! But even wheresmart phones are limited and simple mobile phones are available, the power ofSMS is enough to deliver crowd – based monitoring and improvements of wastemanagement.

Especially to the areas of street cleaning,collection, recycling and waste prevention, there can be radicalimprovements with limited cost! And this is exactly what we need during thisperiod of global financial instability! The power of massive social collaboration is something that can be proven more powerful than any advanced technologies for collection and treatment of waste - and still it is ignored. We must start thinking in a different way and we have to do it now!

There are just two pre-conditions for that.

A. Togive citizens all the tools to do it (not so difficult and definitely affordable) and, most importantly

B. Toinspire them in order to have a continuous feedback from them, to make themreal human sensors of the problems in waste management, to create the right atmosphereand motivate people in order to increase social participation and interest forwaste management.

After all, the only way to use the potential of newtechnologies is to provide a meaningful and interactive citizenship. But thisis supposed to be the core purpose of any urban governance, right?

Let’s try to think that way. I am sure we have a lotto learn and much more to deliver. And I am sure that managing complexity witha network of thousands human sensors will be much more effective than ignoringit, as we usually do today.

Waste management in global cities

2012-01-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

This is the first post of two that address the issue ofwaste management in global cities and megacities.I will try to resume some of my major findings during last two years. There will be a special event dedicated to waste management and global cities at the World Cities Summit 2012 and soon the whole program will be available - as far as I know top speakers are included.

My research was in the framework of the ISWA project “Globalization andwaste management” which is going to be presented in Florence 2012 Conference(see the excellent web-site) for the first time. ISWA;s Task Force has worked in four different packages namely a. megacities and waste management b.informal sector as a global stakeholder c. global recycling markets and d.international aid tools and their utilization.

Although the project is still on - going and there is a lotof work to be done until we will have complete it, there are some key-issuesthat I have concluded, especially about global cities, which means cities that are highly interconnected in theglobalization network. Some of the things I learnt have been already presentedduring ISWA 2011 conference in Daewoo, South Korea (see ISWA's knowledge base and search for megacities).

Studying the triangle “Globalization – Megacities – WasteManagement” my major conclusion is that awaste management system in a global city or a megacity is much more than alocal system because a. It is part of the global network of material flows b.It is highly affected by global consumerism trends and c. it is directlyinfluenced by global regulations and initiatives related to waste management.Of course someone would easily complete that this is also true for othersmaller or less globalized cities but this does not affect the core of theconclusion.

That complex dynamics between global and local markets,global and local governance, global and local stakeholders is a key issue forunderstanding waste management in globalcities.

As a result inmegacities and global cities institutional development, social support andparticipation and financial sustainability (or the Software elements of wastemanagement) are becoming more and more important especially for the success ofrecycling, reuse and waste prevention initiatives. They are highly sensitive tothe continuous change of the neighborhoods and the appearance of “cities withinthe city”, especially to the poorest ones where inadequate waste managementpractices create serious health and environmental risks. Clearly, the Softwareelements control the social behaviour of citizens and thus they are the mostimportant for the success of recycling, reuse and waste prevention programs.

It seems that a major barrier comes from the complexinteractions between the hundreds stakeholders involved in a global city wastemanagement. Another serious barrier comes from the lack of initiatives tointegrate informal sector to waste management activities.

From those remarks, it is obvious that the overallperformance of a global city waste management system results from continuousinteractions between global and local markets, emerging social behaviour, citygovernance, global and local stakeholders, city growth etc. And thoseinteractions are hardly described by the traditional waste managementapproaches which are based on engineering and logistics.

The problem might be more general. As long as we face SWM asa matter of appropriate storage, collection, transfer, treatment and disposaland the main effort was to minimise environmental and health impacts,engineering and logistic tools were sufficient to plan and implement wastemanagement systems. But today, resource management and social behaviour arebecoming an organic part of any waste management system and they are essentialto address increasing recycling rates and better quality of recyclables,participation of industrial stakeholders, eco-design initiatives and closedloops of products and materials.

Consequently, engineering and logistic tools are not enoughto plan and deliver waste management systems in global cities. Especially in amegacity, the overall waste management system should be considered as “complexsystem”, which means a system composed of interconnected parts that as a wholeexhibit one or more properties (behaviour among the possible properties) notobvious from the properties of the individual parts.

Complexity theory and Complex Systems Science (CSS) is arelatively new field of research focused on systemic understanding,self-organization, irreducibility, emerging patterns and properties andnon-linear behaviour. Complexity science has been rapidly evolved during thelast 20 years for the study of complex physical, biological and social systems.Cities as a whole may be considered as emerging entities existing near a criticalpoint of self organization, far from equilibrium and qualitatively differentfrom their constituent residents and subsystems.

Waste management systems in global cities should be studiedusing complexity theory and complex systems science tools because:

The overall performance of a megacity wastemanagement system is the result of complex interactions between global andlocal stakeholders, global and local material flows, global and local recyclingmarkets, global and local governance etc.

Effectiverecycling, waste prevention and reuse programs are of high importance for amegacity since they improve self-resilience and relief waste managementsystems. However, those programs are directly linked with social behaviour andthe emerging system performance is a result of thousands or millions dailyinteractions.

In global cities and megacities, local patternsand heterogeneity are the rule in waste management and micro-local dynamicshave an impact at the system performance through their aggregate effects butalso because they influence urban change iteratively through local connectionsand impacts.

In metropolitan areas there are a number ofcouncils, utilities, regional and governmental authorities, NGOs, privatesector companies, informal sector unions, municipal utilities etc. Each ofthese entities is operating according the rules of limited awareness andjurisdiction, and self-interest and with selected connections to otherentities. The dynamics of stakeholders’ interaction in megacities cannot bepredicted or modelled with the usual information tools

But is it any easy and practical way to manage Complexity in global cities? Or the ideas above are just theoretical approaches? The answer will arrive at the next post

The problem is not with waste but with climate!

2012-01-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

Photo from Environmentla Photographer 2009, see http://www.ciwem.org/competition-and-awards/environmental-photographer/epoty-exhibitions--events.aspx

This post is a really important contribution from my friend Martin Steiner (General manager of TBU Austria - see www.tbu-austria.com) and Ulrich Wiegel (Consulting Engineer, see www.icu-berlin.de). I found the article very interesting and speaking frankly very close to my own perceptions about the difficulties in addressing climate change issues. It also fits a lot with my previous post http://mavropoulos.blogspot.com/2011/10/urban-waste-management-and-climate.html.

Please enjoy it (unfortunately this is just a two pages abstract of a very important article that is too long to be published in my blog - but I tried to keep the fruitful thoughts and key-messages of the authors).

"The problem is not withwaste, but with climate…-how perception influence behaviour

Both solid waste and greenhouse gases are “wastes”in a broad sense, one solid, the other gaseous. The firstis perceived with our senses, the other not. Solid waste is accessible to allthe senses: we see, feel, smell– and even hear it, once the garbage truck arrives. The essential greenhouse gases of methane, nitrous oxide andcarbon dioxide are outside our sensory capacities: invisible, odourless – and, moreover are disposed of at virtuallyzero cost, even allowing for the current European carbon trade system. Wesimply dump the gaseous garbage into the “air ocean” on the bottom of which welive.

About 250 kg of household and commercial garbage isgenerated per person per year. In addition, about the same amount of recyclablematerials is separately collected, comprising: paper, glass, biowaste etc.,altogether 500 kg of “waste” per person per year. The quantity of greenhousegases (measured as CO2-equivalents, to which the various greenhouse gases areconverted according to their relative impact) comes to about 10,000 kg ofCO2-equivalents per person and year, or 10 tonnes, about 20 times the quantityof waste.

Althoughthe green house management problem seems to be greater than the solid wastemanagement problem, little attention has been laid on it.

Solid wastemanagement became very quickly a major political and scientific issue in manycountries worldwide, the last decades. In this sense, many technologicalachievements and policies have been implemented to minimize solid waste production and to limit adverse effects into the environment.

This quick response in the solid waste sector was aconsequence of the following three factors: the negative impacts of improperwaste treatment were quickly felt (e.g. groundwater pollution caused bydumpsites), and prompted action to be taken. Secondly, waste – through itssensory qualities – is present to some degree in everyone´s mind on aday-to-day basis – this increased the political priority to deal with it.Thirdly, the adoption of environmentally friendly waste treatment has enabled tangibleenvironmental benefits to be quickly realised.

However,all these mechanisms do not apply to CO2-waste: damages occur only followingconsiderable delay and are not locally connected to the source. This, togetherwith the fact that CO2-waste cannot be perceived “sensorily”, has resulted inless intense countermeasures being taken.

It isclear that CO2-waste management depends on the existence of the problem in ourperception. To be accustom this the following example is provided: If somebody throwing a noticeable piece of paper litter out their car window every twoseconds for a minute, over one kilometre, resulting in 30 pieces of litter lyingon the road, altogether maybe 150 g of waste that would be noticeable andannoying. If at the same time, the car has left behind 150 g CO2 over the onekilometre “on the road” via its exhaust that would not be noticeable andtherefore not being annoying– so it does not exist in our perception.

Onfurther reflection, if CO2 were solid, the greenhouse gases management problemwould have already become a major issue some 80-100 years ago, with the rapidexpansion of electricity production and industrialization. Surrounded by rising CO2-ash heaps from these activities, the notion totransport a human body weighing around 100 kg using a vehicle weighing morethan 1,000 kg, thus a payload of less than 10 % of the total mass, resulting inmore than 90 % energy loss, which is clearly too high as a proportion of energyinherent in the system, would have been promptly rejected.

We have after all direct experience of the banningof forms of energy consumption that produced atmospheric pollution which isobvious, we could see smell, and even taste it, and in terms of fatalities: inmost of Europe in the middle of the last century laws were introduced to limitparticulate atmospheric pollution (‘smog’) through smoke control. Within a fewyears people willingly gave up burning coal to heat their houses and water,because they could see both the problem and the benefits of action.

Forthese reasons CO2-waste management has been developed with considerable lowerrates than the solid waste management sector. It is characteristic in the caseof Austria that although a number of measures, introduced in a successive 10years period, have already solved the waste ‘problem’ by nearly 100%, areduction within 30 years of fossil-based greenhouse gas by 16% has only beenannounced.

Recycling is easy and makesus feel good – avoidance is hard and an annoyance

Anotherimportant difference between solid waste management and CO2-waste management isthat the first is largely based on Recyclingand the second is base on Avoidance.Recycling does not work with CO2-waste which final and only option isdisposal-either by conventional dumping into the ‘air ocean’ or by innovativesubterranean storage. So, a fundamental partial solution for reducingCO2-waste is avoidance and that means abstaining from consumption, which peopleare reluctant to do because they love convenience, and because they do notsuffer enough immediately from the problem.

Withover 100 years of increasing CO2 output, the unspoken assumption has been madethat its disposal would not cause environmental damage. Until science could atlong last agree that there would be any damage at all, technology and societydeveloped into a state of enormous – because of its free-of-cost – CO2-wasteproduction. The acknowledgement of the damage, and acceptance of the soon-to-beenforced CO2-levies will be, unlike for solid waste, clearly more difficult, asa) the damage is a future damage, is not clearly defined and not locally feltb) the existing social and economic system would be hit hard – one may imaginethat all 10 tons CO2 per person per year would be charged per tonne analogousto waste treatment with say 100 € (which is the cost for one tonne of avoidedCO2 for renewable energy technologies) and c) for this investment no reliableand auditable outcome can be assured.

At this point a philosophical consideration of theavoidance issue is necessary: Although technical innovations are important toavoid CO2-waste a society-wide ‘value change’ is rather critical to beachieved.

It is obvious that as humans – apart from the securing of our basicsurvival needs – we ultimately aim for one thing: to be happy (according to competent studies “happiness” is theleast common human condition by the way, and not attainable by directly trying).Now, happiness is a condition that exists only in our minds and is generated inessence by ourselves and our emotional response to external influences.

In this direction ‘Low energy happiness generationbehavior’ is consider a key factor leading to climate protection. This meansthat, if we can produce in ourselves the same level of happiness with reducedmaterial and energy consumption, it can be referred to as climate friendlyhappiness. The initially noticeable satisfaction “loss” caused by abstentionand effort is counterbalanced by the satisfaction “benefit” caused by thecertainty of “doing the right thing”. This has already been achieved withwaste. If we were able to imagine greenhouse gases “materialized” in solid formwe would be able to create within us an increasingly greater sense of happinessfrom the initially unpleasant sacrifice associated with “doing without”.

On theother hand we realize that in the waste sector we have – with the participationof the broader community and developments in technology and organizationalframework – been able to achieve something which, at the end of the seventies,was also unimaginable. In the area of climate protection, technology, whilevitally important, will not provide the whole answer; the challenge remains toshift our philosophical basis and value set. Only then will meaningful andefficient outcomes be achievable.

Thetechnical/scientific knowledge for implementing a climate-related change ofvalues is available and is gathering momentum. It is now a priority to keepthis change of values in our conscience, and to increase its perceivedimportance. In the area of climateprotection, technology, while vitally important, will not provide the whole answer;the challenge remains to shift our philosophical basis and value set."

La Pintana: an awarded solid waste project

2012-01-05T04:05:00.000-08:00

Some months ago, during theInternational Conference on Waste Minimization and Recycling of theInternational Solid Waste Management Association (ISWA) in Buenos Aires, the IDB and the FEMSAFoundation awarded the Water and Sanitation Prize for Latin America and theCaribbean in the category of Solid Waste Management to the La PintanaMunicipality of Santiago, Chile, for its strategy of source separation,selective collection, and treatment.

During November, in an IDB seminar in Mexico, I met Gustavo and sharing I learnt more about the La Pintana project and asked him to write about it. This is what Gustavo has prepared – thanks a lot Gustavo for this contribution, I really appreciate it and I think La Pintana serves as a good example of realistic solutions for transition countries and medium size municipalities.

"Through this project, which was developed in the framework of Local Agenda 21, in response to the challenges posed by the Kyoto Protocol, of which Chile is a signatory, so that cities will face the challenges of socio-environmental in the present century, the Municipality of La Pintana, located south of the metropolitan region, in Santiago de Chile, with 201.178 inhabitants, has been encouraging in the Commune willingness to take charge of the integrated waste management, treating directly the fraction of vegetables residues eliminating the disposal of them in the landfill, producing significant savings for the municipal budget, not only the disposal in the landfill, the Municipality also paved the way for implementing treatment facilities for these wastes, promoting recovery and treatment of them through composting and vermiculture.

The old department for Cleaning and Ornament in the municipality was transformed in the Directorate for Environment Management (DEM), This Directorate have today four units, Green areas, Environment Health, Environmental Operations and Environmental Education. To do more effective it work The DEM has divided the commune in five operative sectors, where the four units have representation like a little (mini) DEM. Through them the DEM performed their activities for Local Environment Management (GAL for their acronym in Spanish)
The DEM did en 2003 a characterization for their Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). The DEM established that the most important fraction in the MSW in La Pintana was the vegetable fraction, (more of 56% in the summer), with this reality the DEM took the resolution to do an effort to work with those waste and gave them a value, started a program when the community must separated the vegetable waste in their houses (separation at source) and give them to truck that collect this fraction. The wastes are transported to the treatment plant built at the commune center, where the wastes are treated trough composting and a reduction treatment with the Californian’s red worm (Eisenia Foetida).
The above mentioned treatments generate two high value products, the composting and humus. These products are handled by the municipal plant nursery, used as tree, shrubbery, plant and flowers substratum, that come back to the commune in green areas, grounds parks, so improving the life quality of the people living in La Pintana.
The mainly actors especially in this program are the inhabitants of La Pintana, without them the program can not have a real sense. At the first time was necessary to sensitize the people of La Pintana. Explained to families, the scope of the program how to sort and deliver the vegetal fraction. Together with this work the DEM has develop an educational program free of charge for the inhabitants of the commune, this has developed a strengthened the relationship between the municipality and community. These processes easy can be replicated by any other municipality.
The sensitization reach initially around 17.000 families, In 2010 the DEM in an additional effort reached contact with other 20.000 families this gave a total of 37.000 families and this represent the 82,2% of the total inhabitants in the Commune.
As a result of this communal program the Directorate for Environmental Management can treat around the 30% of the total vegetable waste of La Pintana in their own plant for composting and vermiculture. This process has aided the commune to obtain very easy, the middle environmental certification of the Chilean ministry for environment. The commune has become a pioneer in their program for Local Environmental Management in a national level. The contribution of the DEM to a sustainable development is reflected not only in saving cost to the municipal budget generated from the process for the separation at source and their treatment as described above, but especially in a greater contribution to a better environment in Chile.
How the saving cost generated from the Directorate of Environmental Management activities, are transferred to the Social development in La Pintana?. The municipality has a sport stadium, with 22 sport schools; the young through the sport have the opportunity to avoid the drugs and delinquency. In a commune with high conflict and social problems (La Pintana is considered a homogeneously poor commune) can said that thanks to DEM work, La Pintana have a South American champion in athletics disciplines. This has been generated by the virtuous circle of the sustainable development. Environmental work, generate economy for the municipal budget, this cost saving are transferred to the Social development of the inhabitants of La Pintana.
The precious work of the 120 people that work at the DEM, and their contribution to a commune with scarce resources, has been awarded with several national an international awards, for example, the award from “The Peace House” in 2009. “The AVONNI 2010” (Avonni is backwards innovation in Spanish) where the DEM participate together with other 550 projects for this national award. La Pintana won with their project “Transformation of waste cooking oil in biodiesel”. In 2011 the prize granted by the IBD-FEMSA organizations, obtained the award for the good practices in Solid Waste Management. The results that the Directorate for the Environmental Management has obtained can be summarized in the following achievements:
• Diminishing of the waste volume transported to the landfill.
• Make a significant cost saving to the municipal budget.
• Change the common leave earth as substrate for a high quality composting, that bring real nutrients to the soil.
• Reuse the pruning’s remains in a creative way for the elaboration of composting.
• Minimize the loud and smog contamination, due to less trucks circulation to the landfill.
• Sensitize the community about the need to minimize the household waste
• Diminishing of the greenhouse gases, due to less transport and the use of biodiesel, because the maximum distance from each point of the commune to the treatment plant is only 1 kilometer. Compared with disposal of waste in the landfill distant 12 kilometers away from La Pintana.

Gustavo González A.
(Ph.D.Chem.Eng).
Manager of the treatment plant for SW.
Directorate for Environmental Management.
Municipality La Pintana. Santiago-Chile."

For more see the video and the article - the video is in Spanish as well as the official press release

Coming back from Durban...

2011-12-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

This is a post written by David Newman, my good friend and contributor to this blog. I consider that David's thoughts below reflect our world in a sentimental but more that true mirror and I am sure that most of us, the EU and USA residents, will have similar thoughts many times, especially coming back from transition countries. Thanks a lot David - please enjoy it...

"Post - Durban reflections

We are living in a western microcosm which is destined tobe surpassed by the energy coming out of places like Durban. Here is youth,vitality, poverty, the need and the desire to create wealth. We in Europe areold and wealthy and the paradigm is ending. And we are not willing to get upand move to where the new paradigm is, instead we sit in our roccaforte andprotect our position- a position being eroded by the growth of the new world,in the same way it was 150 years ago by the growth of the USA. We haven't learnt those lessons, even thoughwe saw the rise of Japan, then China, and now Brazil, India, and parts of Africa.

Some may say that Europe always retained its supremacydespite the rise of the new economies- but this is a partial reading ofhistory. Europe has remained wealthy because the south has failed to open itsown economies to its own people. This has now changed.

The new Arab Spring is nothing but a desire to liberatethe economy from imposed elite monopolies. These elites have given their peoples education and expect their peoplesto not see the lesson- that the economy is in the hands of few, the opportunitiesare limited, major industries are monopolised. Just as Europe was. Even sellingfruit on the street was an offence in Tunisia. So these educated people wanttheir share too, want to belong, to participate in the growth of theirsocieties, to travel, to own homes, businesses and to enjoy the liberty of anopen society.

And when they can't get into the economy they move-immense numbers of asians, africans and south americans have been and aremoving now. It is the largest emigration we have seen in human history.Millions. Millions. Poor people but also people given that education and unableto find fulfillment in their own societies. Doctors, engineers, economists,artists, musicians. Depriving their home countries of intellects they so sorelyneed but that are shut out through repression and monopolisation of economicsectors. So idiots are in control because they belong to the elite. And theyare corrupt.

So the courageous and the intelligent risk their lives onboats heading north and west across the Med; or hidden under lorries ridingnorth through El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico. Such waste.

Can the uprisings in the Arab countries be linked to theeconomic decline of Europe ? In other words, having nowhere to go to seek work,as Europe declined, the arabs realised that above all in their own societiesthey were denied those same opportunities they sought in Europe ?

The world improves slowly but the steps forward are overthe corpses of the poor, women, the disenfranchised, the repressed, theuneducated. Such waste. Such a daily tragedy.

David Newman"

What's the outcome of Durban regarding waste?

2011-12-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

This is a valuable contribution from my good friend David Newman, ISWA's Vice - President who participated at the Durban Climate Change event as ISWA representative. I think that it is really thoughtful and worth to read it carefully. Thnaks a lot David, your posts are highly appreciated not onlly by me but by my readers as well.

"The negotiation process on Climate Change whichterminates today in Durban is both extraordinarily complex and equally boring.Delegates from 194 countries spend days working their way through stacks ofpaper to find fault with the wording of each sentence, opening excruciatingdiscussions which have to end in compromise because the process can only go forwardwith 100% consensus.

Venezuela, in a session on CDM, remained silent as theChair called the session to an end, only to stand up immediately afterwards tomake an objection, thus hijacking the process. It is democracy gone mad.

The negotiating teams meet for about 18 hours a day,especially when their Ministers arrive to close off some of the issues. Yeteach of them know that the wider process, that of approving a renewed KyotoProtocol, is in any case momentarily blocked by vetoes from the USA and others.

Absurd alliances take place : the USA, Bolivia andVenezuela all argue against market mechanism rules, the USA because the rulesare too restrictive, the latin Americans because they oppose markets !

In any case let's look at the wider issues

1) Investments in renewable energy have reached $240bn ayear now. These will grow whether a new treaty is signed or not because nations(like Italy) have incentivated renewables. And their unit cost has fallen 40%over the last five years making them seriously competitive.

2) Investments are being made in sustainability in allsectors, from energy to water source protection to waste to agriculture, all inthe direction of improving their environmental footprint. To take one example:while forest cover has fallen worldwide there has been a huge increase in treecover and reclaimed lands from the Sahel desert areas of north Africa. A newgreen swathe has grown right across a belt reaching from Mauritania in the westto Sudan in the east which was unimaginable ten years ago.

3) Our waste industry. The protocol for the first timeincludes waste as a mitigation instrument for developed countries and this is aresult which opens the waste sector to financing from mitigation funding in thefuture. While this is a victory for lobbying from ISWA and friendly countries,it also recognises the enormous CO2 reduction potential of the industry whichuntil now had gone unrecognised. We must wait to see if the protocol entersinto international law.

We will see what the future of Kyoto holds, it is notclear. But a process has been put in motion which will be hard to stop. And asthe climate warms the urgency to reduce emissions will rise. Above all fromthose who emit most and ironically are worried about the lawsuits which willcome from those who bear the consequences - read coal, petrol and the USA onone side, read victims of hurricanes, floods, drought and landslides on theother."

Ecological behaviour and commitment to the environment

2011-12-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

This is from Science for Environment Policy, an EC service, issue 265, December 2011.
"Researchers have used the psychological concept of ‘commitment’, normally used to understand relationships between people, to investigate our relationship with the environment. The results indicate that an individual’s commitment to the environment is important in their ecological behaviour, for example, their willingness to use public transport and make sacrifices for the environment.

Human behaviour is central to the exacerbation, mitigation and adaptation of various environmental issues, particularly climate change. As such, many policymakers are seeking insight into the psychological processes that influence pro-environmental behaviour, in order to inform policies that address detrimental behaviours and promote positive behaviours.
The concept of ‘commitment’ is rooted in the theory of relationships with people. It essentially describes feelings of attachment and a long term orientation in thinking about the relationship. The theory proposes that an individual’s commitment to their partner is predicted by their satisfaction with the relationship, their investment in the relationship and the other alternatives that exist to this relationship.

This study took this concept of commitment to try to understand human relationships with the environment. It developed environment-specific measures of commitment and its three predictors: satisfaction, investment and alternatives. The satisfaction measure focussed on an individual’s reward from spending time in the natural environment and investment looked at the involvement and effort people put into the environment. The measure of alternatives investigated the presence of other ways in which people could enjoy themselves and spend time, other than in the natural environment.

The study examined the relationships between these concepts by analysing the scores of 248 university students in the USA on these measures. It also included several other relevant measures, such as environmental identity, which assesses the degree to which individuals associate themselves with the environment, general environmentally friendly behaviour, such as public transport use and buying ecological products, and willingness to sacrifice for the environment, which assessed an individual’s willingness to sacrifice their own needs in order to improve the environment.

The analysis revealed that both the participants’ who had satisfaction with the environment and invested in the environment were more likely to be committed to the environment.
However, their perception of alternatives was not related to commitment. Commitment to the environment does not mean that an individual is not attached to other activities and places, in the same way that romantic attachment excludes relationships with other people. Therefore the predictor of ‘alternatives’ may not be so relevant in the environmental context.

Further analysis indicated that individuals with commitment to the environment said that their behaviour was pro-environmental and that they make sacrifices for the environment.
The research identified some interesting relationships between humans and the environment, although none of them were proven to be causal, i.e. it is not certain that commitment leads to pro-environmental behaviour or willingness to sacrifice. However, a greater understanding of these concepts could eventually provide insight into what influences an individual to develop long-term commitment to the environment, rather than making short-term decisions based on one’s own needs. This could potentially inform policy that seeks to encourage long-term and committed relationships to the environment."

For more: Davis, J.L., Le, B. & Coy, A.E. (2011) Building a model of commitment to the natural environmental to predict ecological behaviour and willingness to sacrifice. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 31(3): 257-265.

Albina Ruiz: a waste side story!

2011-12-06T02:56:00.000-08:00

This is a contribution by Alberto Huiman Cruz, from Lima, Peru, a colleague I recently met in Mexico. It is the story of the recently awarded Albina Ruiz. I have made a little search about her and I have to say that the results achieved by her efforts are really important, especially in terms of improvement of health conditions. Congratulations from my side as well.
"Albina Ruiz is not afraid of cleaning up garbage. Many of us take efficient waste removal for granted. Yet, in some parts of the world, refuse is not effectively managed. This has long been the case in Lima, Peru.

The problem was particularly severe in Lima’s northern district. In 1995, for example, its 1.6 million residents produced 600 metric tons of solid waste daily. Municipal authorities were only able to manage about half of this. The rest ended up strewn all over; it was found in the street, in the river, or in vast open dumps, invariably leading to higher incidence of disease, as well as feelings among the residents of discontent and decreased self-image.

The high levels of unemployment in the area also fueled these feelings. In order to make money, people who called themselves “recicladores” searched the dumps for recyclables that they could then sell, through an intermediary, to a recycling facility. This generated less than $2 a day for the recicladores, who wore no protective clothing and became targets of gang violence.

Albina Ruiz started her organization, Ciudad Saludable (Healthy City Group), to combat these issues. Based on ideas she originally presented in her university thesis, the organization develops waste removal and management systems that are effective and inexpensive. Through a micro-entrepreneurship model, these systems allow the recicladores to take charge of dealing with the refuse, thereby addressing their unemployment. Ruiz’s solution also involves coordinating with the public sector and increasing public awareness about the importance of waste removal.

In the last decade, Ciudad Saludable has positively impacted over 6 million people in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and India. Ruiz has also established two new organizations: Peru Waste Innovations, and Healthy Cities International, whose goal is to replicate Ciudad Saludable’s methods and successes globally. For her work, Ruiz was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 1996.

David Nahmias, Ashoka’s Knowledge Team liaison to North and South America, helps coordinate Venture and Fellowship in these two regions; he describes Ruiz as one of Ashoka’s most impressive and inspirational Fellows.

“When I worked as Venture Coordinator in our Mexico office, Albina came to speak with our team there,” he said. “I was captivated by how she has managed to expand her micro-entrepreneurship model throughout the world, forge strategic partnerships with large corporations, and even influence national public policy in Peru and Brazil, all while speaking very humbly about her achievements. It was at that moment when I understood in real terms the amazing potential that Ashoka Fellows have to generate large-scale systems change around the world.”

Ruiz’s commitment to improving the lives of the working poor recently attracted the attention of The Global Fairness Initiative(GFI), which was founded with the goal of promoting fair and sustainable approaches to economic development. GFI presented Ruiz with the 2011 Fairness Award on November 8.

Two weeks later, Ruiz accepted the prestigious Albert Medal at the Royal Society of Arts in London, joining a long and distinguished list of innovative pioneers that includes Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.

Ashoka, GFI, and the Royal Academy are not the only organizations to recognize Ruiz’s innovation and passion. Her efforts have been commended by Avina, the Schwab Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, PBS, and the Clinton Global Initiative, among others. In addition, she is the author of several articles and books on the subjects of community planning and disease prevention.

Despite these successes and her international reach, Ruiz maintains her connections to her roots. She can still be found combing the beaches of Lima for trash to clean up, just as she did during her university days."

I am just 4,74 persons away!

2011-12-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

After some weeks away, I am back to blog again. I just finished a long travelling schedule (actually I am on my way back home) and few minutes ago I was reading something really important, that I would like to share with my readers.

I am sure that most of you are familiar with the term "six degrees of separation". In case you are not, this is a study made in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram. He asked 296 volunteers to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb. He discoovered that on average, using 6 persons as intermediate points, they finally made it, although they had no idea of the address of the person. The result of the study was that our world, even in 1967, was interconnected. Using friends of your friends, with six steps on average, you can contact almost anyone worlwide!

A new study, recently completed and based on Facebook data analysis, says that in our era the average steps required are reduced from 6 to 4,74!

The sample was 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population. The findings were posted on Facebook’s site Monday night (see http://www.facebook.com/data) .

The experiment took one month. The researchers used a set of algorithms developed at the University of Milan to calculate the average distance between any two people by computing a vast number of sample paths among Facebook users. They found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37.

As the researchers conclude “When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rain forest a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend.”

Just two comments from my side.

First the world is much more interconnected that we actually understand. And this is something that has not yet been utilized for the improvement of waste management, through massive social collaboration! As we have discovered working on the project "Globalization and waste management" with ISWA colleagues, it seems that interconnectivity and flow of ideas, trends and culture is a key-issue for the waste management practices in the most interconnected parts of our world, the megacities!

Second and last, this interconnectivity does not mean that the whole world is one. Changing the view, you can easily conclude that you will never reach the world without 5 more persons to act as intermediate media! Or, as Milgram said "the result could also be evidence of psychological distance: that we were actually, on average, five “worlds apart.”

A comment by Derek greedy

2011-11-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

This is a comment I just received from my good friend Derek Greedy, which is also the President of CIWM. Thanks a lot Derek for your contribution and congratulations for your CIWM inauguration.

"Viewed the video with interest and content duly noted. However it doesn't get us away from the fact that the Greek economy is perhaps under more pressure than many of us. I recognise that you have your troubles and for that you are much in my thoughts but none of us our immune from the economic crisis that much of the world at large faces. A battle in which we are all involved and unless we tackle it together there will be many hard years ahead for all of us. No matter how we look at it we are now part of a global community. Being insular in our outlook is no longer an option."

A comment regarding the Greek Crisis

2011-11-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is a comment regarding Greece and its economic crisis. It is a video - please spend some minutes to watch it. But before watching the video, please read carefully some lines.

I am sure that there are things to debate about the video. For sure, Greece and Greeks have their own, substantial responsibility for what is happening now.

But I am also sure that there are a lot of things that cannot be debated. As an example, Greeks are working much more hours than most of the EU citizens.

I dedicate this video to all those who consider Greeks as the "black sheep" of EU.

Even more I dedicate this video to those ones who might think that Greeks are like the lambs to the slaughter. At least, they have to think that slaughter in Europe is usually combined with German strength and arrogance, French incompetence to resist and late reaction and British criminal negligence for non - members of the former British Empire

As for those European leaders or citizens that consider Greece as the sick part of the EU, I strongly propose them to remember what Jesus has told:

"Medice cura te ipsum." (see Gospel of Luke chapter 4:23).

In English: "Physician, take care of yourself!"

Please enjoy the video:

http://www.gr2day.com/106.htm

Informal Waste Management Knowledge Hub!

2011-10-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

I was really positively surprised when I visited the Informal Waste Sector Knowledge Hub. I think that it deserves a thorough reading of the many materials that are posted and I am asking my readers to visit it and have a look at:

http://www.informalwastesector.net

It is really a very good initiative aimed to highlight the informal sector contribution to waste management worldwide and to deliver knowledge and tools to those who are interested about informal sector.

Although some of the ideas presented there need further discussion and more detailed assessment, we have to remember that we are living a tsunami of urbanization and this tsunami has the form of new urban informal settlements.

So even if someone does not like at all the idea of informal sector as a stakeholder in waste management, the issue is not ideological at all. More than 70% of the urban growth is happening informally so the waste management industry and the governing authorities must not ignore or underestimate the role of informal sector in waste management. Instead of the more or less arrogant confrontation that is the current dominant view, governments, municipalities and companies have to look closer and find ways to integrate informal waste management to more formal and effective approaches.

This is absolutely necessary for two reasons.

First, because informal sector contributes a lot to recycling and recovery authorities but also it contributes a lot to black market conditions and unhealthy activities which create health risks for urban dwellers.

Second, because informal sector activities are not something temporary or something that will be a short – term condition. With more than 280.000 people coming everyday to megacities, worldwide, informal settlements will be a permanent form of urbanization for many years. And this has to be addressed with the right political, social and financial initiatives.

Last but not least, although I am sure that many of my friends and colleagues will not like this statement, I guess that there is something more about it. The first wave of urbanization, 300 years ago, resulted to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, which really affect our lives up to now.

The current second wave of urbanization seems like a tsunami comparing to the first one and I am sure that it will bring its own revolutions, through the power of social co-evolution in megacities, through the new instant and long-term connections of the poor incomers with permanent residents and urban markets. If someone shares this opinion, as I do, then the logical consequence is that in waste management a lot of innovation will come from those who need it more in order to survive and improve their life. From those that have to manage waste with limited resources and find resources from limited access to waste. Welcome to the Informal Silicon Valley…

Urban waste management and Climate Change adaptation

2011-10-05T03:09:00.000-07:00

Speaking for waste management, the adaptation challenge is currently underestimated compared to the great importance that has been given to climate change mitigation issues. Taking into account that waste management is still out of the mainstream agenda of the climate change policy – makers and decision - makers, although there is evidence that sound waste management practices can deliver substantial carbon emission savings, the result is that very few measures and policies have been arrived dedicated to adaptation and waste management.

Worldwide, global cities recognize the importance of adaptation because as Barbel Dieckmann, the mayor of Bonn in 2007 put it “…cities are already experiencing flooding, water shortages, heat waves, coastal erosion and ozone-related deaths”. The lesson we learnt from the Katrina hurricane was that multiple failures of an aging and inadequate infrastructure, plus indifferent planning, sharply increased the death toll of a catastrophe that had long been predicted. And while cities are moving relatively fast to create adaptation strategies, as a kind of “reaction” to the aftermaths of Katrina hurricane, waste management is usually out of the adaptation agenda.

The importance of adapting the current waste management is high and it deserves more attention by urban planners and decision makers as well as international organizations, for many reasons.

First of all, current urban waste management systems are proven vulnerable day by day. Search a little bit at the Web and you will find lots of landfill floods and collapses due to hurricanes or extensive rainfall, collection systems collapsed or blocked for a certain period due to extreme weather events. Although for the time -being we do not have reliable data to consider, it seems that extreme weather events will become a rule (and not an exception, as it is now) for designing waste management systems in certain areas of the world.

Second, it seems that the most vulnerable waste management systems are the ones that happened to be in growing and transition megacities, where informal sector plays a certain role in waste management and infrastructure either is not in place or it is not adequate. In those urban areas, the environmental and health risks from a potential disaster related to waste management are really high and under certain conditions they might be proven more than local ones. Take into account that dumpsites, which are the dominant practice in those cases, are usually located at low levels and excavated with no plan and hydraulic protection and you will understand that this is a serious problem.

Third, even in developed and mature megacities, where infrastructure is in place, the collection systems remain vulnerable, facilities must be examined for their resilience under the new weather patterns and we still have the problem of new and old landfills. Old landfills, even if they are closed possess a serious risk, especially if they are located into floodplains. New and active landfills are by far the most vulnerable part of the waste management chain and their potential for environmental damage is really high, especially in the case of erosion or oversaturation.

Already, there are events even in developed countries that outline the serious impacts of the current underestimation of the importance of waste management adaptation strategies. As an example, 30% of 1064 Austrian landfills are in areas where flooding is a major risk. A 25.000 m3 old landfill was completely eroded during a 2005 flood of Alfenz River in Austria, resulted in water pollution events. And the famous Elbe River flood on 2002 created landfill and dumpsites erosion which contributed in heavy metal and arsenic contamination.

So it is time to change our attitude regarding the adaptation of waste management. There is one more reason about it. Mitigation efforts must be global and their global results will be long-term ones. But adaptation is something urgent that must be delivered locally and the results will be more or less immediate. In that view adapting waste management systems is within the spatial and temporal scale of human brain and of our societies’ understanding, which means is more achievable. And for awareness purposes, focusing resources and attention to adaptation strategies is the crucial link to demonstrate the importance of mitigation measures.

How to cope with this problem? It is neither easy nor simple, but there are some starting points.

First, we need to face urban waste management as a system and assess the region – city - site-specific vulnerability of it. Of course landfills, dumpsites and collection systems have to be studied in details since they are obviously the most vulnerable parts. But even before those physical elements of the waste management chain, we have to study the institutional framework in each area and the social – demographic factors related to waste management. Because actually the vulnerability map of any system will be the combination of geographical vulnerability with social – demographic factors.

Second, climate change and extreme weather events create a new diversification of regions and territories, according their vulnerability. This means that a. site selection criteria have to be updated and reflect this diversification and b. they have to be applied much stricter than they are applied now.

Third, we need to find a way to include the Low Probability – High Impacts events in the designing principles and procedures, according the expected climate change impacts in each area. This is also a challenge for studying the vulnerability of the current infrastructure in place. Appropriate risk assessment procedures should be developed for that purpose.

We need a road map to assess the adaptive capacity of urban waste management systems and to frame them within the overall city adaptation strategy. Emergency planning and medium term adaptation measures are definitely parts of the adaptation strategies and usually there have not been even discussed for urban waste management. Informal sector integration in waste management procedures might be required too.

Last but not least, it is obvious that diverting waste from landfills, using several parallel collection systems, improving recycling - recovery performance and introducing waste prevention initiatives will definitely relief the impacts from any extreme weather phenomena, especially the health and environmental impacts related to landfills and dumpsites. In that term, those measures are proven as the link between adaptation and mitigation strategies and they have to be even more upgraded than they already are for waste management policies and strategies.

The future of waste management is URBAN!

2011-10-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

This is a short lecture I recently gave to an AIDIS event in Sao Paulo. The event was dedicated to the presentation of the excellent report of AIDIS "Waste Management in Latin America" and I really have to congratulate the organizers for the excellent report they presented. For more about AIDIS see at

http://www.aidis.org.br/htm/eng_htm/index_eng.html

For more about the event see at

http://www.aidis.org.br/htm/eng_htm/noticias_3_encontro.html

I have to thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to contribute to a so important event and I want to ensure them that I will be on their side, available to contribute, whenever they ask for. Here are the thoughts I presented.

"...Latin America and the Caribbean is the most urbanized region in the world, with its urban population expanding from 61 percent in 1975 to more than 78 percent in 2001. With increas¬ing urbanization—along with economic growth and rising consumption—comes greater waste generation. And the waste will continue to grow: several recent World Bank studies project that the region’s municipal solid waste will increase from 131 million tons in 2005 to roughly 179 million in 2030.

Urbanization brings high growth in population, in income and unpredicted spatial growth. Urban areas in Latin America are becoming a symbiosis of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, while allowing the rise of a new middle class.

Thus, urbanization goes together with a rapid increase of the urban GDP /capita income, with decrease of average household size, increased demand for dwellings and increased informal sector markets in all the urban life, including waste management as well. One thing is for sure: more waste is coming and it will be urban.

But urbanization has also another, usually hidden, side that we have just began to understand it. Big cities have lower environmental and energy footprints than smaller ones and much lower than rural areas. Urban conglomerations deliver more results (in GDP/ capita, in productivity, in energy use per capita) with less resource. Recently it has been found that there is a so- called “super-scale effect”: double the size of a city and you will have double plus 15% efficiency in energy used, GDP/capita or any resource use. Half the size of a city and you will have a half minus 15% efficiency. This means that big cities deliver more using less and this is something that is directly linked with the social context of urban life and not with the engineering and logistics of it.

Now it is the time to utilize this particular property of urbanism for the benefit of waste management. For many years we faced the problem of waste management trying to resolve it with engineering and logistic tools. And we were right because the first objective of waste management was and it still is to protect human health, taking the garbage away of the daily city life.

As long as we face SWM as a matter of appropriate storage, collection, transfer, treatment and disposal and the main effort was to minimise environmental and health impacts, engineering and logistic tools were sufficient to plan and implement waste management systems. But today, resource management and social behaviour are becoming an organic part of any waste management system and they are essential to address increasing recycling rates and better quality of recyclables, participation of industrial stakeholders, eco-design initiatives and closed loops of products and materials.

As a result of those trends, it is obvious that the governance issues of waste management (institutional development, social support and participation and financial sustainability) are becoming more and more important especially for the success of recycling, reuse and waste prevention initiatives. They are highly sensitive to the continuous change of the neighbourhoods and cities within the megacity, especially to the poorest ones where inadequate waste management practices create serious health and environmental risks.

Clearly, the governance issues elements control the social behaviour of citizens and thus they are the most important for the success of recycling, reuse and waste prevention programs.

From those remarks, it is obvious that the overall performance of a city waste management system results from continuous interactions between global and local markets, emerging social behaviour, city governance, global and local stakeholders, city growth etc. And those interactions are hardly described by the traditional waste management approaches which are based on engineering and logistics.

So now it is the time to include social behavior and participation as an organic part of waste management, knowing that without it all infrastructure design might be proven as useless. And now there are smart tools to do it.

One of the major barriers in appropriate waste management is the lack of appropriate information for organizing waste collection, street cleaning and recycling. New emerging solutions do emerge and I think the most interesting one is to use citizens as sensors. Using smart phones applications and relevant software tools we can now have real time monitoring of all municipal activities, involving citizens not only to monitor but also to participate in decision making. This is the new era of urban waste management, a management that will be based in active and real time participation of citizens and in that way we can also open the crucial issues of waste prevention and recycling.

Of course infrastructure will always be needed – we can avoid it no matter how successful recycling we will have. But it is also time to focus at the overall cycle of waste, including the substantial cost of logistics, which represent 60-80% of our expenses for waste management. So why not to have e.g. waste treatment plans nearby the city centers? Why not to have underground transfer stations and treatment facilities?

The future of waste management is urban because cities were always and still are the major source of innovation for our societies. And through events like the one we have today, we have the opportunity to be the catalyst of this innovation."

From LCA to Life Cycle Management

2011-09-09T02:58:00.001-07:00

This is from Science for Environmental Policy, DG Environment News Alert Service, issue 252.

"Although life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely accepted method for supporting decision-making, it can face difficulties when being translated into practical life cycle management. A recent case study on local waste management has led to the development of several principles to ensure that LCAs are understandable and applicable.

The EU recommends the use of LCA or life cycle thinking in the waste management plans of Member States. However, for LCAs to be successful in developing waste management plans they must be transparent, both in terms of their results and their links with policy practice.

The waste agency of Catalonia (Spain), commissioned the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change to explore the LCA of different waste management options, with the specific aim of examining whether it is preferable to treat waste in Catalonia or to export it for treatment. The research group analysed the process and compiled a set of principles to guide those undertaking LCAs to ensure they are understood and used by decision makers. Although focused on Catalonia, the study is general in its scope and does not depend on any specific local conditions, so its recommendations could apply to other regions as well.

Four waste management options were identified with different combinations of treatments (energy recovery, solvent recovery and landfill) and a choice of whether to export the waste or treat it within Catalonia. The authors estimated the environmental impact in terms of energy, the expenditure associated with transport and treatment of each type of waste, and developed a model for each management option, using LCA techniques to identify the maximum distance that the waste could be transported for treatment while managing environmental impact.

The approach, using four models, was adopted by the Catalan government as a scientifically robust and practical approach to waste management. On the basis of the experience gained in the project, the researchers developed the following recommendations for life cycle management, which could be applied to other regions and environmental policies:

‘Consensus beats reality’ principle – From the start, it should be acknowledged and understood that LCA can never completely represent reality and it will be affected by its assumptions and that the different stakeholders have preconceptions. Although LCA itself cannot be totally realistic, it is important to have consensus about the expectations placed upon it.

‘The three-thirds’ principle – To ensure LCA studies can be useful for, and correctly understood and interpreted by non-LCA experts, resources should be distributed as follows: one third to seek consensus with the client on the goal and scope of the LCA, one third to help the customer understand and use the results, and finally, one third to perform the LCA study itself.

‘Trust beats certainty’ principle – Scientific robustness is important in an LCA, but so is the decision-makers’ level of trust in the method and in the LCA practitioner. Trust must be in place if the LCA is to translate into effective life cycle management and social skills are needed.

‘Good enough is best’ principle – This addresses the issue of whether to base a decision on an incomplete or limited LCA. The study suggests that a suitable approach is to start by settling for simplified LCAs and allow the possibility of a full LCA if there is disagreement on the results.

1. See: http://faostat.fao.org/default.aspx
Source:Fullana i Palmer. P., Puig, R., Bala, A., Baquero G., Riba J., Raugei M. (2011) From Life Cycle Assessment to Life Cycle Management: A Case Study On Industrial Waste Management Policy Making. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 15(3):458-474.

Contact: pere.fullana@esci.es"

2012 +...Maybe the future has already arrived

2011-09-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting article from my good friend David Newman, ISWA's Vice - President and director of ISWA Italia. He is always thinking the broad landscape and provides thoughtful insights about our future. You can find more about David in a very interesting self-description he has written at:

http://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/galleries/Organisational%20Structure/Profile_David%20RobertNewman.pdf"

Thanks a lot David for this contribution - my good readers please enjoy it.

"When the financial crisis broke in 2008 I predicted several events whcih have since come to be. I also got some predictions startingly wrong. For example, I predicted that the crisis would lead to several countries declaring bankruptcy, to heavy social unrest, to widespread unemployment, to military style repression on the streets of countries considered democracies. Most of this has come to pass, in one or several countries. Among those that I predicted would survive relatively unscathed was Greece. How wrong can you be ?

Here’s some more predictions three years down the road and looking forward into 2012.

Eurozone
It is unlikely governments will act willingly to drastically reduce the debt burdens. Therefore the banks and the speculators will act for them, forcing countries
like Italy into insolvency (don’t forget, in 1992 the UK went through the same turmoil) and imposing thereafter economic policy. It will be painful. Average standards of living will fall by about twenty percent over the next five years.

Germany will not continue to bail out the weaker countries- France cannot afford to. Spain is on the road to financial stability, Portugal is turning around, but
Ireland, Greece and Italy are bankrupt. How the Eurozone will deal with this is the big unknown but I doubt it will lead to countries leaving the Euro, rather a restructuring of their debts under a programme agreed with other Euro nations, the IMF and the major banks. Forget retiring at 60. More like 70.

America
Obama risks losing the next election. One of my predictions in 2008 was that he would probably be a disappointment and that the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting in 2009 was his first real testing ground- for the progressives amongst us he has shown himself to be a charismatic failure.
America will not default, nor will it fall into much of a deeper recession. If I were to invest anywhere in the world right now it would the USA.

BRICs + Turkey + Korea
They are laughing all the way to the bank in Brazil, India, Indonesia, China, Turkey and a few other fast growing nations- not everything is working positively but the crises of Europe and the USA are a long way away. Why ? precisely because many of these nations adopted ten years ago the strict public spending regimes Europe and the USA failed to adopt but preached for everyone else ! These countries will grow quickly based on export demand for their products but above all on internal domestic demand. Goldman Sachs estimates by 2020 over 800 million people around the world will join the middle classes, and they all will be from these countries. The environmental conseqeunces are devastating, both in terms of resources consumed and
waste produced.

Then there are some exceptions- Australia, with its rich mineral resources, seems to be in a (rich) world of its own; South Africa and much of black Africa is growing rapidly although their economies are still too small to influence international markets and events and grinding poverty and corruption is still the norm.

And finally there is the Middle East. Two events this year will make ground- breaking changes to the stalemate of antagonism and hatred there.

The first is the Palestinian declaration of independence which will happen this month at the UN. The world will finally be divided between those who recognise and those who do not recognise the Palestinian state. And the political consequences are enormous although volatile.

Secondly, the gas and oil fields found off the Israeli Mediterreanean coast finally give this country energy independence and that means independence from agreements with its neighbours. This may play out in a more relaxed Israeli approach to regional politics, or an even more aggressive approach.

You might say there is a third event, the Arab Spring. And this is so, but who knows how it will evolve ? I am not willing to make a fool of myself by predicting the growth of peaceful, democratic nations that make peace with Israel and live happily ever after; nor do I think Al Queada will take over. But in between there are so many variables in each nation that a prediction would be foolish.

We will survive this period of turmoil and perhaps, in ten years time , come out of it with greatly strengthened economies. Who will lead the pack will be those nations are to change their spending patterns rapidly to turn investments into new technologies and away from financing public debt. Korea is a model. In 2009 it took the decision to invest $80 billion in infrastructure, clean energy, new technologies, and today is the Asian powerhouse after China. But it could afford to do this because in the 1990s it sorted out its bloated public sector, its over-leveraged and corrupt banks, its public finances. Why didn’t we learn this lesson too ?

Impact of landfill caps on leachate emissions – an Austrian case study

2011-09-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

This is from "Science for Environment Policy - DG Environment News Alert Service" issue 251.

"Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills, which consist of everyday consumer items, are potential long-term sources of emissions that could threaten the environment and human health if they are not managed carefully after closure. New research has presented a methodology to estimate future emission levels for closed MSW landfills and the impact of different aftercare strategies.

Globally, landfilling is the main method for disposing of solid waste. Highly industrialised countries, such as the US, the UK and Finland, extensively depend on landfilling their waste without any pre-treatment. As MSW landfills are possibly long-term sources of emissions, these sites need to be managed beyond closure.

According to the EU Landfill Directive1, which took effect in 1999, landfill operators have to continue managing sites after closure as long as the authority considers the landfill not likely to present a hazard to the environment any more.
The researchers used an Austrian MSW landfill in Breitenau as a case study to evaluate emission levels from the site and to demonstrate the long-term environmental effects of installing a final cover to prevent emissions. This site was closed in 1989 and was capped with layers of gravel (0.2 metres) and sandy silt (0.9 metres). The temporary cap was removed after 20 years (in 2009) and a composite lining system was installed as the final cover. The study focused on one landfill compartment, which contained around 35,000 tons of MSW.

Leachate emissions decrease very slowly and may have environmental impacts for centuries to come. The approach to evaluate potential future emissions was based on a comprehensive assessment of the state of the landfill and included analysis of monitoring data, investigations of landfilled waste, and an evaluation of containment systems and site-specific factors, such as climate. Future emission levels were modelled and site-specific predictions of leachate emissions were presented.

The results suggest that leachate concentrations increased considerably at the site when there was a change in the water flow pattern of the waste during final cover construction. Specifically, the concentrations of leachate pollutants chloride and ammonia-nitrogen increased from 200 to 800 milligrams per litre (mg/l) and 140 to about 500 mg/l, respectively. It is found that a period of intensive flushing after the change of the water flow pattern and before the final cover installation would have reduced the amount of leachable substances within the landfill and substance concentrations in the leachate would decrease to 11 mg/l of chloride and 79 mg/l of ammonia-nitrogen within 50 years.

A decline in water infiltration due to the installation of an impermeable top cover may lead to high substance concentrations in the leachate for centuries (above 400 mg of chloride per litre and 200 mg ammonia-nitrogen per litre), but with low associated annual emission loads (below 12 kg of chloride and 9 kg of ammonia-nitrogen per year). However, a gradual decrease in the cover’s performance may be expected without cover maintenance and would be associated with higher emission loads of a maximum of 50 kg of chloride and 30 kg of ammonia–nitrogen.
The methodology can be applied to other closed landfill sites to illustrate the effect of different aftercare strategies on the landfill pollution hazard. The researchers caution that emission models should be treated as tools to demonstrate the effect of different landfill conditions and not as deterministic forecasts of the future.

1. See: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1999:182:0001:0019:EN:PDF

Source: David Laner, D., Fellner, J. & Brunner, P.H. (2011) Future landfill emissions and the effect of final cover installation – A case study. Waste Management. 31 (7):1522-1531

Contact: d.laner@iwa.tuwien.ac.at "

ISWA: Knowledge base free for all!

2011-08-24T01:23:00.000-07:00

What is the value of knowledge? What is the difference between private and public knowledge? What is the relationship of knowledge to conscious? How can we know? Is knowledge valuable because of its role in practical reasoning?

These are some of the daunting questions that philosophers ask about the nature of knowledge.

No matter what your answer is, ISWA created what is called ISWA Knowledge Base. And I am sure that all ISWA members and followers are as proud as I am for that initiative!

Just visit http://www.iswa.org/en/525/knowledge_base.html and you will find a free for all - open access waste management library that already contains 863 documents from different resources, including a lot of ISWA publications and technical documents. And soon it will contain at least double. You know why?

First, because the open access library is fed with materials from at least 4-5 ISWA conferences per year.

Second, because ISWA is working closely with several other international institutions to promote interesting waste management publications and make them available through the Knowledge Base.

And third, because ISWA invites everyone to contribute to the Knowledge Base with technical and scientific papers. Every author can provide materials related to waste management, of course except advertising ones.

The concept behind ISWA’s Knowledge Base is simple: in a globalized world, where waste management is becoming one of the most challenging problems and scientific knowledge is produced simultaneously from thousands different sources, a free for all digital library is the minimum we can do to provide know-how to the ones that need it more!

In other words, ISWA serves the Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

Such “open access” thinking is what powers internet phenomena such as Wikipedia, which currently contains more than three million articles, and Creative Commons which allows users to find artwork that they can legally reuse. Recently, it is also the justification behind academic sharing, such as the OpenCourseWare consortium and other smaller projects sharing academic work.

Last but not least: ISWA should promote Knowledge Base and make it the WASTEPEDIA of the web – I am sure it can be done and thousands of people will contribute to that. Let’s do it…

Coming back from Napoli

2011-05-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

I just finished a presentation I delivered to “Summer School: Biological and Thermal Treatment of Municipal Solid Waste” that took place in Napoli, Italy, 2-6 May 2011. This is a summer school organized in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate ETeCoS3 (www.internationaldoctorate.unicas.it )

I really enjoyed the spirit of the event. Although I did not followed all presentations, I recognized high level - expertise presentations, thoughtful questions and answers, and a feeling that those new researchers are trying to dig deeper than the surface of their science and they have time and the capacity to do it.

I am really thankful to my friend and coleague David Newman (ISWA’s Vice- President) for suggesting me to the organizers. Special thanks to Giovanni Espozito and Flavia Liotta, both from University of Cassino for their efforts to arrange all logistics and their hospitality.

Best regards to (hopefully) new friends Eric, Piet and Francois.

My presentation will be soon available to my Scribd Account.

Last but probably not least: Napoli is still full of small dumpsites, even in the historical center - the waste management problem has not yet been resolved and according the discussions I had, it will be come event worst within next year because the landfills that now serve 60% of the waste will be come completely saturated...

Waste Management 2030+

2011-04-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is an article I prepared for the magazine Waste Management World. It is based on my key-note lecture at ISWA´s conference in Lisbon, October 2009.

The purpose of the article is to outline the major trends and challenges that will shape the future of waste management for the next few decades. Although in our complex and unpredictable world ‘prediction is very difficult, especially about the future’ (Niels Bohr), there are certain trends and facts that more or less create the ‘bigger picture’ in which the waste management industry will evolve. Interestingly, discussion of these trends has not up till now directly linked them with waste management – at least not according to the author’s knowledge.

Putting these trends together and considering the consequences they will have for waste management, it is clear that new challenges are emerging, and the current situation must be seen in a different way. Our waste management systems and our market conditions, even at their best, are incapable of handling the growing amounts of waste globally. So unless a new paradigm of global cooperation and governance is adopted, a tsunami of uncontrolled dumpsites will be the prevailing waste management method, especially in Asia.

The whole article can be found at:

http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/display/article-display/8267238380/articles/waste-management-world/volume-11/issue-2/features/waste-management_2030.html

I hope you will enjoy it

ABRELPE is getting recognized as a key-stakeholder in Brazil

2011-04-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

With great pleasure I visited Brazil once more, as an invited key-note speaker for ABRELPE´s seminar on waste management technologies.

Every time I come to Brazil I feel a vibrating country, people with great expectations and hopes, a booming market and a growing waste management sector. The last is certainly reflected to the great participation and publicity ABRELPE´s events have gained, with new records achieved year by year.

This time, the event organized was dedicated to the new waste management policy, a real revolutionary approach and one of the most progressive waste management laws worldwide. Reverse logistics, shared responsibility during the product life cycle, a waste hierarchy approach and integrated waste management plans countrywide are just some of the key - points that have already started to be discussed in Brazil.

The event was a big success and ABRELPE utilize it in order to present the unique publication PANORAMA 2010, which includes a detailed presentation of waste management activities in brazil and their benchmarking year by year. It also includes a summary in English and Spanish, so it is pretty useful for anyone who is interesting in Brazilian situaton regarding waste management. The whole publication can be found at:

http://www.abrelpe.org.br/panorama_2010.php

PANORAMA 2010 and the whole event were covered with great publicity. frankly, it seems that Carlos Silva Filho, ABRELPE´s managing director has gone a long way forward and now ABRELPE is not just a well placed stakeholder within waste management community - it is becoming the key-stakeholder and the main reference for waste management activities in the country. Congratulations Carlos and I wish ISWA to have more members like ABRELPE.

Needless to say that the Brazilian hospitality was as always great, which makes me again waiting for the next opportunity to visit Brazil.

Sustainable landfill concepts from a practicioner's view

2011-04-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is paper written by Haris kamariotakis and me.

It was presented and discussed at ISWA Master Class for sustainable landfills, October 2009 in Lisbon. The Master Class was organized by ISWA Working Group on Sanitary Landfills, which is chaired by ny good friend Derek Greedy.

I think its view was really appreciated by the participants.

I hope you will enjoy it too.

You can find it at http://www.scribd.com/doc/52390003/Sustainable-Landfill-Concept

Megacities and waste management: A challenge for 21st century

2011-04-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

This is a paper presented at th recent ISWA Conference in Hamburg, November 2010.

Its purpose is to present the challenge of waste management for the emerging megacities of the developing world and transition countries and to outline major issues that have to be further elaborated in order to create sustainable patterns in waste management.

Megacities face tremendous environmental challenges and threats for human health. In this framework the role of waste management is becoming more and more crucial both for the daily life as well as for the long to medium term sustainability of megacities. The challenge of a successful waste management in megacities is one of the most demanding for public authorities and the waste management industry.

This paper outlines some of the major characteristics of megacities that substantially affect waste management activities like their rapid growth, the symbiosis of wealth and poverty, the role informal economy, governmental and institutional issues and their major role in the globalization process.

Then it focuses on how the characteristics of megacities create certain conditions and implications for waste management depending on the megacity growth profile.
Special importance is given to the role of the informal sector and the experiences related its integration to waste management systems. While there is no certain way for a successful waste management approach, there are things that must be avoided and they are presented in a Failure Receipt. Also, some generic suggestions are made on how to increase the possibilities of a successful approach.

Finally, it is proposed a view and certain questions that must be answered in order to understand how sustainable waste management can be created within the triangle megacities – globalization – waste management.

The paper can be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/52389719/Metropolitan-Sustainable-Development-and-Waste-Management-in-the-21st-Century-Full-Paper

Breaking the link between economic growth and waste generation

2010-07-09T03:38:00.000-07:00

This from "Science for Environment Policy", issue 203, a service delivered by DG Environment.

" High levels of waste production must be tackled as part of the move towards sustainable living. Recent research has used Sweden as a case study to assess the strength of suitable policies and strategies that are required to break the link between economic growth and waste generation.

Over the past few decades the amount of solid waste has grown alongside growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For example, in the EU-15 the total quantity of municipal waste grew by 54 per cent per person between 1980 and 2005. In Sweden, manufacturing waste increased by 60 per cent over the same time.

Waste prevention is a top priority for the EU 1, although a future target for waste reduction has not been specified at EU level. In Sweden, an assessment by the Swedish Environmental Objectives Council2 suggests it will be difficult to avoid increasing quantities of waste.

This study developed two scenarios to investigate the relationship between waste generation and economic activity for the period 2006-2030 in Sweden. One scenario is based on the official projection of the Swedish economy, which is linked to historical data on different categories of hazardous and non-hazardous waste flows from economic and human activities. The other scenario adjusts the future quantities of waste generated by households, and companies' material inputs and production processes of goods that would be necessary to achieve absolute decoupling (i.e. no growth in waste whilst GDP still increases).

The results suggest that if waste generation continues according to historical figures, there will be relative but not absolute decoupling of waste quantities by 2030. That is, waste quantities will still increase but at a lower rate than growth in GDP. Of the overall waste generated, total non-hazardous waste increases by 52 per cent and hazardous waste by 72 per cent compared with an estimated growth in GDP of 67 per cent from 2006-2030.

To achieve absolute decoupling (i.e. no waste growth), waste production by firms and households must decrease relative to economic activity in the future. Waste generation related to materials used in the production of goods must decrease at about twice the historical rate; that is, a reduction of about 2 per cent per year for both hazardous and non-hazardous waste.

Waste related to production processes must decline by 1.35 and 2.09 per cent per year for non-hazardous and hazardous types of waste respectively. All household waste must be reduced by 3.36 per cent a year.

The amount of waste that must be reduced, as indicated by this study, suggests strong policy measures are required to move companies and households towards sustainable production and consumption, where waste generation is decoupled from economic growth.

For companies, policy instruments, such as a tax on virgin materials, must ensure production techniques change to those that generate less waste. For households, policy instruments, such as different VAT rates for goods and services that generate less waste, are needed to change the pattern and intensity of domestic consumption.

1. See: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm
2. See: www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/5775

Source: Sjöström, M., Östblom, G. (2010) Decoupling waste generation from economic growth - A CGE analysis of the Swedish case. Ecological Economics. 69: 1545-1552.

Contact: goran.ostblom@konj.se"

SWEEP - Net: a hope for waste management in MENA region?

2010-06-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

I spent three fruitful days in Tunis participating in the first meeting of SWEEP – Net (Solid Waste Exchange of Information and Expertise Network). This is an initiative supported by GTZ, Germany and the Tunisian ANGed, trying to promote sustainable waste management in the countries of Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) through adequate common activities and political agendas.

This is the first time I felt that something is moving in this so difficult as well as so troubled area of the world. Thanks to the efforts of the SWEEP – Net General Secretariat representatives from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Mauritania and the Arab League were gathered and made an intensive workshop concerning the key-priorities on waste management, the strategy of the network, institutional consolidation, working groups etc.

I was positively surprised by some facts. First it was the level of some presentations which have been really well elaborated by the speakers. Second it was the feeling of “the necessity of such an initiative” I received from a lot of participants. Third, it was the understanding that although waste management is underestimated in the political agendas in this area, there are very well educated human resources that could upgrade it and deliver serious results.

So I left Tunis with more hopes for the future of waste management in MENA than I went there. And I think ISWA would be a real supporter and part of this network too, since it has a lot to offer and it is very well perceived.

Needless to say that I found some old and I made some new friends there (hopefully they think the same). I always feel very comfortable between Arabs and the hospitality provided by the organizers was a great one and really promoted the development of good relationships.

Thanks a lot to Anis Ismail, secretary general of SWEP- Net for his help and hospitality. And I hope we will soon meet again and deliver real results through SWEEP – Net.

Last but not least. For everyone that has not yet been to Tunisia, I can provide a guarantee of an unexpected warm and high – level hospitality by friendly people within the framework of a real impressive landscape and cultural monuments. Do not miss it if there is such an opportunity.

Industrial recycling networks

2010-06-18T04:46:00.000-07:00

This is from "Science for Environment Policy", Issue 200, 17-6-2010,a periodical newsletter by DG Environment.

Recycling waste products between companies in industrial recycling networks can bring environmental and competitive benefits. A recent study on whether such networks can be used to advance sustainable development more broadly suggests companies first need a clear, shared network identity before other types of sustainability-oriented cooperation can take place.

'Industrial ecology' aims to reduce the environmental impact of industry by recycling by-products and waste from one company and using them as raw material inputs (resources) for another company. The concept of industrial ecology is modelled on natural ecosystems where all materials are recycled in an efficient and sustainable manner.

These industrial recycling networks can be considered a type of 'industrial symbiosis' (IS) project. Apart from providing economic benefits to all the firms involved, the environment also benefits from reduced raw material use, waste generation and emissions.

This study conducted a survey among companies from the general manufacturing sector of Austria, as well as firms belonging to recycling networks in Styria in Austria and Oldenburger Münsterland in Germany. It sought to understand whether IS projects can be used as a starting point for much wider cooperation amongst companies in terms of sustainable development. That is, whether they encourage further environmental protection and social responsibility activities.

The survey asked about the sustainability-related aspects of inter-company recycling activities and compared responses from companies within IS projects with companies that did not belong to such networks.

Surprisingly, companies belonging to the recycling networks passed on a
significantly lower percentage of waste products for recycling than companies in the general manufacturing sector (52 per cent for other companies compared with 39 per cent for the Styria network and 36 per cent for the Oldenburger Münsterland network).
In addition, companies that are partners in the recycling networks do not view their cooperation to be different to a regular customer relationship.

In particular, none of the companies from the Styria recycling network and only two companies from the Oldenburger Münsterland recycling network were aware that they were part of a wider waste recycling network. This implies that the companies view the recycling activities as a bilateral market relationship, rather than a shared value contributing to sustainable development.

Descriptions and charts can be used to understand the materials and energy flows for recycling purposes, but they do not reveal any information about the social level of the recycling networks. This study demonstrated there was no shared network 'identity' in the Styria or the Oldenburger Münsterland recycling networks.
In order for industrial networks to encourage new ideas about sustainability and become sustainability networks, it would be necessary to first create a network identity. From this a network vision of sustainability with common objectives could be developed.

Source: Posch, A. (2010). Industrial Recycling Networks as Starting Points for Broader Sustainability-Oriented Cooperation? Journal of Industrial Ecology. 14(2): 242-257.
Contact: alfred.posch@uni-graz.at

ARS is on the way up!

2010-06-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

As I was flying from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt I was thinking about the ARS (Argentinean ISWA National member) Beacon Conference on Sustainable landfills I just attended. And I have to say that I was happy enough considering that the event was a great success for both ISWA and ARS.

For ARS, it was an event with massive participation (up to 500 hundred people) and excellent representation of more or less all the levels of government and municipalities. What a recognition for ARS and the restless efforts that they made! It is really impressive how many people are really interesting for waste management in a country that has just started to recover from an almost lethal financial crisis.

It is more impressive if you consider that such an interest is combined with lack of financial resources that could support infrastructure development.

For me, the first real lesson of the event was that ARS influence has really started to grow, maybe faster that ARS’ people consider. The second lesson is that there is a growing need for education and training in specific waste management issues, that ARS has the capacity to cover and thus there is a huge opportunity for strengthening of it.

For ISWA, the event was a proof of the successful work and promotion made by the Regional Development Network and of the political recognition it can have.

The example of Argentina is a real Beacon for all national members that may help them to understand the real power and strength that can be utilized from their membership to ISWA. Further, the example of Argentina proves that not all matters are related with financial resources and official policies: even with their absence, an active and well networked organization can deliver a lot and gain serious recognition.

Because the real and the most important difference is made by the passion, the quality and the commitment of the people involved – we should never forget that finally and after all ISWA is and will be an NGO that promotes sustainable waste management in practice which means through and by more and more informed, educated and globally oriented human resources!

Special thanks to Ricardo, Atilio, Sole and Maria for their (as always) perfect hospitality and logistics – guys I wish we could have two or three of you more in other countries.

Last but not least: combining those really good friends with the magnificent Buenos Aires explains why every time an Argentinean event is finished I wonder when the next will be. Even in the middle of the worst financial crisis in Greece…

PANORAMA of Solid Waste Management in Brazil and RIO AMBIENTE event

2010-05-31T04:15:00.000-07:00

I was just attended an excellent event organized in Rio de Janeiro, within the framework of RIO AMBIENTE 2010. It was a two days international seminar on waste management technologies and systems, organized by ABRELPE, the Brazilian ISWA National member.

The event was organized on a high professional level and I have to say that it was one of the very few events, at least for me, in which all speakers made substantial contributions. Needless to mention that ABRELPE and Rio stakeholders involved provided a very warm and comfortable hospitality, as it is the Brazilian mentality and habit which created familiarity between the most different type of people.

As for the event, I was surprised by the deep and intense discussions made for the future of waste management in Brazil.

I think the highlight of the event was the presentation of the 2009 edition of PANORAMA of Solid Waste in Brazil, made by Carlos Silva Filho, executive director of ABRELPE and very good friend of mine. This is an excellent publication, made every year by ABRELPE, which presents more or less all the important data and evolution in waste management on a national and regional level.

It is not only the useful statistics and the very careful design that make PANORAMA very easily utilized. It is not just the professional level of the printing and editing work. The most important aspect I think is that reading such a publication (even the English summary) you have a very good idea of what is happening in Brazil, what are the main problems and of course which may be potential solutions.

As Carlos wrote in the preface of it “…themes related to solid waste gain an increasingly larger importance in the society (so) the annual update and deepening of data, which give origin to the industry panorama, becomes an indispensable instrument for the definition of strategies addressing the industry development”.

But except the impressive PANORAMA, all major issues discussed and sometimes with a lot of details. Here are just some of them:

The new national plan for waste management with emphasis to Reverse Logistics
The need for a national network of sanitary landfills
The necessity of treatment facilities for big cities with emphasis to thermal treatment plants
The international experiences regarding waste treatment and possible models that can be adapted in Brazilian conditions
The emerging regulation changes in order to modernize recycling activities and state control
The potential and the barriers for Public – Private Partnerships
The very important and characteristic role of scavengers and favelas in Rio de Janeiro waste management.

When the event finished I really felt that waste management in Brazil and especially in Rio de Janeiro is in front of a great challenge.

As the country rapidly increases its Gross Domestic Product, with rates that for 2009 were around 7%, the waste production is really booming, as several speakers confirmed. There is a very clear danger that dumpsites will be rapidly expanded as well and several environmental and health problems might be tremendous.

Brazilian market has more or less all the components required to deliver solutions for the emerging waste disposal crisis. Brazilian government seems to understand the problem but probably is not giving yet the importance required.

The upcoming Olympic Games 2016 in Rio create a window of opportunity for delivering waste management infrastructure. In Brazil, as I have the opportunity to see with my own eyes, there are a lot of human resources (and more are already prepared) and some institutions that can provide a substantial improvement of waste management in a relevant short – time. It is their time now to grasp this opportunity and create new and more efficient and safe waste management. And I feel that ABRELPE is really a key-partner of this effort.

I hope they will succeed - it is worth for this beautiful country and its warm people.

Congratulations to ABRELPE for the event but much more for the unique PANORAMA – I wish other ISWA national members to get the idea and implement it.

Carlos and Alberto, special thanks for all your hospitality and warmness, we really felt almost like home, as every time we visit Brazil. I hope that I will provide at least a similar hospitality when you come to Greece and I am more than grateful for giving me the opportunity to interact in so well prepared and interesting events.

A real special web-site !

2010-05-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

For those ones who would like to have a very clear and regularly updated picture of what’s happening in waste management in Brazil, there is one and only solution. The excellent web-site:

http://www.resol.com.br

During my recent visit to Rio I had the luck to meet the person who is behind this thesaurus of information and I was surprised by his efforts and hard work to sustain something that it is almost unbelievable to imagine that is elaborated by just one person, even if this person is a special one.

The site is available in Portuguese, Spanish and English language and it contains from new tenders in Brazil up to handbooks, best practices for several waste management activities, a lot of videos, legislation issues etc.

And most importantly, it is regularly updated on a weekly basis, at least.
Just subscribe with your e-mail and you will receive a weekly newsletter with all the updates.

This is one of the most impressive portals I have seen for waste management and it becomes much more impressive when you think that just one person is really delivering this content.

My Congratulations to Jose Henrique Penido, this is a real masterpiece. But it is also a serious indication that in Brazil there are very capable scientists and practitioners that can undertake the effort to upgrade waste management conditions and drove the country out of the dumpsites.

http://www.resol.com.br a site worth to visit!

A great event in Netherlands

2010-05-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in Leeuwarden, Netherlands for the ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Prevention, organized by NVRD, the Dutch National member of ISWA.

I had the honor and the pleasure to chair the first day of the conference and to watch carefully the second one. So allow me to say, that this was one of the most interesting conferences I have ever participated.

For a so difficult as well as complex issue as waste prevention is, there was a remarkable effective combination of theory and practice, in a way that I consider should be emblematic for ISWA’s events.

Very careful selection of high quality speakers, topics that cover the whole spectrum of waste prevention, intensive interaction between participants - speakers and a fruitful networking were just some of the advantages.

Beside them, a very warm hospitality and well organized events allowed participants to spend some happy time between the intensive conference sessions.

As for the content, the issues of behavioral science were well balanced with the changes required on the industrial level in order to achieve waste prevention in practice. Psychology, sociology and communication science should be combined with an industrial revolution (eco-design) in order to close the cycle of a lot of materials and achieve minimum environmental impacts from production and consumption of products.

I have to write my special thanks to all NVRD people for their hard efforts and the successful event. NVRD is really an organization that is going up, getting more mature as well as more effective, as I had the opportunity to understand with my eyes. Needless to say that it was a great honor for me to be one of the speakers in its annual congress.

Maarten, Eric my congratulations are a least recognition for your efforts. Participants’ comments and compliments are more than enough to encourage you, NVRD and ISWA to go on with such events.

keep walking guys, we need more such initiatives

Annual Waste Report for Italy

2010-05-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

This a contribution by my good friend David Newman - thanks a lot David this is realy interesting

Last week the government institute for the environment in Italy, called ISPRA, published its annual Waste Report, using data from 2008.

There are some really interesting developments I wanted to share with your readers.

Firstly, for the first time in living memory, the amount of total MSW produced has decreased. Only a small total decline, some 0,2%, but in per capita terms a significant 2%. This is actually the third year that per capita waste production declines, while being the first year that this reduction has had an impact on the overall national figures.

The decline is evidently due to a reduction in consumption, that's a no-brainer. But we should take into account the last three years' per capita decline and part of the reason for this may lie in the prevention and reduction policies being enacted in some regions.

Secondly, while the amount of waste produced declines, the amount collected separately for material recovery increases again; an overall level of 30,6% of all Italian MSW in now collected separately and sent to reovery. This is indeed a substantial result; regions in northern Italy have attained levels over 50%, including densely populated industral regions like Lombardy, Piemonte, Veneto. Once again the south of Italy shows how under-developed it is, with overall recovery levels of 15% circa. In between sit the central regions like Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, Abruzzo.
Note the great strides ahead made by the Region of Sardegna where overall recycling levels have achieved nearly 40%.

Thirdly, where the recovery levels are highest is where the regions have enacted policies of separate collection of organic household waste. The 2008 figures show an increase in organic waste collection on 2007 of over 14%, to circa 3.340.000 tons. Organic waste now accounts for 34% of all the recycled waste collected, the largest single fraction, and with paper and cardboard, over 60% of all recovered waste.

This means that Italy is rapidly heading towards the goals of the Landfill Directive in terms of reducing organic waste to landfill.

Indeed the other good news in that the number of landfills has declined again, while the number of composting plants increased to 229.

Landfills still account for 44% of all our MSW disposal (about 32.000.000 tons) though in continuous decline; composting separate waste 7%; MBT 22% (a small reduction on 2007) and incineration still at 11%. The rest is recycled.

The report contains a load of informaion regarding the economics of the waste industry in Italy, as well as a comparison with EU countries.

You can obtain this very detailed and well presented report in Italian from the website www.atiaiswa.it in the next few days or from the ISPRA website now www.isprambiente.it

A very good ISWA Beacon Conference in Perugia

2010-04-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I just came back from perugia, Italy where I attended an excelent ISWA Beacon Conference on Biowaste Management organized by ISWA Italia. Congratulations to ISWA Italia and of course to my good friends David Newman and Enzo Favoino for their timeless efforts and the results achieved.

The conference structure and content were of a very high level and I have to say I was surprised by the steps that have been already done in certain EU countries regarding biowaste management. The program can be found at https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/_temp_/ISWA_Beacon_BTW_programme_01.pdf

Conference attendants and speakers supported with several strong arguments the neccessity of a biowaste directive, something which I think is required more than ever. Allow me to mention the lectures of Enzo Favoino, Florian Amlinger, Cestmir Hirdinka, Francesc Giro, Ricardo Rolandi and Eric Lombardi as the most valuable for me.

During the conference I made some new friends and I am sure I am going to meet them again and share ideas and concepts. Eric, Florian and Cestmir I am keen to see you again.

Composting green waste saves as much CO2 as energy recovery ?

2010-04-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

This is from "Science for Environmental Policy", issue 191, 15 April 2010

"Recycling green waste as compost could match the environmental benefits of converting it into renewable energy, in terms of CO2 savings, according to new German research. It suggests that the two forms of waste management should be seen as complementary and both should receive subsidies.

Green waste is biodegradable waste, usually from gardens and parks, and includes grass, hedge trimmings, leaves and tree trunks. It can be used to produce energy in biomass power stations and receives a renewable energy subsidy in Germany. It can also be recycled as compost, which reduces the extraction of peat an important sink for CO2. However, composting does not receive financial support in Germany. The EU is currently developing policy to encourage composting and develop standards for composting across the EU1.

The research compared the environmental benefits of energy recovery from green waste and of recycling green waste using 81 samples. It analysed the CO2 balance of each system by estimating the release and savings of CO2 at the different stages of the process chain. For energy recovery this included the transport, shredding, incineration and the CO2 saved from the renewable energy produced. For recycling this included stages such as transport, composting and CO2 saved by replacing peat. Four different types of green waste were considered that differed in their amount of wood, herbaceous/grassy material and soil.

The results demonstrated that waste with a high percentage of wood produced the most CO2 savings for both composting and energy recovery whilst those with only herbaceous and soil components produced the least savings. The CO2 savings from energy recovery varied from 126 to 1040kg of CO2 saved per tonne of green waste, depending on the type of waste and its composition. The CO2 savings from recycling varied from 259 to 1193kg of CO2 per tonne of green waste, again depending on the type of waste. This indicates that the environmental gains, in terms of CO2 savings, were similar for both energy recovery and recycling of green waste.

Notably, green waste with a high percentage of herbaceous/grassy content and soil content had twice the CO2 savings from recycling as from energy recovery. This is probably because this type of waste has low heating values, due to high water and ash content, and is therefore better for composting purposes.

The researchers suggested that energy recovery and recycling of green waste should be judged as complementary systems. It is unlikely that one method on its own will achieve the desired reduction in CO2 levels and a combination is more likely to lead to a significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. As such they recommend that recycling of green waste be awarded equivalent financial support as the use of green waste to produce renewable energy.

1. See: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/compost/index.htm

Source: Kranert, M., Gottschall, R., Bruns, C. & Hafner, G. (2010). Energy or compost from green waste? A CO2-based assessment. Waste Management. 30: 697-701.
Contact: martin.kranert@iswa.uni-stuttgart.de "

No Need to Waste?

2010-03-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

ISWA and NVRD are organizing the 2010 ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Minimization and Recycling on May the 20th and21st in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.

The title of the event is representative of its content: "No Need to Waste".

As Waste prevention and recycling are becoming more and more integral parts of sustainable waste management and resource management there a lot of advanced approaches that can be rapidly dispersed and tested. This conference will provide participants with the latest information to improve their knowledge and performance in this field.

ISWA and the ISWA National Member in the Netherlands – NVRD have assembled a rich and exciting program that covers all the important topics for anyone with an interest in ‘Waste minimization and recycling’.

Among the confirmed speakers are Atilio Savino (ISWA president, Argentina), Stefan Bringezu (Wuppertal Institute, Germany), Hans-Christian Eberl (European Commission, Austria), Rachel Gray (WRAP, United Kingdom), Pål Mårtensson (City of Göteborg, Sweden), David Newman (ISWA Italia, Italy), Maarten Goorhuis (NVRD, Netherlands), Jan-Willem Scheijgrond (Philips, Netherlands), Jean-Jacques Dohogne (ACR+, Belgium).

The Beacon conference will be an exquisite opportunity to strengthen and extend networks with other experts and waste professionals from all over Europe and other parts of the world.

To register and for more information, please follow this link: http://www.iswabeaconconference.com/

The preliminary program will soon be published on the conference website.

I am going to be there and make my own contribution to this very interesting conference. I hope I will meet a lot of friends and coleagues.

CU there mates

A campaign I like

2010-03-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

As we move towards a more and more intensive recycling new and innovative approaches for awareness and campaigns are developed. The last one that i like is described below (adapted by UNEP and
http://www.environmental-expert.com/newsletter/News_Waste_Recycling_25032010.htm )

"Adventure Ecology founder and environmentalist David de Rothschild and his intrepid crew; Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl along with National Geographic filmmaker Max Jourdan and Myoo Media's Vern Moen set sail on Saturday on the Plastiki, a unique 60ft catamaran engineered from approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and srPET, a fully recyclable material.

An 'off-the-grid' vessel relying primarily on renewable energy systems, the Plastiki and her crew will journey more than 11,000 nautical miles drawing attention to the health of our oceans, in particular the colossal amounts of plastic debris, by showcasing waste as a resource and demonstrating real world solutions through the design and construction of the Plastiki.

The Plastiki began her adventure nearly four years ago after taking inspiration from a report issued by UNEP called 'Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas' and Thor Heyerdahl's epic 1947 expedition, 'The Kon-Tiki.

True to Adventure Ecology's values, a compelling and pioneering expedition was needed that would not only inform, but would also captivate, activate and educate the world that waste is fundamentally inefficient design.

With more efficient design and a smarter understanding of how we use materials, principally plastic, waste can be transformed into a valuable resource, in turn helping to lessen our plastic fingerprints on the world's oceans.

The Plastiki expedition took influence from the principles of 'cradle-to-cradle' design and biomimicry before being realized by a multifaceted team from the fields of marine science, sustainable design, boat building, architecture and material science.

The journey to date has generated opportunity for tremendous curiosity, discovery and innovation as well as a platform for discussion, debate and action.

To follow the adventure, feed your curiosity, track the crews' individual stories, witness the challenges that our oceans and its inhabitants face and learn what you can do for our Planet, please log into the expedition's online mission control: www.theplastiki.com for regular updates, GPS positioning, crew blogs, photography and mini-films."

Romania becomes first country to introduce junk-food tax

2010-01-08T04:42:00.000-08:00

This is from EurActiv Romania web-site.

A new tax on junk food products will be introduced as of March 2010 in Romania, the proceeds of which will go on health programmes, EurActiv Romania reports (www.euractiv.com).

The move appears to set a worldwide precedent.

The new tax is due by the juridical persons who produce, import or process unhealthy foodstuffs, with a high content of salt, fats, sugar and additives.

More precisely, the products are defined as:
 Fast-food products;
 The cake and candy-making industry;
 Snacks and crisps, and;
 Soda, except water and fresh bottled juice.

Health Minister Attila Czeke said on Tuesday (5 January) that he will introduce the fast-food tax in order to contribute to the country's health programmes. He also said he had asked his administration to prepare details of the exact modalities of the new tax. He promised to hold discussions with producers and distributors of the products in question.

The proceeds, to be collected as of 1 March 2010, will be considered income for the health ministry to spend on health programmes. The ministry justified its proposal by pointing out that more and more people in Europe suffer from obesity, increasing the risk of diabetes, hypertension and premature death.

"Unhealthy food boosts the number of fatalities and health spending, it reduces productivity, harms quality of life and reduces life expectancy," a ministry document says.

Dragos Frumosu, head of Romania's food industry federation, warned the tax will raise prices and cause producers to move their businesses to other countries, the Mediafax agency reported. Frumosu also complained that the draft law had been elaborated without a public discussion.

A fast-food tax, also referred to as a 'junk food tax' or 'Whopper tax', has been discussed for many years in the US but has never been introduced.

Consumer footprints for personal hygiene and cleaning products

2010-01-06T04:24:00.000-08:00

This is from "Science for Environment Policy / Issue 177" (service from the European Commission)

A new study provides recommendations to reduce the environmental impact of personal hygiene and cleaning products on the environment. Researchers undertook life-cycle assessments of products including detergents, soaps and toilet cleaners, and compared their environmental footprints looking at different types of environmental damage.
Consumer products undoubtedly take a large toll on the environment. The energy and raw materials used in production, packaging and distribution of products obviously have an impact, but inefficient use of products by consumers can also add to the environmental burden. Most studies of the environmental impact of cleaning products have focused on laundry detergents and there is almost no public research available on household cleaning and personal hygiene products from a full life-cycle perspective.

With this in mind, Swiss researchers conducted a full life-cycle assessment of nine different products using data from industry and consumer behaviour studies. The products studied were: liquid and bar soaps, liquid and powder detergents, a stain removing detergent booster and a toilet care product, plus bath, kitchen and window cleaners. They calculated that the use of these products account for around 1 per cent of the 10 tons of CO2 equivalents produced by the average European consumer each year.

Crucially, the consumers themselves cause a large impact. The impact of these products on the environment would be substantially reduced if consumers could be encouraged to drive less often or smaller distances to buy their cleaning products, and apply only the necessary amounts, using cold water where possible. In many cases, replacing outdated household appliances could also help reduce the burden. However, different waste disposal or recycling options had little effect on environmental impact.

Recommendations arising from the study included the following:

• High water content can unnecessarily increase the amount of packaging needed for a product. Manufacturers should instead sell cleaning products in pouches to cut down on energy and materials required for packaging, production and transportation.
• There is little data available on the environmental impact of industrial production processes. More studies are required.
• Producers and retailers should consider offering and promoting refillable packages.
• The land and water use impacts of products made from vegetable oils should be carefully considered in the context of the location where the oils are produced.
• In general, more in depth life-cycle assessments are required to help guide policy making for more sustainable products.

Source: Koehler, A. and Wildbolz, W. (2009). Comparing the Environmental Footprints of Home-Care and Personal-Hygiene Products: The Relevance of Different Life-Cycle Phases. Environmental Science and Technology. 43(22): 8643-8651.

Global warming: a public threat?

2009-12-09T01:31:00.000-08:00

Contribution by George Sbokos (info@ecothesis.gr)

Dear Antonis,

thanks for delivering the ISWA White Paper Summary on Waste and Climate Change. I hope your message will be a part of the decision making proccess in Copenhagen. On the same day, the 7th of Dec. “…an important piece of news came from the U.S.: the Environmental Protection Agency found that the gases contributing to global warming threaten public health and opens the way for establishment of standards regardless of developments in Congress…”. So I first had to ask myself, how tight could the american evaluation range of the importance of global warming be, in order to be understood and manageable only as a "public threat".

Then I questioned if is it not a matter of a tight evaluation range. The Irak and Afganistan issue had to be labeled as a “terrorist threat” in order to legalize the bombardments, the H1N1 had to be upgraded to a “pandemie” in order to forward the use of untested vaccines. I came up to the conclusion that Bureaucracy and laws have to be neutralized, in order to move on with some political issues. In that meaning, “public threat” might be the key word to put the U.S. Congress off.

Even if so, that might be a "CHANGE WE CAN". I mean, till now we were only common to the famous words of President George Bush senior "the American lifestyle is non-negotiable", delivered to justify its refusal to participate in the first World Summit on Environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Or the words of the George Bush junior administration in 2002, which refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on climate change and reiterated its refusal to the G8 Summit in July 2005, arguing that “the U.S. economy will be destroyed if we try to reduce emissions from industry to the levels indicated the Kyoto agreement”.

Consider, the world would only need 66,7 billions per anno to apply the goals against global warming. Consider, this amount is 12 times less than the money given to the banks last year. Consider, it represents the 2/3 of the annual worldwide military spending. Consider it is the ½ of the money given to advertisement (Le Monde, 6.12.2009).

Wish the best and raise your voice to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen!

'Intelligent' waste collection system trialled in Shanghai

2009-12-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

This is from "Science for Environment Policy / Issue 176" (service from the European Commission)

New research has developed a system to monitor municipal waste. It uses sensors to calculate the weight, volume and, potentially, type of waste, identify hazardous waste and optimise the routes of waste collection trucks.

The EU's Sixth Environment Action Programme identifies waste prevention and management as one of four top priorities1. In the EU, approximately 3562 million tons of waste are thrown away every day. The research, funded by Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea and partly funded by the EU-China Energy and Environment Programme2, developed an early detection system in Shanghai, China for monitoring the content of waste containers that could help manage the waste situation. The Pudong area in Shanghai generates about 2820 tons a day and this figure is set to increase.
In the past, such systems have only been able to monitor the level of content within the container, but this study investigated other properties. The system consists of a set of sensors and a camera mounted onto the containers to estimate the weight of the waste, its volume and the type. The sensors could also measure the temperature inside the container and liquid levels. Geographic data on the location of the container was also recorded. After significant development in the laboratory, two fully equipped prototypes were tested in the Pudong area in real conditions.

The system successfully measured weight and volume of waste, providing a means to monitor the overall amount of waste. Another goal of the system was to detect materials that could be a potential risk for the incineration plant, such as bricks or concrete. This could be done by calculating the density using weight and volume data. From this, the researchers could calculate a density threshold over which the content might be considered risky. This was estimated at 1kg per litre over more than 1000 trials during field tests.

The second objective of the system was to devise the most efficient route for the waste collection trucks. Again, this used measurements of waste weight and volume. Assuming that a truck can only hold a certain amount of waste and must serve a certain number of waste collection points, routes were identified to make collection as efficient as possible, specifying the location and order of collection points. This led to reduced traffic emissions and costs and helped prevent and manage problems with collecting waste.

The researchers suggest that most issues related to municipal waste (monitoring, sorting, accounting, reduction policies, pollution surveys) could benefit from gathering data at each single production point to be sent wirelessly over the town. As well as developing this data-collecting capacity, the researchers intend to assess the economic impact of fitting the equipment on standard waste containers.

Source: Rovetta, A., Xiumin, F., Vicentini, F. et al. (2009). Early detection and evaluation of waste through sensorized containers for a collection monitoring application. Waste Management. 29:2939-2949

Waste management after 2030

2009-11-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

It seems that this presentation was a real hit. In ISWA's 2009 Lisbon congress and in HSWMA's 2009 Athens Conference the more or less same presentation created a huge effect between the audience and a plethora of congratulations.

Please allow me to thanks all people encouraging me to write a paper with the same title - I am already working on this.

In the meantime, my presentation is available at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22205324/The-Future-of-SWM

The main topics are:
Historic waste
Increasing Quantities
Changing composition of waste
Recycling and resource scarcity
Energy revolution
Robotics

All those are viewed and discussed according their waste management impacts

Comparing N2O emissions from organic and mineral fertilisers

2009-07-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

This is from "Science for Environment Policy / Issue 158" (service from the European Commission)

A recent study compares the effects of organic, 'natural' fertilisers, such as compost, with mineral, synthetic fertilisers, such as urea, on N2O emissions from Mediterranean soil. It suggests that there is little difference between the fertilisers, but that pig slurry offers the best overall balance in terms of emissions and crop yield.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG). Although N2O exists in smaller quantities than CO2 in the atmosphere, it is a more powerful GHG. One of its main anthropogenic sources is agricultural soil, the result of applying organic and mineral fertilisers. These fertilisers also produce nitric oxide (NO) which damages the ozone layer.

Previous studies on the effects of applying natural organic and mineral fertilisers on N2O and NO emissions have produced contradictory findings. Emissions are influenced by conditions such as soil type, crop, temperature and water levels in the soil. Research, conducted under the EU NitroEurope project1, investigated the effect of both types of fertiliser on a non-irrigated crop under Mediterranean conditions. It also investigated the effect of the first rainfall events in autumn on changing levels of N2O and NO.

Eighteen 30 m2 plots were selected at a location near Madrid where no crop had been sown and no fertiliser applied in the previous 5 years. Individual plots were treated with four natural organic fertilisers (composts and liquid manures), a mineral fertiliser (urea) and a control treatment without any nitrogen fertiliser. Barley was sown on the same day in each plot. Changes in N2O and NO were measured during the whole experimental period from January to October.

There were no significant differences between the fertilisers and very low emissions were measured for all treatments and throughout the study period. However, to compare, composted, organic municipal solid waste (MSW) produced fewest N2O emissions and composted crop residue with sludge (CCR+S), also a natural organic treatment, produced the least NO. Three of the four natural organic fertilisers (MSW, CCR+S and untreated pig slurry) produced smaller NO emissions than urea, and a NO sink was observed at several points, particularly when soil temperatures were low. The authors suggest that further studies are needed to investigate this process. The research observed brief rises of N2O emissions in autumn when the first rainfall events occur and the dry soil becomes wet.

An emission factor was calculated which related N2O emissions to the amount of barley produced. This indicated that digested pig slurry is the most efficient fertiliser for this type of Mediterranean agrosystem if the aim is to reduce N2O emissions without reducing crop yield. In comparison, composted residues mixed with sewage sludge and urea both had high emissions factors, i.e. it would not be possible to reduce N2O emissions without also reducing crop yield.

1. NitroEurope was supported by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme. See: www.nitroeurope.eu

Source: Meijide, A., García-Torres, L., Arce, A. et al. (2009). Nitrogen oxide emissions affected by organic fertilization in a non-irrigated Mediterranean barley field. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 132: 106-115.

Contact: ana.meijide@upm.es

Biowaste management and ISWA's position

2009-06-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

This a presentation that outlines ISWA's position paper on the Green Paper for Biowaste Management. It was made during an event organised by the European Economic and Social Counciland the municipality of Salerno, which applies a complete source separation program. The presentation emphasizes the view for biowaste management as well as lessons that have been learned through biowaste management around Europe.

The presentation is available at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16952026/Biowaste-Position

Recycling campaigns: factors affecting succcess and failures

2009-06-30T01:27:00.000-07:00

A new paper is posted at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16951395/Recycling-Campaigns-factors-affecting-success-and-failures

The paper has been presented in Brazil and Serbian conferences.The abstract is like this.

"As the move towards recycling societies seems to be global, there is a need for a better understanding of success and failures factors for recycling activities. Big differences between recycling programs within a country, even within a city, highlight the importance of local conditions and appropriate design of recycling activities. But going further it is necessary to discuss about recycling and personal behavior.

The aim of this paper is to outline the major issues and questions that are related with the failure and success of recycling programs in the framework of personal behavior, using evolutionary psychology concepts. By that way, the waste management community would better design and take-care the recycling activities in order to make them more efficient and more oriented to results.

Firstly, major psychological barriers will be presented in the framework of behavioral psychology. Is there any kind of barrier to our brain for long-term results? Is there any structural problem to our personality that renders a more general recycling behavior?

The evolutionary emerging structure of human personality will be described and its impacts to decision-making. The importance of human temporal and spatial scale will be discussed as well. The importance of present-focus brain will be highlighted.

Finally, the already proposed frame of situational conditions – social and environmental values - personal attitudes will be discussed as a mean to understand the actual personal recycling performance.

Major findings regarding social- demographic characteristics and their link to recycling will be summarized. The link between life-style and recycling performance will be assessed through literature review and the effect of neighborhood will be presented. Specific social research outcomes will be presented and comments will be made regarding the correlations between different approaches and views to individual’s recycling performance. Why full recyclers are mainly retired and relatively rich? Why non recyclers are mainly “young without children – families with children – middle aged without children”? What is the role of architecture?
Property plays a role as well and type of flat (with or without terrace, space limit)

Conclusions will be addressed and special emphasis is going to be given to recycling barriers and problems that must be overlapped. The major conclusions are:

• The human personality provides a barrier for recycling due to species characteristic understanding of temporal scale. Our brain is too much present – focus in order to understand and act according long-term impacts. Information campaigns are not enough to change cultural patterns and understanding the problem is important but not enough to change human behaviour.

• Recycling success is a different story in developed and developing countries. In developed countries it is linked with moral values and responsibility, where in developing countries it is usually linked with survival and daily income. Thus, recycling in developing countries should be faced as a major challenge for global achievements

• Recycling behavior is framed by situational conditions, social- environmental values and personal attitudes. The later determines the intention to recycle while the first the possibility to actually contribute

• Recycling activities should be carefully designed according local conditions and situation, taking into account social-demographic characteristics, architecture, finding the starting point and creating clusters

• Social and collective behavior as a mean to handle the present focus brain barrier will be addressed."

New York to phase out bottled water for public sector!

2009-05-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

This is something I copied from www.edie.net/news. It is written by Mr. Sam Bond and I really find it very interesting.

"13-5-2009

The Governor of New York has announced plans to ban the purchase of bottled water by state-owned agencies.

The ban will cover both small bottles and those used by water coolers.

State agencies will be expected to phase out their consumption of bottled water over the next six months.

Governor David A Paterson said the move would save the state money as well as having obvious environmental benefits.

The move will make New York the second state, after Illinois, to scrap the use of bottled water.

Similar initiatives have already taken place north of the border in Canada.

Bottled water will be replaced by tap water.

"Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to ensure that we have clean drinking water supplies," said Governor Paterson.

"If we are going to make such significant investments, we should reap the benefits and use that water. Our efforts will serve as an example for local governments, businesses and residents to follow."

The Governor's Executive Order requires each agency to lay out the specific actions and policies that will be undertaken to achieve compliance with the ban, assess the capability of existing facilities to provide tap water for consumption in place of bottled water and identify reasonable improvements that can be made to ensure reasonable access to tap water for consumption.

It has been backed by New York Senator Antoine Thompson and Congressman Bob Sweeney.

Environmental NGOs have also welcomed the move.

Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: "A decade ago, NRDC released a comprehensive study revealing bottled water is no safer or more pure than municipal drinking water.

"In fact, New York State is home to some of the highest quality drinking water supplies in the nation.

"Governor Paterson's announcement not only makes sense when it comes to public health - it will save taxpayers money and cut global warming emissions from the manufacture and transport of bottled water." "

COMING BACK FROM BRAZILIAN BEACON CONFERENCE

2009-05-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

I just came from Brazil where I was invited to deliver a lecture on “Recycling and personal behavior” during the conference ““Waste Management towards a (re)cyclical system”, which was held in Sao Paulo by the Brazilian member of ISWA ABRELPE.

Waste Management in Brazil seems to have finished its childhood – almost 50% of the huge waste volume of the country is now driven to sanitary landfills and there is a growing interest for waste treatment facilities. Recycling makes remarkable steps forward and the tension between formal and informal sector participation should be creatively resolved because the mutual interest is dominating the real conflict (this was also a very important issue of the conference).
During a visit to the Sao Paulo newest operating landfill, my colleagues from ISWA were surprised by the quality of operation and environmental control to a landfill that receives almost 7.000 tons of waste daily. And definitely it is surprising to know that this megafill is privately operated and state of the art gradually constructed, covering an area of almost 3 km2.

Indicative of what is the current level of discussion in the country is that a new law that prohibits landfilling of every material that has economic value is on the way to be implemented.

ABRELPE has just created a very comprehensive report with the title “PANORAMA of waste management in Brazil” in which the whole picture of waste management is described with the appropriate level of detail, providing a useful tool for everyone who wants to know more.
I have to admit that I was impressed by the active participation and the interest that ABRELPE has managed to raise regarding solid waste management. Important government officials as well as decision-makers and private sector stakeholders were involved to fruitful and I hope productive discussions. ABRELPE seems to be on the right way of growth and gaining influence and as an ISWA Board member I am proud to have those guys as partners and work with them.

Last but not least: Alberto Bianchini (former president of ABRELPE) and Carlos Da Silva are not only the soul of ABRELPE but also wonderful hosts. Their hospitality was more than generous and I really enjoyed their company. Guys it is a pleasure to work with you...

"Turning Waste into Ideas" - ISWA/APESB World Congress 2009,

2009-04-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

Every year ISWA’s Congresses constitute a highlight occasion for waste experts and professionals around the world. This year the Annual ISWA Congress will take place in Lisbon with the coorganisation of the Portuguese Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (APESB). The Congress will take place between 12th to 15th October 2009, in Lisbon, at the Cultural Centre of Belém.

The beautiful and famous city, who has to offer great examples of innovation and progress through its historical paths, offers an excellent chance for inspiration and assessment, regarding current and future policies and technologies in waste management.

Besides the classic scientific sessions, the Congress activities will also include an Ibero-american symposium. The four days event will also host technical presentations, polished debates, facility tours, and social events.

For more information visit the conference site: http://www.iswa2009.org/homepage.aspx

How waste management industry can be involved with production and consumption patterns?

2009-04-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

This is a contribution from Erik De Baedts, NVRD director. Thanks a lot Erik for this really inspiring post, I hope there will be some good replies. I am sure that the current discussion regarding green market and green development are inspiring you.

"In The Netherlands the economic crisis is -among other things- seen as an opportunity to give an impetus to more sustainable development. A financial impulse should be subject to conditions regarding sustainability.

To what extent can the waste industry itself give an impulse to sustainable ways of production and consumption?

Waste management companies, beit from a public or a private background, know which materials can be reused and which cannot. So in product chains they can get in touch with producers to indicate which materials to use and which not.

An example: at this point we see tea bags being introduced in plastics. Organic and non-organic materials together in the waste bin. Unnecessarily difficult and costly to manage. Not in any way a sustainable innovation at all.This is just an example from the daily household. However, in textiles, clothing, but also in electronics, and in many sectors, continuously choices about materials and design are being made throughout the industry.

So far, the waste management industry finds itself at the end of the pipelines in all these product chains. It just manages the outcome of choices earlier made by others. Does the waste industry see the opportunity to play a more active role?In fact, can ideas be turned into concrete trajectories? Are there opportunities to promote that waste management companies upscale their activities to become logistic and production companies that are providers of secondary resource?

Of course the use of secondary resources over primary resources is more beneficial to the natural resources we leave to our children and grandchildren. Waste management and recycling industry can be an important partner in such a perspective.

What conditions for production and consumption should be set at government level to promote such a development? Can projects be set in motion that show the dynamics and social responsibility that mark the waste industry?

I look forward to your ideas and inputs."

Global View of Waste Management is also available through Facebook

2009-04-14T05:12:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I created a Facebook Group regarding the Global View of Waste Management blog. You can join it at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=72894372340&ref=mf#

The intention is to inspire a discussion regarding the most important waste management issues with a global interest and view and to find more contributors. Within the first day 32 friends have joined and Erik De Baedts, a good friend from Netherlands Solid Waste Association, has put a triggering issue for discussion:

To what extent can the waste industry itself give an impulse to sustainable ways of production and consumption?

See the whole idea of Erik in the next post.

Thanks a lot Erik for your contribution and welcome. I will be glad to host more triggering questions

Recycling and personal behaviour

2009-04-13T02:36:00.000-07:00

As the movement towards recycling societies seems to be global, there is a need for a better understanding of success and failures factors for recycling activities. Big differences between recycling programs within a country, even within a city, highlight the importance of local conditions and appropriate design of recycling activities. But going further it is necessary to discuss about recycling and personal behavior.

The aim of the invited lecture that I am going to present in the Recycling Conference 5-7 May in Sao Paulo (for more information look at http://www.feirasnacipa.com.br/beacon/) is to outline the major issues and questions that are related with the failure and success of recycling programs in the framework of personal behavior. By that way, the waste management community would better design and take- care the recycling activities in order to make them more efficient and more oriented to results.

Firstly, major psychological barriers will be presented in the framework of behavioral psychology. Is there any kind of barrier to our brain for long-term results? Is there any structural problem to our personality that renders a more general recycling behavior?

The evolutionary emerging structure of human personality will be described and its impacts to decision-making. The importance of human temporal and spatial scale will be discussed as well. The importance of present-focus brain will be highlighted.

Then the difference between recycling in developed and developing countries will be emphasized in order to outline the different motivations that do exist to recycling. Those differences provide a useful tool to understand the “moral” against the “survival” recycling and drive to helpful remarks regarding informal sector recycling. The more recycling results that seem to be produced in low- income countries will be discussed and comments will be made regarding the income-related issues. The conclusions are:

1. Informal recycling is low cost and has poor working conditions, but in spite of this it is both efficient and effective, and recovers a lot of materials.
2. Formal recycling initiatives have a tendency to be high cost, inefficient, isolated, and to recover very small quantities of material.
3. Municipalities beginning with recycling would often be better advised to build on the activities of the existing private recycling sector – both informal and formal -- rather than to reinvent formal recycling themselves.

Finally, the already proposed frame of situational conditions – social and environmental values - personal attitudes will be discussed as a mean to understand the actual personal recycling performance.

Major finding regarding social- demographic characteristics and their link to recycling will be summarized. The link between life-style and recycling performance will be assessed through literature review and the effect of neighborhood will be presented. Specific social research outcomes will be presented and comments will be made regarding the correlations between different approaches and views to individual’s recycling performance. Why full recyclers are mainly retired and relatively rich? Why non recyclers are mainly “young without children – families with children – middle aged without children”? What is the role of architecture?
Property plays a role as well and type of flat (with or without terrace, space limit)

Conclusions will be addressed and special emphasis is going to be given to recycling barriers and problems that must be overlapped. The major conclusions are:

• The human personality provides a barrier for recycling due to species characteristic understanding of temporal scale. Our brain is too much present – focus in order to understand and act according long-term impacts. Information campaigns are not enough for change

• Recycling success is a different story in developed and developing countries. In developed countries it is linked with moral values and responsibility, where in developing countries it is usually linked with survival and daily income. Thus, recycling in developing countries should be faced as a major challenge for global achievements

• Recycling behavior is framed by situational conditions, social- environmental values and personal attitudes. The later determines the intention to recycle while the first the possibility to actually contribute

• Recycling activities should be carefully designed according local conditions and situation, taking into account social-demographic characteristics, architecture, finding the starting point and creating clusters

• For all those reasons there is not a global solution for successful recycling. Instead there is an ocean of bad or inappropriate solutions with some islands of successful ones

Brazilian Conference: SWM towards a (re)cyclical system, 5-7 of May Sao Paolo

2009-04-02T03:51:00.000-07:00

Nowadays the waste management sector is facing several changes and challenges at a global level. The exchange of experiences and information is a task for everybody.
Because of that, ABRELPE, ISWA National Member in Brazil will hold an ISWA Beacon Conference in Sao Paulo, next may, with the theme “Waste Management towards a (re)cyclical system”.

With this theme, the Conference propose a discussion regarding the paths and solutions for a new waste management system, based on the implementation of an efficient cyclical system to return and recover recyclables, raw materials and energy.

The Conference program will show the most updated subjects on waste management issues towards the development of this sector at a local, regional and global levels.

More information at http://www.feirasnacipa.com.br/beacon/.

A very good seminar regarding recycling crisis: May 13, Milan, Italy

2009-03-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

The global economic crisis has led, as we all know, to a crisis in the recycling of many waste fractions.

How these markets are evolving, what is happening in different countries in Europe and the developing world, what measures are needed to kick start the recycled materials markets, what policy changes are needed when a "circular economy" stops turning, are all questions which will be discussed in a seminar organised in Milan by Iswa Italy on May 13th.

To register (free for Iswa members) go to www.iswa.it

Waste without borders in the EU?

2009-03-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

The following text is taken from the conclusions of the 1/2009 report of the European Environmental Agency. The title of this interesting report is "Waste without borders in the EU" and you can download it from

http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/waste-without-borders-in-the-eu-transboundary-shipments-of-waste

"Developments in shipments of waste indicate that many of the principles in the EU Waste Framework Directive and EU policies are being achieved.
Almost all waste generated in the EU that requires disposal is disposed of within the EU. This is in accordance with the EU political target to establish a self-sufficient network of disposal installations in the EU. Increasingly, hazardous and problematic waste is shipped for recovery within the EU, which is also in accordance with the political target. Increasing amounts of waste paper, plastics and metals are exported for recycling, driven by the increasing prices of secondary waste materials and supported by EU legislation requirements for increasing recycling rates. This shows waste being used as a resource, which is in line with the EU strategy on waste prevention and recycling.

However, developments in some areas do not fulfill the requirements of the EU Waste Framework Directive nor do they comply with EU regulations on the shipment of waste. EU Member States have not made progress toward individual Member State self-sufficiency in waste disposal. It is currently not possible to document at EU level what specific kind of hazardous and problematic waste is shipped across boundaries. This is due to highly aggregated reporting. Similarly, aggregated reporting means that it is not possible to determine whether shipment of the waste results in better, more environmentally friendly treatment of the waste.

It is difficult to follow some waste streams, in particular e-waste. It would appear that the EU exports a significant quantity of used electrical and electronic products to developing countries that do not have an adequate waste management infrastructure. These are then probably subject to treatment that poses a threat to the environment and human health.

EU Member States collect a huge quantity of data and information on the shipment of waste, but it is still impossible to ascertain whether, at the EU level, these shipments reduce negative effects on the environment….
However ….more than one third of the notified waste is not classified because there is no code that is suitable for the waste. Also, the codes are too general, making it impossible to determine the exact nature of the waste shipped. .. However, all wastes for disposal, as well as hazardous and problematic waste for recovery, must be notified to the relevant national authorities before shipment…."

David Newman comments on UN report

2009-02-27T01:42:00.000-08:00

This report is a fairly outdated and probably expensive UN report stating the obvious.

We already knew these data from a UK report published over a year ago which shows how Britons throw away 30 percent of the food they buy, even when it is perfectly edible. But so what ?

When we go to the developing countries, where people are presumably poorer than in Britain and therefore likely to reject less of a prime commodity like food, well (guess who ?), UNEP in a report in 2005 tells us that organic (including food) waste accounts for up to 70 percent of urban waste.

Greenpeace reported on fisheries by-catch over a decade ago, demonstrating how many millions of tonnes are wasted annually.
So what has the new UNEP report added ?

What it could have said was : if we can correctly manage and capture the potential in food waste we could:
A) produce energy
B) produce fertilisers
C) reduce CO2 emissions

Until food is so expensive that we cannot afford to waste it all the rest is just talk. The fact is food is too cheap and this comes down to how we obscenely subsidise food production, especially in the rich countries. But that is another question waste managers cannot ask.

UN calls for food waste revolution

2009-02-26T05:59:00.000-08:00

The following was publish by James Murray, in BusinessGreen, 23 Feb 2009.

The world could easily feed its growing population if farmers, businesses and government's simply stepped up efforts to curtail food waste, according to a major new study from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report, which was published at last week's meeting of the UNEP Governing Council in Nairobi, Kenya, warned that without "a green revolution" across the food industry the combination of population growth and climate change will lead to severe food shortages over the coming decades that could see food prices climb by between 30 and 50 per cent.

"We need a Green revolution in a Green Economy but one with a capital G", said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "We need to deal with not only the way the world produces food but the way it is distributed, sold and consumed, and we need a revolution that can boost yields by working with rather than against nature."

The report, entitled The Environmental Food crises: Environment's role in averting future food crises, calls on food producers, businesses and governments to prioritise efforts to cut food waste as the most effective means of addressing future shortages.

It found that up to 50 per cent of food produced in the US is wasted, while a third of food purchased in the UK is never eaten. Meanwhile, food losses in developing world are similarly high with an estimated 20 to 40 per cent of potential harvests lost as a result o pests and pathogens.

Moreover, 30m tonnes of fish are reportedly discarded at sea each year – enough to sustain a 50 per cent increase in fish farming and aquaculture production, which the UNEP calculates is needed to maintain per capita fish consumption at current levels by 2050 without increasing pressure on an already stressed marine environment.

"Over half of the food produced today is either lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain," said Steiner. "There is evidence within the report that the world could feed the entire projected population growth alone by becoming more efficient while also ensuring the survival of wild animals, birds and fish on this planet."

The report calls for increased investment in agricultural R&D to help reduce waste during the production process, as well as increased efforts from government's to cut consumer food waste.

In addition, to targeting food waste the report calls for an end to agricultural subsidies, curtailing of the practice of using cereals to feed livestock, increased investment in developing second generation biofuels that do not impact on food supplies and improved water management regimes in drought affected areas.
It also calls for wider adoption of organic farming methods, citing a recent report by UNEP and the UN Conference on Trade and Development which studied 114 small-scale farms in 24 African countries and found that yields more than doubled where organic or near organic techniques were used.
"Simply ratcheting up the fertilizer and pesticide-led production methods of the 20th Century is unlikely to address the challenge", says Achim Steiner. "It will increasingly undermine the critical natural inputs and nature-based services for agriculture such as healthy and productive soils, the water and nutrient recycling of forests, and pollinators such as bees and bats."

The report warned that unless its recommendations are adopted up to 25 per cent of the world's food production could be lost by 2050 as a result of " environmental breakdown".

For example, it said that the retreat of Himalayan glaciers as a result of climate change could put nearly half of Asia's cereal production at risk, while global water shortages could cut crop yields by 20 per cent.

In related news, UNEP released a second report which found that 40 per cent of civil wars fought since 1990 were a direct result of natural resource shortages, a situation that is likely to worsen as climate change accelerates.

It warned that conflicts with a link to natural resources were twice as likely to relapse within five years as conflicts fought for other reasons, and called on the UN to take environmental and resource issues more seriously in its post-conflict planning.

5 year jail term for a plastic bag in New Delhi!

2009-02-22T02:33:00.000-08:00

The discussion around plastic bags and their impacts to solid waste management has gone a long way last years.

Just last month New Delhi passed a preliminary ban imposing a five-year jail term or a 100,000-rupee fine, about $2,055, on anyone caught carrying or handing out plastic bags.

That did not stop 67,000 plastics professionals from convening last week for Plastindia 2009, a five-day celebration of all things plastic. Some interesting points regarding plastic bags, waste management and the plastic industry reactions are made by Heater Timmons in New York Times, 17/2/2009. See this at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/business/worldbusiness/17bag.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=plastic%20bags&st=cse

Some thoughts regarding SWM and Climate Change

2009-02-18T00:09:00.000-08:00

The importance of Green House Gases (GHG) in decision making for SWM systems becomes an elementary part of every discussion about the future waste management. Below you will find some questions to consider and some thoughts to share about the issue.

I do believe that half of the effort we need is to create an appropriate framework for the assessment of the link between GHGs and SWM. Although there are a lot of very useful related documents, I still believe that the necessary political framework for this discussion is loose and not well defined. For the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA, www.iswa.org ) there is an opportunity to upgrade its profile being a part of the required global drivers for such a discussion. In fact, the global impacts of SWM (as highlighted by GHGs) are an obvious documentation of the need for global action and the necessity of a global know-how provider and driver to more sustainable SWM, exactly what ISWA’s mission is! So allow me to write some thoughts trying to contribute to an initial framing.

Thoughts

Globalization of environmental impacts: GHGs are the most obvious way to highlight that local SWM has a global environmental footprint. There are also a lot of other indications to highlight (in scientific terms) a similar relation between local actions and global effects, but under the current conditions and the global political agenda about Climate Change, the link between SWM and GHGs is the most important tool to create a universal understanding for how our local decisions in SWM contribute to global phenomena.

GHGs and the sense of time: human beings tend to underestimate or even ignore the importance of events that are out of their natural time scale. GHGs impacts are also a very good example in order to prove how previous and current SWM practices create Long Term results which substantially deteriorate the life of future generations.

GHG and developing countries: obviously the GHG effects and their management play a very crucial role for the formulation of international relations and diplomacy efforts. They also have a very clear political and economical content, which is very sensitive and difficult to be avoided. But we have to avoid a direct recommendation of what has to be done in terms of technologies and systems in place. In contrast, we have to point what should be the potential next steps (usually more than one) for more sustainability and less GHG effects in every different level of SWM. We need something like “How GHG effects influence SWM” or similar. The focus should be to criteria and conceptual relations between different practices and technologies and not to a direct indication to what has to be done.

Some Questions

GHG effects should be considered as a risk or as an opportunity for SWM development? (I suggest the second)

What are the impacts to GHGs from the different SWM practices? What are the main risks for SWM systems? Are there any opportunities and where?

What are the impacts to SWM practices and the industry from the accumulation of GHGs? How Climate Change is expected to affect SWM?

What are the key – actions that should be elaborated from different SWM systems and practices in order to minimize the GHGs impacts?

Should we discuss about the economical impacts as well?

Can we categorize Short and Long Term actions?

Can we categorize actions according their effects (e.g. Small, Medium, and High)?

Using mobile phones to promote recycling: the London experiment

2009-02-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

The text that follows is copied by www.edie.net (12/2/2009)

Londoners are being encouraged to starve their bins in a new electronic game that they can play on the move. Recycle for London's latest publicity campaign, which is funded by the London Waste and Recycling Board, is using a mobile phone game to spread the word.

It is the first time that such technology has been used for a public sector campaign. Players will be challenged to starve their "evil bin" by catching recyclable materials in a green recycling box, scoring points for every item caught, and losing lives if the bin eats the items.

More than 60% of the rubbish thrown away in the capital can be recycled by the city is currently managing an average of just 20%. "In London we throw away so much rubbish that could actually be recycled - it's an important resource which is simply being chucked away," London Mayor Boris Johnson said. "I am very excited that the new Recycle for London campaign is using innovative technologies to boost recycling and my message is to starve your bins and recycle, recycle, recycle."

Mr Johnson added that he is confident that the recycling market will recover, despite reports of the recent downturn in some parts of the market for recycled materials. Councillor Daniel Moylan, from the London Waste and Recycling Board, said: "Along with reducing the amount of waste we send to landfill, driving up recycling is our top priority and we shouldn't let a few scare stories in the media divert us from this important endeavour."

For the first time, the campaign will now be advertised on television, alongside the radio and press adverts and the posters on public transport that most city-dwellers will already be familiar with. Londoners can download the game by texting BIN to 62967. iPhone users can download the game from the Apple Store on iTunes. All users can forward the game to friends. It will work on most internet-ready mobile phones. It does not work on BlackBerries.

Urban waste management solutions

2009-02-05T02:11:00.000-08:00

This is an article from the DG Environment Newsletter "Science for Environmental Policy" (Special Issue 11, February 2009).

"What is the best way to manage urban waste? Towns and cities generate huge volumes of waste that are often disposed of as landfill. In a new study, researchers explain that sorting urban waste into organic and inorganic streams, which can be turned into energy and fertiliser, offers a much more efficient and environmentally friendly solution.

Each year, 1.3 billion tonnes of waste is thrown away in the EU1. In several European countries, the main way of disposing of this waste is in landfill sites. In Greece, Portugal, the UK, Ireland, Finland, Italy and Spain more than half of all waste ends up as landfill. Aside from the negative environmental impacts of landfill, including heavy metal leaching and slow release of greenhouse gases, landfill sites are in short supply. Alternative waste management strategies are therefore urgently required.

Using the city of Rome as a case study, landfill was compared with four alternative waste management options:
landfill without biogas treatment
landfill with collection of biogas to burn for electricity production
direct incineration of waste with electricity recovery
a scheme where waste is sorted into organic and inorganic streams at landfill sites, and ferrous metals are recycled

In each case, the researchers calculated how much new waste was generated by the waste disposal process itself, how much energy the process required and how much it generated, and the estimated global and local emissions. The results suggest landfill represents the worst waste management strategy both in terms of environmental impacts and energy performance. The data reveal that even incinerating waste is a better option than landfill.

Separating organic and inorganic waste, proved most effective in terms of reducing environmental impacts and energy performance. In this case, organic waste is turned into biogas and fertiliser, and inorganic waste is converted to Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) which is burned to generate electricity. This scenario could lead to an 80 per cent reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill. In terms of global warming potential, this scenario has a positive effect on net greenhouse gas emissions (because the electricity and biogas produced can replace fossil fuels).

For comparison, under the landfill alone scenario, one year's worth of waste from Rome produces an estimated global warming potential equivalent to 1910 kt CO2 (mainly in the form of greenhouse gases emitted from the landfill site). If the waste is separated into streams, there is a net reduction in global warming potential equivalent to 345 kt CO2 from one year's worth of waste.

Although none of the options evaluated provide a full solution to the waste disposal problem, the researchers suggest that the fourth scenario is currently the most viable. This scheme produces twice as much energy as the direct incineration scheme and is the most energy efficient. From an environmental perspective, the same scheme offers the best solution, as the only remaining waste to enter landfill is burnt inorganic waste, which will not decompose further after disposal. In contrast, organic waste directly disposed of in landfill will continue to decompose for thousands of years, releasing greenhouse gases.

1. See: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm
Source: Cherubini, F., Bargigli, S. and Ulgiati, S. (2008). Life Cycle Assessment of Urban Waste Management: Energy Performances and Environmental Impacts. The Case of Rome, Italy. Waste Management. 28: 2552-2564.
Contact: cherufra@yahoo.it

Theme(s): Climate change and energy, Urban Environments, WasteAdditional information: LIFE has funded a number of innovative projects designed to improve the sustainability of waste management. For project details, please download: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/themes/urban/documents/urban_waste.pdf

Recycling crisis and barriers that we have to overcome

2009-01-27T23:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Antonis

You keep going with special articles about the debate to recycling crisis and after a review I made would like to contribute on that as following

RECYCLING CRISIS

1. What are the barriers we have to overcome?
· Lack of short term capital
· Companies will increasingly need financial resources and/ or bank or state guaranties to continue operations and tackle the negative revenue effects of the recession. This will be essential to maintain the high environmental standards internationally, particularly with respect to climate objectives which cannot be achieved without functioning waste management and recycling infrastructure.
· Recycling needs must remain economically viable.
· There is global supply excess of recyclates without knowing the quantities but there are large stocks for those companies which are largely dependent on international sales in emerging markets such as China and India. And once people stopped buying other products, manufacturers in China no longer accepted America’s recyclables – particularly paper for all that packaging. Secondary raw materials as paper and scrap metals are accumulating at the ports of call because contracting parties refuse to accept the goods.
· The private sector what needs to see is good understanding of how serious the situation is by local authorities. Contractors do not want to stop providing a service but if they cannot afford to continue some contracts, yes the council could take them to the court but this would achieve little. There will be costs incurred and there are few companies who will want to take over the contract at present. The better way forward is for councils to pay more to cover the shortfall in material value and we can agree on a structure so that when prices rise again a fair share of this increase ca be returned to the local authority.
· The biggest market problem is with bad quality of mixed papers and it is irrelevant how it is collected and that means we have to continue with good quality.
· There must be data bases to control the supply and demand in the market otherwise is setting down to a new equilibrium will be a long term effect.
· We have to share experiences and problems and communicate and try and find innovation solutions
· If we have to start landfilling recyclables we will lose public confidence in recycling schemes and it will take a long time to build up again.
· As for eventual market recovery, we would say it won’t happen until manufacturing picks up again. In the mean time, survival is a matter of which recycling businesses anticipated a decrease in demand. Everybody is hurting right now. The question is; How long is it going to happen and who’s best prepared for it ? Who can ride out the storm?.
· In recycling business must understand you are going to lose money one year out four and must prepare for it. It must be part of business plan, but it is difficult to find that altitude, certainly among people who understand recycling and particularly the fluctuation should have been expected because the commodities are volatile and risky whether they’re tin cans or crude oil and we have to understand that the good times wouldn’t roll forever.

Best regards

Andrew Kouskouris

Ideas for discussion regarding landfill tax across EU member states, by A. Kouskouris

2009-01-26T07:29:00.000-08:00

After the question you uploaded about harmonized landfill tax within EU member states, I could put the following ideas for discussion:

a) Harmonized landfill tax would provide incentives for waste producers to find solutions for waste recovery, enhance recycling or re-use, and lead to a drop in the amount of waste produced.

b) Against a harmonized minimum tax might argue that national circumstances vary and that a harmonized tax at EU level will be thus not an adequate solution mainly on the basis of costs and competitiveness issues Especially for waste categories for which there is no alternative to landfill (e.g. construction material and mineral waste), and landfill taxes might argue to have no steering effect and could instead lead to fly-tipping. A flat landfill tax would hinder the mix of incentives and flexibility needed at national or local level to divert from landfill. The economic costs of waste landfills and population density differ among the Member States.

For example United Kingdom employs both tradable landfill allowances and a landfill tax. More generally, opponents might warn that introducing new minor taxes should be avoided as it is contrary to deregulation and reducing administrative costs.

A landfill tax might not be the best solution, by Greg Vogt

2009-01-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

The question posed by Mr. Andrew Kouskouris returns to the issue of using special taxes to achieve certain policy goals. Some do not support taxes of any kind, while some support special taxes directed for special costs, purposes, or society benefits. Certainly if one significantly increases a special tax on a certain item, say a pair of shoes, less people will buy shoes. If you support total diversion of waste away from landfills, then raise the special tax to the level you require to meet your goal. This may not be the most efficient way to shift society's resources, but you will have accomplished your goal.

The arguments against a harmonized landfill tax might include:
- expensive, time consuming to execute
- there may be no 'fair' number or method to harmonize
- other, better tools might be well suited to accomplish the same 'landfill diversion' goal (e.g., market forces, permits, etc.)
- often times creative tax credits work better than direct taxes
- we do not want passage of taxes on waste disposal/treatment facilities methods to become too popular government authorities.

Best regards,

Greg Vogt
Managing Director
International Solid Waste Association
Vienna, Austria

Do we need a harmonised landfill tax across EU members?

2009-01-26T04:10:00.001-08:00

Dear Antonis I write down for your blog the folowintg question I can support and have sent as well to your e-mail: Statistics and reports show that there is not sufficient progress from EU member states to divert waste away from landfill trying to implement landfill directive. Are there any ideas about a harmonised landfill tax with EU member states ? What would be in favour and against on that issue?

Andrew Kouskouris
akousk@epem.gr

Assessing waste prevention schemes among SMEs

2009-01-16T02:01:00.000-08:00

This was published in Science for Environmental Policy, a publication by DG Environment. The article is based at publication "D. and Rechberger, H. (2009). Quantitative evaluation of waste prevention on the level of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Waste Management. 29(2): 606-613".

Evaluating waste prevention schemes is necessary to ensure that funds are spent as efficiently as possible. A new Austrian study proposes a method of ranking schemes to prevent waste production by smaller businesses according to their efficiency in protecting the environment, human health and resources.

Collectively, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute substantially to environmental damage, although they may not be aware of doing so. Initiatives to improve the environmental record of SMEs can therefore play an important role. Incentives that cover 30 per cent of the cost of waste prevention schemes for SMEs in Austria, is an example of such an initiative.

The study conducted a simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) of 52 waste prevention projects from 2005 and 2006, measuring improvements before and after each project in terms of waste produced, energy consumed, CO2 and sulfur dioxide emissions. It also provides data on the impact associated with different waste materials such as paper, cardboard, plastics and metals.

The results were combined with expert opinion to rank each scheme in order of effectiveness. The authors note that one quarter of the projects evaluated were not truly waste prevention schemes, but waste reduction schemes. Waste prevention takes place before waste is generated, collected, stored, processed or disposed of and is aimed at avoiding waste altogether. The three main types of waste prevention measures are:

Optimisation. This reduces the amount of material and energy required, as well as the use of harmful substances, by introducing more efficient processes.
Substitution. This replaces material and energy inputs by using more environmentally friendly options, such as replacing plastic packaging with wood.

Product re-use. This repeatedly uses a product in its original form.
This method suggested that some schemes are not as environmentally beneficial as previously thought. For example, a previously highly regarded scheme to reduce hazardous waste from X-rays was discovered to be not as cost-effective as initially assumed due to the small quantities of chemicals involved. The scheme had been ranked fifth for efficacy in previous comparison studies of waste prevention schemes, but this method placed it at the bottom of the table.
The authors write that SMEs are a vital part of the economy but are often unaware of their environmental impact. The new model could be a reliable method for assessing and ranking waste prevention projects. For example, it could compare the cost of saving 1kg of CO2 in different economic sectors, allow users to choose the most efficient waste management option, support qualitative decisions made by experts and increase the transparency of incentive schemes. Challenges include a lack of means for collecting data on the flow of goods and substances.

Source: Laner, D. and Rechberger, H. (2009). Quantitative evaluation of waste prevention on the level of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Waste Management. 29(2): 606-613.

Contact: d.laner@iwa.tuwien.ac.at Theme(s): Sustainable consumption and production, Waste

Questions that need answers regarding recycling

2009-01-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

Andrew Kouskouris wrote:

"What are the main problems to recycling markets due to the financial downturn?

If we have to start landfilling recyclables we will lose public confidence in recycling schemes and it will take a long time to build this up again.

Local Authorities must determine the extent of the problems they may be facing.

There is a huge amount of uncertainty in the market place at the moment and what is needed is a co-ordinated approach to solving both the short term needs and issues.

The volume of waste produced by businesses is decreasing.

The story of how this happened is the usual tragic saga of good intentions turning into inflexible regulations , and of unforeseen consequences.

Paper mills close in some member states because are unable to competitive with China’s high-tech mills.

Mixed grades of materials (of varying quality) are typically attracting lower prices because more effort and expense has to go into sorting and cleaning materials to produce the equivalent of virgin raw material.

Understanding the forces driving the economics of recycled materials, the negative environmental consequences of the market downturn are:

- Reduced plant maintenance or lower treatment standards due to pressure to reduce costs
- Lower quality of processed recyclable material due to pressure to reduce costs
- Inappropriate storage of materials until market conditions improve, which could cause environmental harm
- An increase in abandoned vehicles caused by the fall in the price of scrap metal

From East to West recycling chain collapses...

2009-01-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

It seems that problems with recycling due to global crisis are going worst. The followink link from Guardian is very usefull for more details

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/09/recycling-global-recession-china

Lot of thanks to David Newman for his contribution

Would you like to have a diary for 2009 that promotes ISWA?

2009-01-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

Trying to arrange my activities for 2009, I thought it will be very useful to have a diary to promote ISWA.

So I simply created one in a word document format. If you want to use it too, you can download it from:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9903651/ISWA-Calendar-2009

If you like it, please promote it through my blog. That is a simple but effective way to promote ISWA and its activities.

Happy 2009 to all droplets that read this blog

2008-12-29T05:14:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone – I would like to share a text in order to celebrate the 2009 arrival.

The following is an effort to “translate” in English an excellent text written by the Greek writer Mirto Georgiou – Nielsen who has wrote the beautiful book “The art to be parent” (ISBN: 9789600333923). The text below is an excerpt from that book.

“ …If life is a chain formulated by all human beings that have lived on Earth, we should imagine every new generation as a link that is added to the infinite track of links that already do exist… Every generation is a new link: first our parents, then we ourselves, after our children and later on our grandchildren. Every new link (we hope to be) more strong, more functional and we wish to be more beautiful.

If life on this Earth is an ocean, every new generation is like one of those infinite waves that are coming from the roots of time, one after another, to crash onto the coastlines. Every new generation is just one more wave, consisted of all living human beings and everyone is just a small droplet within the wave.
Some droplets bring a shingle from the sea bed, some other droplets may bring a shell to put it on the beach and make it more beautiful and some bring nothing.

One shingle, as an example, was left by Socrates, another shell from Shakespeare, a third one by Beethoven or Confucius and it goes on forever. And all those shingles and shells together formulate the current view of our common beach.

Most people in contrast, after having their own route within the wave, they arrive almost empty at the beach, they shine for a while under the sun and then sink in the sand.

The wave before them just yawned their way and their wave in turn just yawns the way for the next wave - generation. First ourselves, the parents, then the children and afterwards the children of our children…

Every new wave is a new generation, braver, more dynamic and hopefully wiser from the previous one…”

Happy 2009 to everybody

Derek Greedy comments on George's post for climate change

2008-12-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

It really is good to see that you have some realists contributing to your Blog.

Yes maybe we do or maybe we don't have a climate change agenda that needs to be addressed but to address that does come at a cost. So should we as is being required by the EU and the member states borrow money from the banks that either don't have any or are reluctant to lend us money and then find that we don't have the resources to pay it back.

Me (cynic) of simple mind just sees this as creating further financial turmoil over what has yet to be conclusively proven to be a problem. Clearly the deeper we go into financial crisis the greater the chance that we won't be able to achieve carbon reductions in any event so just let us all hope that someone somewhere can see the reality that we are all faced with and sit back and put their requirements into the context of the real world that we all live in.

Festive greetings to all your readers.

A social - environmental comment by George Sbokos

2008-12-23T05:59:00.001-08:00

Sitting in my small Attorneys office a week before Christmas. Cases in postponement due to strike, banks in wooden cover due to rivaling, society in despair due to the lack of democracy. Lack in education, lack in governance, lack in social and environmental aspects. A sudden anger and indignation awake us from our idiot –(“private” in a greek meaning) life. Clients, banks, even my loyal friend, segafredo espresso are steaming hot…

It was the 16th of October in this same old blog as we all expected to find some hope in the upcoming UN summit for the cutting down of the C02 emissions (25 – 40% till 2020). And yet it happened in Poznan of Poland on Saturday the 13th (http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_14/items/4481.php). Everything declared last time in Bali Indonesia (http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_13/items/4049.php) is forgotten. The alibi of the 27 of the so called “European Union” decided that, the financial crisis we are facing doesn’t allow at this point any other agreement, than achieving a 20% increase of the clear energy production.

Being about to steam myself, recalling one of the first principles to follow in Aikido martial art: “don’t get angry, the one who does, resigns first”, I thought of Antonis’ blog. It’s not a solution, but it helps and doesn’t even cause any stomach trouble.

I’m questioning myself, where do leaders hide nowadays and how come these world leaders don’t check that they are not even capable to count the costs, they are referring to. I mean, the crisis they are preaching, moralizing their inaction, is not the crisis we are comfronting. The world they think they are living in, is, like N. N. Taleb said about the black swan, different than the world they are living in.

The “cost of inaction” is enormous in front of the “cost of adoption” (reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2007_13/en/Tech_report_13_2007.pdf -).

Not getting angry, still hoping they will recalculate the costs they are referring to, I’m staying sitted in my small Attorneys office a week before Christmas.
Happy holidays. Think of the (r)evolution on Dec. 2009 again.

G.Sbokos

Greece: youth anger against an empty future and a hostile present!

2008-12-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

The facts are already known but the reasoning remains misty, even in Greece. So I feel an obligation to write about the reasoning, just to provide a meaning to what is internationally demonstrated as “Riots in Greece”. I am 100% sure that the discussion about riots in Greece has a global interest and through this I am going to highlight some remarks of more general interest for our world. This is not a typical article for a waste management blog, but we are firstly citizens and then professionals, so allow me to go on.

A first comment about the facts: a “Rambo” type cop killed a 15 years old boy. The impunity of police violence in Greece is deeply at the roots of that murder. In the very center of Athens, a big part of cops are used to behave as they are above any law and control, especially against emigrants. It was just a matter of time to have such an event and in a way it is like the Ancient Greek Tragedies. The killer and the victim could be anyone, randomly chosen by Faith. But the Tragedy remains the same in any randomly selected pair of persons: it is the collapse of the “state” and “the rule of the law” concepts in Greek society.

What comes next? As Helena Smith wrote in Guardian “Within an hour of the boy's death thousands of protesters had gathered in Exarchia's lawless central square screaming, 'cops, pigs, murderers,' and wanting revenge. At first, it is true, the assortment of self-styled anarchists who have long colonized Exarchia piggy-backed on the tragedy, seeing it as the perfect opportunity to live out their nihilistic goals of wreaking havoc. But then middle-class kids - children had got good degrees at universities in Britain but back in Greece were unable to find work in a system that thrives on graft, cronyism and nepotism - joined the protests and very quickly it became glaringly clear that this was their moment, too. Theirs was a frustration not only born of pent-up anger but outrage at the way ministers in the scandal-tainted conservative government have also enriched themselves in their five short years in power.”

And this is exactly the problem. In order to understand what is happening now in Greece we have to use the famous “fire-triangle”. What do we need to have a fire? Ignition, fuel and air (oxygen). The murder was just the ignition. Let’s discuss about fuel and oxygen.

Let’s start with the fuel which is permanently accumulated in our society.

Just few years after the 2004 glamorous and costly Olympic Games, Greece is in an orbit of decadence. For the last 10 years we are just watching ministers to create one scandal after another. Corruption and public money mulcting have become a rule. And it is ridiculous to watch politicians to sentence the pillage that took place during the riots when you know that their own loot with public money and their impunity provide the background for it.

The country has learned to live with bailouts from all around. And what we just do is to pass our debts to the next generations. They are going to have to pay that money back and they have started to understand it.

The current government is swimming in a big pool of scandals for the last 12 months at least. It seems that there is no other plan than to stay on power. The opposition parties do not provide an alternative plan, although they say a lot about certain dimensions of our life. The political discussion, which typically is a major interest for a lot of Greeks seems too boring and with absolutely no interest. There is no long-term plan or vision for our society.

We must have done something very wrong. We have nothing to propose and the result is that we have abstracted from the new generations even their right to disagree with what we propose.

At the same time, our youth is suffering from one of the worst educational systems in Europe and high unemployment rates (70 % among the 18-25s) in a country where joblessness this month jumped to 7.4 per cent. If they can find work remuneration rarely rises above €800 (this is, after all, the self-styled €700 generation), never mind the number of qualifications it took to get the job. Often polyglot PhD holders will be serving tourists at tables in resorts. One in five Greeks lives beneath the poverty line and the future seems so empty in all terms. That was the situation until few months before and the fuel was already there.

But for the last months, new and more flammable materials were added and the new conditions made the fuel more explosive. Middle-class meltdown has started to produce social results that cannot be hidden anymore. The global financial crisis made the situation even worst creating a sense of a no-way out and no hope. The urgency feeling “to do something” has started to upgrade as a mass emotion, even if no one had something concrete to propose.

It is a kind of Crash onto a Wall what we face this period. Nick Fraser explained this very well at Observer. “Aghast, I experienced something of the same sense of recognition after the planes hit the tall buildings, appearing to usher in a new century. But the New Crash (I can't think of another, more suitable term) is both larger and harder to understand. It was possible before October to register the existence of current ills - the already degraded environment, mass murder once again perpetrated for ideological reasons, feckless liberal responses to poverty, wars fought for the dumbest reasons - while remaining at some distance from them. You could hope, somehow, that things wouldn't be as bad as they seemed. … Now something quite significant, and perhaps irreversible, appears to have happened”.

Now let’s speak about the oxygen, the constituent that keeps the fire burning.

First, it is obvious that we are witnesses of a very angry and totally blind mass movement of youth, probably the most independent and spontaneous that had happened ever in Greece. The crisis gets worst, even if the riots will stop for the Christmas, because there is a great democracy gap: no political formation can represent those young people.

Second, the government has a lethal shot from the riots. Up to now it was obvious that we had an incapable government but now it is clear that its incapability has became dangerous too. So the feeling of uncontrollability will keep the fire burning.

Third, the murderer and his advocate have said no word of mercy and no “sorry” for what happened; in fact their statements are quite at the opposite direction – that will provide more reasons to revolt.

Fourth, emigrants do participate in this movement as well because they have suffered a lot from police and they have found a way to cover some of their needs through pillage, although they have not started the riots.

So for me it is obvious that the flames may die down but the coals will simmer.

What can we do about it? Is it a no way out situation?

My opinion is that there are things to do and the first is to cut all the bullshits about “professional anarchists that created the riots” and to understand the deeper social messages carried out from this arousal. The more we stack on the wrong explanation the more the danger we face. By the way the already mentioned wrong explanation provides the best way to get rid of our responsibilities, probably not by luck.

The second is to use the shock that has been in our society as a mean to change direction. To highlight that we cannot afford waiting for the next crisis, which is going to be even worse, unless we do something? To create a new vision for the country, the middle and the working class, a cohesive and hopeful plan for the future that will spot light at the end of the tunnel.

And third, it is obvious that the current political entities are almost clinically dead, even if they are still in life biologically. A new political entity that will arise from their ashes and/ or the transformation of them is more necessary than ever. The constituents for this entity are already here, but the leadership and the glue to join the constituents are missing.

I hope that the current crisis will help to find them.

Pay as you throw scheme: new findings

2008-12-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

The following article has been published in "Science for Environmental Policy" a DG Environment News Service. It is written by Mrs. Sauer (sauer@vse.cz).

New research has concluded that 'Pay As You Throw' waste collection schemes can increase levels of recycling among households, but should be accompanied by effective public information campaigns.

Pay As You Throw waste schemes charge households and businesses according to the amount of mixed residual waste they generate. They have been proposed as an effective means of reducing the amount of waste going to landfill, thus helping local authorities meet the requirements of the EU Landfill Directive.

The study, conducted under the EU-funded PAYT (Pay As You Throw) project2, covered 157 local authority areas in the Czech Republic, with a total population of 2.6 million. All authorities were free to choose their method of charging for the collection of general waste in their area. Of these, 92 operated a Pay As You Throw system, and 65 operated a flat fee approach. The level of recycling among the first group was 12.1 per cent. This was almost double that of the second group's recycling rate of 6.9 per cent. The amount of mixed residual waste generated in the Pay As You Throw areas was on average 240 kg per head annually, compared with 260kg in the areas charging a flat fee.

The researchers believe that a fixed flat fee does not encourage households to separate waste or reduce the volume of mixed residual waste. They believe that although Pay As You Throw models incur a higher initial cost to the authority, they encourage a higher level of separation.
The researchers also conducted a survey among householders in Prague, to assess recycling behaviour. 179 households in 17 districts of Prague were surveyed, and of these, 138 households separated their waste. These households also produced significantly less residual waste - 635 litres annually, compared with 712 litres from non-separating households.

Possible factors were identified which influence separating and recycling behaviour. These included technical factors such as conditions in the house for waste separation (e.g. the size of the kitchen), social factors such as the availability of information, and political factors, for example, whether the waste management strategy corresponded with national legislation. The most important factors were found to be technical, namely the availability of regularly emptied containers in the community for placing recycled waste and the ease of recycling in the home. Households were less influenced by the cost of the service, as the price paid for waste treatment is relatively low (1.7 Euros per household member per month), and this fee was often hidden in total rent costs.

The level of awareness of methods for separating waste was also important, as was the degree to which the waste management strategy was perceived to be in line with national legislation. The extent to which recycled waste was used as a secondary raw material was also a strong factor.

This study was conducted as part of the EU PAYT (Pay As You Throw) project, supported by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme, under the priority 'Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development'.

See: http://web.tu-dresden.de/intecuspayt/

The paper was supported by the Czech grant GACR No.402/06/0806

Source: Sauer, P., Parízková, L. and Hadrabová, A. (2008). Charging systems for municipal solid waste: Experience from the Czech Republic. Waste Management. 28(12): 2772-2777.

Welcome Mr Greedy - more comments about recycling and financial crisis

2008-12-01T06:19:00.000-08:00

It is my honor and pleasure as well to host comments by a good friend Mr. Derek Greedy Chair of the ISWA Landfill Working Group - thanks a lot Derek and feel free to post more..

Derek wrote:

"Dear Antonis I think both Greg and Andrew make some very good points but I do just have one comment with respect to Andrew's observations.

He quite rightly points out that we have to consider these issues in the global context but then considers Europe specifically and the impact that the global economic downturn may have on landfill diversion targets.

I am not as pessimistic here as Andrew would appear as landfill diversion is more about the reduction of biodegradable waste going to landfill than it is about other recyclable materials. The diversion of biodegradable matter should not feel the impact of the decline in the global recycling market. Composting has a very local market place and perhaps could accommodate some of the wastepaper looking for a home. It might need some changes to the current composting /anaerobic digestion activities but it might ease the pressure on wastepaper recycling.

I recognise that my suggestion does not give any answers for the recycling of metals and plastics and only scratches the surface for paper and card we should not forget that recycling is not just about the commodities that find their way to China for recycling."

Comments on recycling and financial crisis

2008-12-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

Greg Vogt, ISWA MD wrote:

"Some considerations

Be mindful of the opportunities to both buyers and sellers when prices are subject to near-term volatility and your materials /products can sometimes afford to move on a different supply chain.

Calling for protective price controls for one business sector is not the way forward, history tells us. Where transportation and labor costs are significant portions, controls can be like grabbing a tiger by the tail."

Andrew Kouskouris, Chair of the Greek FEAD (PASEPPE) wrote:

"Dear Antonis

As we all know we have a significant decline in demand of commodities and prices too for recyclates.

This is so important that could have potential consequences for the targets have been set up in EU for recycling as well as landfill diversion.

Another thing is that public confidence would be reduced.

In WFD which recently was published and is referred that supports the use of recycling (paper , metals, plastic ) ,has been now threatened by global financial crisis with reduced or not at all demand for those basic recyclates.

Metals also will have significant consequences in end-of-life vehicles

We have to know both private and public bodies if we have to continue collecting the above mentioned recyclates which it is economically unviable and threats to jobs in the recycling industry.

I think that we have to work in Global as well in EU cooperation for what has to be done (possibly financial or other kind of help) to the sector of recycling to continue to trade in this difficult period, also I would suggest closely monitoring that phenomenon nationally in cooperation of public bodies and private sector.

Andrew Kouskouris

E-mail: akousk@paseppe.gr http://www.paseppe.gr "

Some thoughts regarding recycling and the famous “de-couple” approach

2008-11-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

The starting point for the following note was the last news regarding the prices of recycled materials. A meltdown of them is more or less a reality going together with the rapid decrease in raw materials prize (by the way Mr. Newman deserves to be proud about his prediction).

Stuart Foster, of Recoup UK, which advises on plastic recycling, said that mixed plastics had slumped from about £200 a tone to the point of worthlessness in only four weeks. He was confident, however, that the low value would be temporary as at least three mixed-plastic facilities will open next year, reducing the nation's dependence on Chinese demand.

Decrease of prices seems to be uniform in all kinds of recyclables. Although there are some predictions that this will not be a permanent situation, in any case the current market conditions create a heavy burden for recycling activities.

As Lewis Smith wrote at TIMES (6-11-2008) “Thousands of tones of rubbish collected from household recycling bins may have to be stored in warehouses and former military bases to save them from being dumped after a collapse in prices.

Collection companies and councils are running out of space to store paper, plastic bottles and steel cans because prices are so low that the materials cannot be shifted. Collections of mixed plastics, mixed paper and steel reached record levels in the summer but the “bottom fell out of the market” and they are now worthless. The plunge in prices was caused by a sudden fall in demand for recycled materials, especially from China, as manufacturers reduced their output in line with the global economic downturn.

Local authorities and collection companies are so concerned about the mountains of paper, plastic bottles and cans that they have to store that they have called for storage regulations to be eased.”

The threat of landfilling recycled materials is realized in some cases as in California. The California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) is pledging to work with California cities and counties, as well as the many recyclers, brokers, and processors who are trying to cope with the rapid decline in commodity prices for recycled paper, metals and plastic goods.

CIWMB staff are monitoring market trends and prices and examining regulatory and non-regulatory options to keep these materials from being disposed. The CIWMB will hold a special public meeting in Sacramento in early December to explore measures it can enact to ease the current situation. The Board will hear from brokers and others about possible short-term and long-term solutions.

"We're aware of the potential dilemma facing our state's recycling infrastructure," said Board Chair Margo Reid Brown. "We cannot undo the incredible progress our local cities and counties have done to reduce our waste in landfills. By working together, I'm confident we can develop short-term measures that will get us through these challenging times, while ensuring we remain true to our overall environmental goals."

Now let’s move to the famous “de-couple” approach. We are all familiar with the concept of de-coupling growth of economy from waste production. In practical terms, the de-couple approach says that we do not want to put economic growth in a risk but we must try to make it more sustainable.

The EU approach has gone further determining that in order to success on that approach we have to decouple the following:

· Economic growth from resource use (having more growth for less resource use or more products per resource units)
· Environmental impacts from resource use (having less impacts for more growth or less impacts per product units)

Obviously for both the previous requirements the use of recycling materials is a key- element.

But how this fundamental role of recycling can be fulfilled when the use of recycled materials is coupled with their prices?

How can we de-couple growth from resource use when we keep the use of recyclables coupled with the market conditions and market conditions (even temporarily) push to more resource use?

How can de-couple the environmental impacts from resource use when the market conditions will determine if the supply chain of a product will include recyclables or not?

Let’s think again about the market fluctuations and their economical, environmental and long-term impacts in our industry. Maybe we have to regulate recycling prices in order to promote the use of recyclables. Or maybe we have to forget de-couple as a concept.

In any case, this is the time to think about it in all levels. Any opinion is welcomed…

David Newman strikes back: financial meltdown and waste management

2008-11-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends

When I wrote about the financial crisis last October 6th, I made some predictions about how the situation would unfold.
Sadly many of those predictions have already come true.

1. Credit will dry up forcing banks and then companies into liquidation as consumers stop spending.

2. Unemployment will rise fast as companies slow production and fire staff.

3. Economies based on exports of raw materials will suffer particularly as the prices of these fall.

This third prediction is one I am quite proud of as no-one much forsaw oil and food prices falling so fast, leading to economies like Russia, Argentina, and the arab oil economies to slash spending.

What now ?
Every cloud has a silver lining.

A) third world and developing economies are going to benefit from rapidly falling import costs- fuel, food and western technologies will all cost much less. Africa may enter a period of faster growth.

B) inflation is falling fast leading to a cut in interest rates, making it less expensive to finance loans, mortgages, investments.

C) useless and technologically obsolete industries will die. It's goodbye to GM, Chrysler and Ford as we know them. It may even be the beginning of the end for IBM, MS and god forbid Google, Yahoo etc., as newer, leaner companies enter their markets and with lower costs take away their business.

D) the very rich just got poorer. That's no bad thing. It closes the gap a little and ridimensions their arrogance. It opens international fora to developing countries like Brazil, India, southern Asia, which have their financial houses in order and can now raise a stronger voice in fora like the IMF, WB, WTO.

E) the future of the liberalised, globalised, free economy is history.
Politics is back in place as the just governor of international trade rules and financial market rules.

I haven't yet mentioned the effect of a new US President. Personally I am not as optimistic as some. He is as much servant as leader given the powers which elect a President; for sure the outcome gave us the best result but let us not be euphoric until we start to see him in action. COP 15 will be one of those occasions.

We have, as I said in October, two harsh years ahead and the data coming out show this to be probable. But as prices in shares, housing, property, commodities fall, so will the capacity of more people to buy them increase. A point will come within 2009 when we hit bottom. The rebound in 2010 could be very fast indeed.
Hold on for a bumpy ride !

Best,

David Newman

Global financial slowdown and its impact on SWM industry

2008-10-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some more thoughts for the current crisis and their impacts to our industry, just some more thoughts to stimulate a fruitful discussion.

In Chinese language crisis and opportunity are symbolized by the same ideogram. What a perfect symbolism for the current financial crisis which will definitely strengthen the role of China and other emerging countries like Russia, India etc. Of course you need not to learn Chinese in order to understand that “sepsis (biological degradation) is the kingdom of creation” as Carl Marx mentioned 150 years ago.

I recall this phrase in order to outline that the current crisis is not a temporary illness that will pass easily with some medicines, even if those medicines cost 1.5 trillions $, which means one or two orders of magnitude more than the money necessary to provide medicines worldwide for 5 years! It seems much more like a partial biological degradation of one of the pillars of the global growth last 30 years, the glamorous financial services sector. Almost no one could imagine such a collapse few years before, although there were certain economists that were speaking for a no way coming ahead, but not in that manner as far as I know.

But what was underestimated? In my opinion, speaking technically and not financially, the main failure factor that drove to a so sudden and violent collapse was the degree of complexity achieved globally. Complexity is measured by the quantity of data required to describe a certain situation and practically, due to the totally uncontrolled free movement of “toxic” funds, the interactions between different financial institutions, governments and investors became so thick and “self growing” that the data required to describe them was practically non available (even if someone wanted to get it, which is not the case obviously). As this kind of complexity was expanding around the world it created a network of “risk transfer” from one to another institution or investor and finally the loop closed and this network was transformed in a global rope.

And this should be considered as key – message #1: in the era of globalization the complexity of our world becomes so high that leads to unpredictable results rapidly. This is not something new for everyone who is involved in environmental issues. We all know very well that climate change problem is a result of complex global interactions that gradually created an almost unpredictable result. And our main problem regarding climate change is that we are not yet in a position to coordinate globally actions against climate change because the environmental problems are still faced on a national basis, ignoring their global effects and complexity.

Key – message # 2: The governments globally found out a way to coordinate in order to prevent the collapse of the financial system. And although it is not an easy task they will finally manage it, one way or another, sooner or later. That means that global cooperation against common threats is possible even today, with the current level of globalization and international cooperation tools. We should grab this as an opportunity to outline that global cooperation is possible for environmental problems as well, first of all for the fight against climate change. We should highlight that if global action and intergovernmental coordination have already realized in order to save the financial sector they could be also realized to save the planet as well as the almost one billion hungry people of it (with much less cost by the way).

If the USA government found a way to inject markets with a trillion $ for the banks, how to hell is it incapable to finance with 50 billions $ the social health program? If the Greek government found 5 billions € available to finance banks with difficulties how to hell is it incapable to close the dumpsites in the country? I am sure you know the answer. It is simply a matter of priorities. And as the current crisis is clearly shown us priorities in our world have to be set again. That is a great field for environmental and humanitarian NGOs and ISWA should utilize it as much as possible.

There is also another Key-message (#3) from the current crisis. The golden boys that shoot our heads with “easy profits with almost no work” are for the time being “dead men walking”. And we must act in order to finish with their fake values too. It is now obvious that the paranoia for “profitability with any risk” led the world to this crisis. The same paranoia created a totally wrong view of the hard working people and pushed golden boys in top positions in a lot of companies. If there is a lesson from this crisis it is a simple and old one: there is no free lunch out there, even if you are the top investment bank in the world.
Now let’s move to the impacts to Solid Waste management industry. Obviously we can recognize some major changes for the near future:

Funds for new waste management infrastructure will be less available and more difficult to “pump” them.

Capital will be much more expensive and risks (which are always high for waste management projects) should be evaluated and priced higher.

Those two points will certainly create problems in the implementation and preparation of major Public – Private Partnership projects.
As it is obvious from the 20-10-2008 announcement of Veolia (http://www.euro2day.gr/ftcom_en/126/articles/385711/ArticleFTen.aspx) new investments will be reduced and profitability will be considered more risky even for multinational giants.

I think that we can also assume a strengthening of the already existing consolidation wave to SWM industry for the next 2-3 years.

One more obvious remark is that uncertainty is going higher in all levels, thus the business environment will become more conservative in any case.

As everyone is predicting safely consumption patterns will be modified. Certainly consumption will be reduced and waste will be less, thus operators will have less waste to handle and thousands of jobs will be lost.

Less obvious is that waste composition will change as well. Let’s have a look at what Tamar Lewin wrote in New York Times (19-10-2008) for the upcoming crisis era:

“Buying patterns too, can be predicted in economic downturns, according to Leo J. Shapiro, who has tracked consumer behavior since he was a young man in the late 1930s. “DURING a recession, laxatives go up, because people are under tremendous stress, and holding themselves back,” said Mr. Shapiro, now chief executive of SAGE, a Chicago-based consulting firm. “During a boom, deodorant sales go up, because people are out dancing around. When people have less money, they buy more of the things that have less water in them, things that are not so perishable. Instead of lettuce and steak and fruit, it’s rice and beans and grain and pasta. Except this time the price of pasta’s so high that it’s beans and rice.” A recent Nielsen report listed tobacco, carbonated drinks and eggs as especially vulnerable to recession, and candy, beer and pasta sauce as recession-proof.”

A last but not least comment about recyclables is necessary. Extraction of raw materials will be less due to reduced consumption. Their prices will go down as well (they have already been pushed down by 25-30% for some materials like cooper or aluminum). Thus recycling will be more difficult because recyclable materials will be less competitive to raw ones. This is my feeling and I hope it is going to be a wrong one.
Let’s summarize the expected impacts.

Less funds available for infrastructure. Impact High for developed countries – medium for the rest

More expensive capital and risks – reduced bankability. Impact High for all PPPs

More consolidations. Impact High to medium

Less waste – less jobs in SWM industry. Impact High for industry “giants” – medium for the rest

Changes to SW composition. It sounds logical but no impact estimation can be done

Less extraction of raw materials. Impact Medium

Less recycling. Impact Medium to low (I hope)

A comment by George Sbokos regarding financial Vs climate crisis

2008-10-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

This is a comment posted by my good friend George Sbokos who happens to be one of the very few lawyers I know with high environmental expertise. George is also running the web-site ECOTHESIS (http://www.ecothesis.gr/) which is unfortunately available only in Greek language – I hope that George is going to prepare and English version too. Thanks a lot George for your contribution.

“Polluter pays, speculator pays
In the upcoming World finance meeting and according to the declarations of Nicolas Sarkozi, a new compromise solution has to be found in order to get consensus for the climate protection aims (http://www.faz.net/s/RubEC1ACFE1EE274C81BCD3621EF555C83C/Doc~E6F7654340A55456BAD032FEB4EB3CFB1~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html).

That should happen before January. Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi demanded already a suspension of the treaty’s (cut down C02 emissions) provisions. At the same time Poland, together with other five EU members, incl. Greece (!) are threatening with a veto. (http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4922NT20081003).

Under these circumstances the Solid Waste Industry, just like any environmental business will be politically directly affected. Indirectly, financially the impacts may stay for the next years because of the global financial crisis.

The main proof -at the time being- of the global hierarchy of environmental issues can be seeing on the comparison between the global reactions after the climate crisis (Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)) and the present reactions after the economic crisis.

Nothing binding in the first case, globally bound in the second. Not a penny in the first case, billions of dollars in the second. Money versus Climate at it’s best!

What really matters now is the exploitation of the unfortunate (?) turn of the economy, and the reconsideration/combination of the decision making and the enforcement of some main environmental issues. The global community has to be convinced, that the solution tunnel out of the crisis leads to the environmental management. The taxation of the natural resources, the reduction in employment taxation has to be taken under consideration.

It is a time of change and that was already foreseeing. The door to a Meta-industrial period is viciously opened, in accurate accordance to the vicious environment where it roots. A new chance for environmental policies is born. Though, next to the enforcement of the “polluter pays” principal, a frame of “speculator pays” liability has to be met

George Sbokos”

III International Conference on Municipal Waste:“THE EUROPEAN RECYCLING SOCIETY FROM THE NEW WASTE FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE”

2008-10-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

Lipor- Serviço Intermunicipalizado de Gestão de Resíduos do Grande Porto, and the Institute for the Sustainability of the Resources (ISR) jointly organise the III International Conference on Municipal Waste, which will be held next 23rd and 24th October 2008 in the city of Porto (Portugal).
With the recently approved new Waste Framework Directive as a backdrop, the Conference will raise the key elements like the application of the waste hierarchy, the prevention programmes, the reuse and recycling targets, the biowaste, the energy efficiency and recovery concepts, by-products versus wastes, and the extended producer responsibility.
With the aim of gathering together all the involved actors for a deep, rigorous, and at the same time, calm and impassioned discussion on the different elements that will shape the new paradigm, the Conference becomes the perfect scenario to get first-hand information on this new Directive.
The Conference will be organized in seven Sessions and one Roundtable Discussion. Each session starts with a welcome and presentation in charge of the Chairman; later a “Keynote Speaker” will present a report on the topic of the Session; and finally there will be one panel composed of two speakers, one Portuguese and the other Spanish, where they will set out their points of view and experience on the topic of the Session.

Call for vote regarding the Waste Management Industry and the Global Financial Crisis

2008-10-10T04:23:00.000-07:00

I invite everyone to vote for the answer to the question "Is Solid Waste Industry affected by global financial crisis?" as it seems on the right side of my blog.

I also accept the call for debate regarding Waste Framework Directive and I encourage evryone to write about it. I will also do the same as soon as possible.

Call for debate regarding the new Waste Framework Directive

2008-10-10T04:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Antonis

As you will know , the revised Directive is likely to be adopted by the EU Council of environmental Ministers on 20/21 October. Following its publication in the Official journal, Member States will have two years to transpose the revised Directive into national law. The Greek government I hope will be carrying out extensive public consultation during that two year period in order to decide how best to implement it.

In addition , if you wish , we could have a debate through your excellent blog , on how the WFD would be implemented.

I hope this is helpful,

Yours sincerely

Andrew Kouskouris

One more comment from David for global financial meltdown

2008-10-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

It's interesting that Greg takes a US privatistic view point. In Europe, where services are paid for by municipalities, our companies working on a tender contract basis for local government entities, whether public or private companies, all face the financial stress - the growing inability of local governments to collect taxes and pay their bills.

In Italy we are already working on a payment time of six months; in Sicilly famously private companies are owed over 600 million Euros by local authorities, a debt rising monthly and now growing over 18 months.

As tax revenue falls so will many business models dependent upon local governments' ability to pay. So while our services will be required, the capacity to pay for them is falling.

David

Global crisis and waste management industry? A comment by Greg Vogt

2008-10-08T03:16:00.000-07:00

It seems that David hit a hot-spot. Andrew Kouskouris, Chairman of the Hellenic FEAD, raised a question about waste management industry and global financial crisis and my good friend Greg Vogt, Managing Director of ISWA, gives an initial response to that question (thanks a lot for that Greg):

"It is important that we in the solid waste stick to doing what we do best, and when predicting the future, use what facts we know and make estimates based on solid assumptions. A few points to offer:

- it is a good time to encourage colleagues and employees to continue to work hard and be productive. There remains a high value for getting things done, regardless of global financial problems.

- during work slowdowns, companies and organizations often take advantage of the time to regroup, educate and train their best personnel, and take a keen look at their marketing approaches so make good value of their resources.

- the need for immediate waste collection and disposal services is very different than the need to make a retail purchase (say, shoes or cell phones). The waste industry generally has the long view with regard to purchasing equipment, servicing customers, compliance with regulations and environmental protection rules, and sustaining recycling programs.

- Those that wish for you to be nervous are winning. "

Obviously, there must be an open forum about global crisis and the future of waste management industry. I invite everyone to start it from this blog, now...

Global financial meltdown - written by David Newman

2008-10-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

This is a note from David Newman, a nice looking + thinking friend, member of ISWA Board. He kindly permited me to publish his thoughts regarding global financial meltdown. I found theme very interesting and I am sure that all readers will do the same. Thanks a lot David and I hope that this will be just your first contribution...

"The impact in the real economy of this year's financial meltdown will now start to make itself felt. And we are all about to be hit by an economic tsunami.

The banks can no longer finance themselves through inter bank relations. This means they are without liquidity. They will not therefore be financing companies at risk, even for solid companies ordinary day to day financing is at risk.

Vulnerable companies in all sectors are now going bust; this will escalate rapidly in the next weeks. By the year end this will have caused a significant increase in unemployment worldwide. Solid companies have frozen new investments, either for lack of bank financing or due to adverse risk factors. Export led economies are equally vulnerable as their major markets shrink. We will see unemployment rise here too leading to widespread social unrest.

Those economies that have benefited from high prices of raw materials will be particularly hit as the investments made on the assumption of increasing prices became unsustainable.

The western economies have a varied capacity to react because some of them are overleveraged already and have no further lending capacity. Others are reasonably immune because they have small domestic economies based on services. Among the first are GB, Italy, among the second Ireland, Greece, Belgium.

Our individual investments will be worth much less, or even nothing, in the short term as housing and stock markets collapse and banks fail. Many of us will lose our jobs as companies fail, governments slash spending, consumers spend less.

The power of the western economies will be significantly reduced relative to the east and middle east, awash with years of accumulated export and mineral wealth. But the key will be to what point the western economies will be able to sustain their unemployed masses before social breakdown occurs.

The measure to protect savings accounts are necessarily limited; taxpayers payments to governments being used to guarantee taxpayers savings- the mathematics doesn't work if that guarantee needs to be given over a long term.

So what to do ?

A first reaction is to go out and celebrate ! What the hell. But after the hangover we've all got some very serious thinking to do, and our collective reactions will determine for how long the depression will last.

For those of us with debts, by dramatically cutting our spending we will contribute to an economic depression; by not doing so we are ignoring the reality of our individual vulnerability and will shorten the time in which our banks close the credit lines. For those of us with savings in the banks, it's a frightening period- are they safe ? Are they hell ! But what do you do with these savings ?

Interest rates will now fall dramatically and leaving money in the bank will mean seeing its real value decline. And it is this group which will inevitably lead us slowly out of the mess as they withdraw their savings and take advantage of cheap markets to buy- property and shares mainly.

It takes a brave man to invest today but the profits from doing so in the medium term will be extraordinary. Companies have stock values so low they are give aways; fire sales of houses make some properties incredible bargains. They will reach the point of the early 1990s when to buy a house cost less than to build a new one- then is the time to buy and the whole economy will start to move again. It's two years before this happens.

Two years in which we've all got to face insecurity, fall in spending power, actual or relative poverty. A dramatic response to a decade of over spending fuelled by cheap money and sheer greed.

One bright note: economic decline will mean the use of less resources and may actually benefit the environment. Take some comfort from that if you can !

David
October 6th, 2008"

Some words about the global financial meltdown from David Newman

2008-10-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

This is a note written by David Newman, member of ISWA Board. David sent it by e-mail and he kindly permited me to publish it

The impact in the real economy of this year's financial meltdown will now
start to make itself felt. And we are all about to be hit by an economic
tsunami.

The banks can no longer finance themselves through inter bank relations.
This means they are without liquidity. They will not therefore be financing
companies at risk, even for solid companies ordinary day to day financing is
at risk.

Vulnerable companies in all sectors are now going bust; this will escalate
rapidly in the next weeks. By the year end this will have caused a
significant increase in unemployment worldwide.

Solid companies have frozen new investments, either for lack of bank
financing or due to adverse risk factors.

Export led economies are equally vulnerable as their major markets shrink.
We will see unemployment rise here too leading to widespread social unrest.

Those economies that have benefited from high prices of raw materials will
be particularly hit as the investments made on the assumption of increasing
prices became unsustainable.

The western economies have a varied capacity to react because some of them
are overleveraged already and have no further lending capacity. Others are
reasonably immune because they have small domestic economies based on
services. Among the first are GB, Italy, among the second Ireland, Greece,
Belgium.

Our individual investments will be worth much less, or even nothing, in the
short term as housing and stock markets collapse and banks fail. Many of us
will lose our jobs as companies fail, governments slash spending, consumers
spend less.

The power of the western economies will be significantly reduced relative to
the east and middle east, awash with years of accumulated export and mineral
wealth. But the key will be to what point the western economies will be
able to sustain their unemployed masses before social breakdown occurs.

The measure to protect savings accounts are necessarily limited; taxpayers
payments to governments being used to guarantee taxpayers savings- the
mathematics doesn't work if that guarantee needs to be given over a long
term.
So what to do ?
A first reaction is to go out and celebrate ! What the hell.
But after the hangover we've all got some very serious thinking to do, and
our collective reactions will determine for how long the depression will
last.
For those of us with debts, by dramatically cutting our spending we will
contribute to an economic depression; by not doing so we are ignoring the
reality of our individual vulnerability and will shorten the time in which
our banks close the credit lines. For those of us with savings in the banks,
it's a frightening period- are they safe ? Are they hell ! But what do you
do with these savings ?
Interest rates will now fall dramatically and leaving money in the bank will
mean seeing its real value decline.

And it is this group which will inevitably lead us slowly out of the mess as
they withdraw their savings and take advantage of cheap markets to buy-
property and shares mainly.
It takes a brave man to invest today but the profits from doing so in the
medium term will be extraordinary. Companies have stock values so low they
are give aways; fire sales of houses make some properties incredible
bargains. They will reach the point of the early 1990s when to buy a house
cost less than to build a new one- then is the time to buy and the whole
economy will start to move again. It's two years before this happens.

Two years in which we've all got to face insecurity, fall in spending power,
actual or relative poverty. A dramatic response to a decade of over spending
fuelled by cheap money and sheer greed.

One bright note: economic decline will mean the use of less resources and
may actually benefit the environment. Take some comfort from that if you can
!

David
October 6th, 2008

Recycling Benefits Vs Transport Impacts: globalisation makes Life Cycle Thinking a Necessity

2008-10-06T09:22:00.001-07:00

The rise of recycling rates in developed countries and the contemporary growth of China and other big Asian economies have created a global transfer network for recyclable materials. Only in 2007, 4.7 million tones of recovered paper and half a million tones of recovered plastics were exported from UK.

Everyone who is involved, even a little bit, in Solid Waste Management and Life Cycle Thinking, knows very well that there are two major findings:

· Recycling is useless without a facility, even far away located, to receive recyclables and drove them back to a new Life Cycle loop.
· The results of Life Cycle Analysis are strongly depended on the geographical boundaries of the system because for some materials regional, national or even continental borders are not enough to materialize the actual benefits of recycling.

As the Climate Change factor got more and more important in decision making, it became clear that the more the distance of transfer the less the global benefits from recycling. Due to the globalization process and the differential requirements for raw and secondary materials between developed and developing countries, a new question emerges: is it worth to recycle if the actual close of the material life-cycle loop will be thousands miles away?

Although we can be quite sure regarding the benefits of recycling, it is a question whether those benefits are traded - off if we take into consideration the CO2 emissions from recyclables transfer for thousands miles.

Trying to answer to that question is not a simple task, but under certain assumptions and limitations WRAP provided an answer in the new report:

“CO2 impacts of transporting the UK’s recovered paper and plastic bottles to China”

The report is available at http://www.wrap.org.uk/

The major finding is that CO2 emissions associated with transporting one tone of recovered paper from the UK to China are estimated to lie between 154kg and 213kg of CO2. The emissions associated with CO2 impacts of transporting the UK’s recovered paper and plastic bottles to China 4 transporting one tone of recovered plastic bottles range between 158kg and 230kg of CO2. These CO2 emissions levels represent less than a third of the carbon savings from recycling identified by a majority of the life cycle assessments (LCAs) reviewed in the study. This suggests that there are CO2 savings to be made from recycling, even if the recovered materials have to be transported to China.

Reading this interesting report I made some more general conclusions.

The result confirms something that we already know: in order to achieve significant benefits from recycling a global network should be developed for recyclables management and utilization. For this network we need a set of flexible but effective rules and regulations that will assure that what is gained locally by recycling will not be lost globally by inappropriate management of recyclables.

Like all the Climate Change issues, recycling either it will be a global practice or it will die. Once again the future of our planet calls not just for cooperation but for a global recycling consortium which will include all continents and all countries. Is that possible? The answer is unknown but ISWA has a very important role to play in order to make it a “Yes”.

And last but not least, in the era of globalization Life Cycle Thinking should be a minimum requirement in order to take decisions for environmental issues. Our planet has become too wired to avoid it…

WAste Load Lifter Allocator – Earth class (WALL-E): a dream machine for waste management – a nightmare for the future of earth

2008-09-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Written by Antonis Mavropoulos

20-9-2008

I just watched the movie WALL-E with my daughter. It is a DISNEY – PIXAR production with high quality animation and interesting characters in the form of robots. But what makes the movie really audacious, at least for people working in waste management business, is that the main hero is a professional waste manager robot with the name Waste Load Lifter Allocator – Earth class (WALL-E). And this is why I think that the movie deserves some deeper thoughts about the future of waste management.

Comment 1: The movie presents earth, at least the big cities, after 500-700 years as “Waste Lands”. Different waste types have covered the whole surroundings and a lot of the actual city space. Skyscrapers have been built from packaged waste in order to save space for waste storage. No signal of life is detected. All the residents have been left for a cruise at space that lasts at least hundreds of years.

The only activity that is still going on is the waste packaging and allocation made by a robot.

I have never seen a so direct and full of meaning comment for the future of our civilization in case we will not find radical solutions to minimize waste production and improve their management in terms of maximizing recovery and minimizing residues.

WALL-E comes to remind everyone that solid waste management is directly related not only with the quality of life in big cities but even more with the actual capability to live in them. If we just imagine what will happen to New York, Paris or London, or any other big city in case waste management is completely out of order for 2-3 months…

The movie is also a great caution for the fact that we all know: the biggest challenges in solid waste management are still ahead us. The continuously increased production of waste in combination with the continuously increased variety and complexity of waste streams have created a big problem for our industry: waste management has to run just one step beyond new products consumption, without having the time and capacity to overtake (the curse of “always second”).

The only way to confront this lag – time is to integrate waste management and resources management. But that is something we all know is difficult, it needs radical industry transformations and it takes time. In order to gain more time, waste treatment technologies and recycling schemes are for the time being the only tools available.

The history of waste management has just started and the steps we have done so far are much more less than the steps we have to implement ahead.

Comment 2: Speaking technically, WALL-E as a robot is not so futuristic. Its main capabilities are already familiar in waste management industry, although they do not have been integrated in the form of a robot.

WALL-E moves using caterpillars and allocates the packs using well-designed mechanical arms, a little bit more modern that some lifters already have.

WALL-E can recognize different types of waste, using something like infrared or laser detector. Optical detectors have already been successfully tested in several facilities and are already in use.

Just because there is no human kind in earth, WALL-E makes no recycling or separation of waste streams. He (the robot is a male) peaks only what is a kind of game and all the rest are driven in his square stomach.

Then, his whole body acts as a compactor providing nice compacted waste packs.

WALL-E puts those packs in order creating daily cells, floors and skyscrapers of them.

My first thought when I saw WALL-E working was that this robot could be a kind of achievable machine for waste management industry. I am almost sure that robots that will act like WALL-E could be developed in the next 5-10 years. Maybe they will be not so handsome and sweet like WALL-E but certainly so effective in similar duties.

Comment 3 (final): There are some more interesting highlights in the movie. I peak two of them.

People in the space cruise are so much depended on robots and daily consumption of food and beverages, that they have been mutated to fat and unable to move entities. In general terms, the dependence of human kind on machines has been the subject of a lot of science fiction movies and books. But in this movie people have lost the most vital abilities: to move and communicate directly.

There is also a female robot called EVA. This robot is by far more advanced than WALL-E in terms of a. movement (EVA suspends and flies fast in stead of moving with caterpillars) and b. capacity to detect and recognize items.

The weak point of EVA is that it is by far much more depended from its technological advances and very sensitive to their damages or malfunctions.

WALL-E on the other hand is much more simple and heavy – duty made. Those properties are necessary in order to survive in crude environments, although they are creating troubles when you move to complex technological systems.

Instead of conclusion: go and watch WALL-E. There are a lot to think about…

ISWA “From Open Dumps to Sanitary Landfills” Workshop - Saturday 1 November 2008, Singapore

2008-09-05T02:06:00.000-07:00

SEMINAR PROGRAM
Click Here to download a printable pdf version of the seminar brochure
8.30am	Registration
9.00am	Opening & Welcome
	Introduction Derek Greedy, Chair of ISWA Working Group on Landfill (UK)
9.10am	Closure of Open Dumps Jan Thrane, Odense Renovationsselskab A/S (Denmark)
9.30am	CDM - A Driver for Improvded Landfill Practices in Developing Countries Gary Crawford, Veolia (France)
10.00am	Landfill Gas Recovery and Utilisation Graeme Alford, Landfill Gas & Power (Australia)
10.30am	Tea Break
10.45am	Landfill Engineering Beyond the Open Dump Antonis Mavropoulus, EPEM SA (Greece)
11.15am	Guidelines for Improving Solid Waste Disposal Sites in Pacific Island Countries Stuart Dever, GHD (Australia)
11.45am	HELP Model - Demonstrate the Potential Impacts of Leachate Migration from Open Dumps James Law, SCS Engineers (USA)
12.15pm	Lunch Break
1.00pm	Case Study Presentations
	Experiences from Turkey as an Example of a Developing Country Dr Günay Kocasoy, Institute of Environmental Sciences - Bogazici University (Turkey)
1.30pm	Closure of Open Dumps in Tonga and Samoa Islands Stuart Dever, GHD (Australia)
2.00pm	Overview of Land-Based Waste Disposal Systems in Africa Reuben Ossai, The Initiates Limited (Nigeria)
2.30pm	Malaysian Scenario on Landfill Management (Closure) Prof Dr P Agamuthu, Inst. of Biological Science - University of Malaya (Malaysia)
3.00pm	Tea Break
3.15pm	MSW Disposal in Brazil: Evolution and Tendencies Carlos R V Silva Filho, ABRELPE (Brazil)
3.45pm	Workshop Wrap-Up Derek Greedy
4.15pm	HELP Model - Practical Demonstration James Law, SCS Engineers (USA)
5.30pm	Workshop Close

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE NOW

VENUE
The workshop will be held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Room 310, Level 3
Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre
1 Raffles Boulevard, Suntec City, Singapore

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
The official working language of the workshop is English. There will be no translation.

REGISTRATION FEES

ISWA Members:	Prior to 15 Sep AUD $170 (approx 225 SGD/€105)	After 15 Sep AUD$200 (approx 245 SGD/€120)
Non Members:	Prior to 15 Sep AUD $230 (approx 300 SGD/€140)	After 15 Sep AUD$260 (approx 320 SGD/€155)
Students & Developing Countries:	Prior to 15 Sep AUD $80 (approx 105 SGD/€50)	After 15 Sep AUD$110 (approx 135 SGD/€65)

The registration fee includes participation in the workshop, workshop proceedings on CD-Rom, morning/afternoon tea and lunch.

FURTHER INFORMATION
For further information contact:
Veronica Dullens
Waste Management Association of Australia
Email: veronica@wmaa.asn.au
or telephone: +61 2 8746 5055

The organisers reserve the right to cancel the workshop should minimum numbers not be reached. Should the workshop be cancelled all registration fees will be refunded in full.

Disclaimer: This Email is only for general information and is not to be taken as a substitute for specific advice. Views expressed are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent WMAA. WMAA: Suite 4D, 5 Belmore St BURWOOD NSW 2134, T: 02 8746 5000, F: 02 9701 0199. If you do not wish to receive further emails from WMAA please email enquiries@wmaa.asn.au.

Risk assessment as an engineering tool for landfills

2008-08-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

Risk assessment has been widely used as a tool for the development of waste management facilities. At the strategic level, risk assessment is used to inform decision makers about the planning process. As an engineering tool, risk assessment is used to optimize the mitigation measures required to prevent, control or minimize the risks to the environment from the site. The use of risk assessment techniques in landfill design and in uncontrolled dumps remediation / rehabilitation has provided remarkable results in terms of cost savings and environmental protection. This paper aims to present risk assessment applications in landfilling and thus to outline the key role of risk based engineering.

This is a publication made at WIT Waste Management 2002 Conference in Cadith and can be found at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4911701/Risk-assessment-as-an-engineering-tool-for-landfills

Why there is no incineration in Greece?

2008-08-20T03:55:00.000-07:00

This is an article for the Argentinian magazine VIAL. This article has been based on the material I presented at 2008 ISWA Beacon Conference in Buenos Aires, as an invited speaker. The article contains also an introduction of the Change Ring tool for the evolution of waste management systems.

The article can be downloaded from

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4909382/Why-there-is-no-incineration-in-Greece

The Change Ring: Policy, Know-How and History as a frame for SWM development

2008-07-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

This is an idea that will be presented in details in ISWA 2008 Conference at Singapore. The concept, developed in the framework of a paper about "Barriers and Drivers for SRF applications in Low-Income Countries", written by A. Mavropoulos, R. Skoulaxinou, A. Mentzis and K. Naoum, provides a way to understand SWM development and the dependence from Gross Domestic Product per capita, Policy, Know-How and History-Culture. Some excerpts are found at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4020462/The-Change-Ring

Waste management in Argentina is moving forward

2008-06-23T03:15:00.000-07:00

I just came back from magnificent Buenos Aires where I partcipated as a speaker at the ISWA Beacon Conference on Sanitary Landfills. I was surprised by the magnitude and the interest of the participation, whic was more that even the optimistic organizers expected.

It seems to me that in Argentina it is a period of increasing know-how about waste management and that ARS (the local ISWA member) is becoming a real effective agent in decision making.

There were really interesting debates about waste management planning procedures and experiences, a lot of succesful examples about applied technology concepts as well as a succesful discussion about the future of landfills and their social acceptance.

I was also impressed by the Brazilian experiences and the level of presentations deleivered by ABRELPE: these guys are really working hardly to improve waste management in Brazil.

I really enjoyed my participation and interaction with the audience during my lectures and I have to be gratefull for the things I learnt.

Soon, I will post my presentation about "Change and Waste management"

Beside from my special thanks to organizers, especially to Mr Atilio Savino and Ricardo Rollandi, I have to say that Mrs Soledad Garavelli was the real soul of the conference.

I really feel that the future of ISWA in Latin America is in good hands

I hope to see you again friends

Public - Private Partnerships and Solid Waste Management Infrastructure

2008-06-03T04:00:00.001-07:00

This is a presentation recently (2007-2008) delivered in Hungary and Serbia regarding the concepts of PPPs and their application in waste management. Certain consequenses and modifications are marked for the design, preparation and implementation of such projects.

The whole presentation can be found at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3214162/Public-Private-Partnerships-and-Solid-Waste-Management-Infrastructure

Decision making for waste treatment technologies

2008-06-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

This is a presentation made in Novi Sad, Serbia at 2006 during the conference "Growth of the solid waste sector: Management and solutions". The whole presentation can be found at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3213880/Decision-making-for-the-selection-of-appropriate-waste-treatment-technology

Summary: main concepts and tools available to design an integrated waste management system under the sustainability approach