"Recycling: yes or not?"

Hi bloggers!

After a while, it is now time to complete the “Recycling: yes or not?” discussion. That will roughly take two more posts, I promise.

The conclusion of the last post introduces what I am going to talk about today: in the next paragraphs, I will analyze the remaining disposal methods. In order to do that, these posts will be mainly based on the “Environmental benefits of recycling – update 2010“ report, edited by the Waste & Resource Action Program (WRAP – www.wrap.org.uk). This document runs a clear excursus across all the waste treatment methods, highlighting the best disposal solution for every different type of waste. Moreover, it is focused on the Municipal Solid Waste and, obviously, it analyzes also landfilling and incineration. Considering that these two disposal options have been already discussed, I will be mostly talking about Composting, Anaerobic Digestion and Pyrolysis in comparison to recycling.

Before analyzing in detail the contents of this report, I would like to get started with a significant sentences available in the summary (page 1):

“The conclusion was clear – most studies show that recycling offers more environmental benefits and lower environmental impacts than the other waste management options”.

Right, the scheme followed by the report is structured according to the different type of waste. For the first one, cardboard, it is shown that landfilling, incineration and recycling are the most common treatment. Same consideration can be found in other works like Arena et al. (2004). As well as WRAP report, the authors actually note that for paper, incineration could be sometimes better that recycling because it allows higher ratios in terms of energy recovery. Considering instead both the water usage (quite high for incineration) and energy request, recycling seems to be the best option. In 2014, Bajpai totally promoted paper recycling instead: indeed, his work points out how paper produced from recycled material requires less energy, prevent virgin material employment and reduce environmental pollution (Bajpai 2004). 

Same conclusions have been traced by a Swedish study. Herein, the authors show how "the potential saving that can be made when going from incineration to recycling is 1.2 million ton CO2 -equivalents" (Finnveden et al. 2005: 225).

Concerning plastics, recycling is overall ranked as the best option in terms of climate change (low impact), energy demand as well as water request (low as for paper). Pyrolysis is also considered as a preferred disposal methods because it is the treatment that shows the lowest toxics effects on human health.

Also Quian et al. (2014) promoted the pyrolysis process: considering before the advantages of recycling, as it helps to protect the environment and reduce the use of natural resources, they illustrated that, with its considerable heating value (Kiran et al. 2000), plastic represents the right ingredient to produce a more calorific fuel.

The problem of recycling plastic consists in its costs: how explained by Eriksson et al. (2005), recycling plastics presents the lowest consequences but, at the same time, the highest outlay. However, the same study explains how the general term “recycling” means reducing the environmental impact as well as softening the demand of energy resources and also limiting the economic expenses.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) and composting are taken into account especially when food and organic waste are involved but this, with few more important bits, will be the topic of the last "Recycling: yes or not" post.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling: yes or not?

Incineration

Back again on RE-cycling!
Let's restart the debate that I started few posts ago. Today it is time to talk about the incinerations’ impact.

Incineration consequences are involved in two main fields: global warming and human health. In both cases, the original factor that needs an accurate analysis is the gas emissions. Despite the combustion of waste does not release methane, in terms of global warming incineration is problematic because of the amount of CO2, N2O and NH3 emitted ("Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories" IPCC 2000, page 455). Instead, considering humankind health, Daskalopoulos et al. (1997) explain how municipal waste combustion released "polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF)" (Daskalopoulos et al. 1997: 226). These are generally known as toxins and they are considered causes of skin and liver diseases as well as cancer. Moreover, the same authors say that also metal compounds, heavy metals and acids gases are a result of waste incineration and also involved in the human health concerns.

However, comparing incineration to landfilling, it is easily noticeable that:
1. gaining and using energy from incineration is easier rather that from landfilling. Indeed, as highlighted in “Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste” report (DEFRA 2013), from incineration there is a substantial gain of usable energy in terms of heat and electricity.
Even though successful attempts have been done, energy recovery from landfilling is in fact a quite expensive procedure and it is mainly discussed as a possibility rather than a convenient and actual opportunity (Lombardi et al. 2006).
2. intuitively, incineration reduces the volume of waste. This means that less rubbish is thus dispatched to the land. Moreover, the residual bottom ash can also be reused in other engineering fields like road building (Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste, DEFRA 2013).
3. as explained in the UK Government report “Waste GHG Inventory Summary Factsheet”, the emissions from landfill represent the biggest amount of Green House Gases concerning the waste management (incineration does not produce CH4). In 2010, 89% of UK waste disposal gases came from land and just a minor part from incineration.
4. finally, another evidence is that water and soil pollution are mainly related to the leachate derived from the landfilled waste. Water contamination coming from incineration is minimal (Daskalopoulos et al. 1997).

Keeping in mind the energy recovery concept, I would say that with this post we have learnt why landfilling is at the bottom of the “Waste Hierarchy” and why the incineration is located in a slightly better position.
At this stage, we have to keep climbing the hierarchy as well as keep comparing the different disposal method each other. In the next few posts I should be able to conclude the current discussion and hopefully I will have fully explained the RE-RE-RE importance.

So...see you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling@UCL

Green UCL

Hi everyone!
I am writing a new post because this morning I received an important email so, before carrying on with the most important discussion of this blog (“Recycling: yes or not?”), I decided to talk about the “Green UCL”. The subject of the email that I got is “Are you ready for the Christmas Switch Off?” and it clearly sounded like something to talk about.

Together with the “Green Champions” and the “Environmental Sustainability Team”, “Green UCL” works in order to create a more sustainable university, striving for a more and more green, clean and healthy world. Green UCL organizes frequent events and activities aimed to promote and make aware students (and people) about the sustainable issue.
The most important activity planned for December 2014 is exactly the “Christmas Switch Off” (figure 1), organized to save energy, hence carbon and money, during the Christmas holidays.



Figure 1: "The Christmas Switch Off" poster

The idea arises considering that, during the near winter break, lots of machines and devices will be left on. Therefore, the “Christmas Switch Off” represents an intuitive, simple but important tip aimed to prevent an unnecessary waste of energy. The same event was organized during the last Eastern Holidays and the result was awesome: the saved-energy would have been enough to make 2 million cups of tea! If you need a list with all the things that could and should be switched off have a look at the "checklist and resources" link.
There is also a sort of contest that runs together with the switch off event: anyone is invited to send photos while switching off lights, radiators, projectors or whatever and, for the most original one, there is a book voucher or a chocolate award.

Obviously, Green UCL also cares about the recycling within the university. On December 4th, for instance, the facebook page was updated with a post related to new UCL recycling signage and its meaning (figure 2).

  

Figure 2: facebook screenshot of Green UCL page

To get involved with Green UCL follow this link.
Twitter: @GreenUCL – facebook: facebook.com/greenucl

So, the next post will restart the “Recycling: yes or not?” discussion. Stay tuned to read about the incineration process and its links with the other disposal methods.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling: yes or not?

Landfilling

Hi everyone!

I hope that this idea to split the discussion in several and focused posts is useful. Therefore, avoiding long introductions, today it is time to talk about landfilling consequences.

Landfilling waste produces a considerable amount of gases, of which Methane and Carbon Dioxide are the most common. The thing is that CH4 and CO2 belong to the GHGs group (Greenhouse Gases) so, their production is strictly connected to the global warming issue (2014 IPCC's "Synthesis Report", page 4, 43 and 116 and 2014 DEFRA report "Energy from Waste", paragraph 37).

A work conducted by Daskalopoulos et al. (1997) shows concrete data about the amount of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in UK due to waste landfilling: the former is the 63.8% of the total volume while the latter is the 33.6%. Thereafter, besides global warming, the most relevant problems linked to landfilling are intuitively detailed by the authors as water pollution, risk of explosion (due to gas accumulation) and health problems (Daskalopoulos et al. 1997: 214 and 215). The same bad consequences can be found in other papers: El-Fadel et al. (1997) actually include also air pollution and vegetation damage.

In addition to the gases, both these papers talk about the leachate, which is the liquid result of the waste degradation. Leachate does not have a big influence in terms of global warming as much as gas does, but it is widely taken into account when it is related to water and soil pollution.
Again, the same list is highlighted in a really interesting report edited by DEFRA in 2011: "Applying the Waste Hierarchy: evidence summary" describes, for each different kind of waste (paper, aluminium, plastic and so on), what the favourite disposal methods are: landfilling is again the last favoured option and the reason is because of the high health, environment and climate change impacts that it brings.
Finally, there is one more aspect to account for: land availability. We have to consider that also the waste production is consequently growing together with the population. Therefore the landfill sites are getting full and there is an actual need to find new places to install new sites and new rubbish. A study conducted by King et al. (2006) tackles this issues and shows how the available land space is predicted to finish. Moreover, the three researchers lead their work explaining how, also in the land availability context, the general concept of recycling is the key tool to treat waste in the next future.

After this brief summary about landfill implications, I have to keep following up the “Waste Hierarchy”: as explained in the previous post, I want to reach to top of the triangle starting from its base. The next step is thus related to incineration, which will be the topic of the next post.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling: yes or not?

An introductive chat

It has been a while since I’ve post a new piece of writing so today I want to keep talking about the issues I left in ice at the end of “Digging the Topic – part 3”. Basically, I want to understand whether or not the recycling process is important and, if yes, why. I am aware that the answers can be easily taken for granted, but the aim is to tackle this topic with a scientific approach. Then, considering that it will be probably a long discussion, I am going to split it in different posts. "Recycling: yes or not?" will be the title of every post while the subheading will address every single post.

I believe that the right starting point consists in talking about the disposal method that do not include energy recovery. Why? Because landfilling and incineration are widely evaluated as the worst existing waste disposal options and, at the same time, they represent the most widespread waste treatment. Figure 1, taken from the 2011 EU’s publication "Generation and treatment of municipal solid waste", refers to the European situation and it schematically shows how much common landfilling and incineration are when compared to all the other main waste disposal. Indeed, in 2009, these two treatments were used to treat more than half of the total amount of European waste (278 on a total of 492 kg for each inhabitant).

 Figure 1: schematic waste treatments usage according to the EU's website

(y=kg procapita; x=years). Click to enlarge.

Surely, the image shows also how that landfilling operations decreased between 1995 and 2012 as well as recycling increased but, according the Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, this positive trend must be only a starting point. As I mentioned in the previous post called “2020 is getting closer and closer” the European Community advised both that landfilling must be further reduced and that, by 2020, the recycling ratio needs to reach the 50% in weight (nowadays England is at 43%).

Giving this discussion a worldwide perspective, a huge challenge is for the developing countries. An example comes from an interesting work about the waste typology and disposal methods in 6 Asian country. Indris et al. (2004) explain how important is the waste debate in those countries where the amount of rubbish is prominently growing together with the population. Ignoring the discussion about the different kind of waste, the authors show striking data like China’s landfilling percentage, which reached 96% in 2011. In other countries, like Taiwan and Malaysia, is also highlighted how landfilling and incineration are the most common used methods for getting rid of most of the rubbish. Summarizing, this paper is highly useful because it tells us the importance of gaining a wider knowledge about waste disposal in those countries where the amount of waste is getting higher and higher. The concern is aimed to prevent environmental and health issue that frequently arise from a bad waste management know-how.

I think that this sounds as a good introduction post to the following discussion. My aim consists in exploring the advantages of the recycling by understanding first all the concerns and limitations related to the other disposal methods. I will start thus from the bottom of the “Waste Hierarchy” (click here to refresh your mind about it) and, through the less favourite disposal methods, I will hopefully show why the “RE-RE-RE” are located at the top of the triangle. Hence, the next posts will be dealing with few considerations about landfilling and incineration.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling@UCL: a quick newsflash

Miles Irving says...

This is (another) post that it wasn't meant to be done now. However, I believe that an interesting part of blogging can be also the unpredictability of writing sequences. I mean, sometimes we have to modify a sort of planned schedule depending of what's going on around. So, what did Mr Irving say? As promised in the introduction post of this blog, I will widely discuss the recycling facilities in our University but, in the last days, the Cartographic Illustrator of the Drawing Office (UCL - Department of Geography) sent two important emails over. The former (14/11/2014) looks more like as an indisputable call to follow the basic rules of recycling and of the good manners while the latter (19/11/2014) is a clear handbook about how to recycle our waste at UCL.
For the time being, considering that the subject of the second email is exactly what I will fully investigate through the "proper post" about recycling at UCL, I want to copy here the body of the first Miles' email as I found its content so appropriate as well as strictly related to this blog:

"Dear All,

I would like to remind everyone about the Food Waste Bins, these are either the “Orange" Section of the triple banks dotted around campus, or any bin with a “Red” bin bag usually located in Kitchen areas often in a brown plastic bin.

these bins are for uncooked or cooked food waste only

including
Fruit
Banana Skins
Tea Bags (but not Tea)
Coffee Grounds (but not coffee)
Sandwiches
Yoghurt
Fish
If you would put it in your composter at home, you can put in here 

Please do not put in...

Cardboard Coffee Cups
Unwanted mail (especially with your name on it) (if you don’t want it, stop it coming from source)
Full Yoghurt Pots
Sandwich wrappers
Liquids
Cellophane and dirty food trays
Plastic Bags and bottles 

There is also a battery bin located in Pearson & Bedford Way.
this too is full of all of the above waste, it is not nice having to pick out old banana skins and coffee cups from the batteries.

As your green champion I am always happy to discuss any aspect of recycling and I will send out a full breakdown of all of our recycling opportunities next week

Thanks

Miles"

I feel like helping Miles to spread his message.

Well, in the next days I am going to resume the discussion triggered from "Digging the topic - part 3"; taking into account pro and cons of each disposal methods, I will try to understand whether or not recycling is an important tool for society and environment.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Time Out: news and activities

America Recycles Day, Guardian Big Energy Debate & Manchester United

I decided to start the week with something that looks more relaxing compared to the lists of concepts highlighted in the previous posts. Hence, browsing the Internet, I found three nice bits related to the recycling process and, more generically, to the energy debate.

1. America Recycles Day
In 2012, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), US produced 251 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste. I think that this data is the right point to start talking about the "America Recycles Day", an initiative promoted by the non-profit Keep America Beautiful with the aim to encourage the communities increasing their recycling actions.
The official day is on November 15th of each year but it actually lasts longer than a single day. In the last few months 1053 events were planned throughout the US territory: “Plastic Bag Recycling & Household Hazardous Waste” (Hickory, North Carolina), “Recycle Cloths for the Planet” (Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey), “Stock the Pantry” (Steubenville, Ohio), “Recycled Art Contest” (Hogansville, Georgia) and many more.
Obviously, there is an online side of this initiative that runs on all social media and involves things like #RecyclingSelfie (see figures below).
Links: www.kab.org, www.americarecyclesday.org. Twitter: @kabtweet, @recyclesday

  

America Recycles Day: screenshots from my twitter account

2. Guardian Big Energy Debate
We are still on time to sign up for the “Guardian Big Energy Debate”, event scheduled for Wednesday 21st January 2015. Organized by the Guardian, the meeting represents the end of a 12-months project that has involved policy makers, industry and academics. The aim of the debate is an update on the energy situation in UK and understanding how to better address future approaches in terms of supply, costs and emissions.
Together with the Guardian’s energy editor Terry Macalister, there will be talks held by MPs as Tim Yeo and Caroline Flint.
Links: Guardian Big Energy Debate Twitter: @guardianeco (#bigenergydebate)

3. Manchester United
MNU is aware of the energy issues and realizes that its worldwide popularity could be a fundamental action to help tackling the environmental debate. The project seems to be still embryonic, but the idea would consist in spreading the environmental voice taking advantages of the huge amount of people linked with the media of the club: MUTV (Manchester United Television), Twitter (3.8 Mln followers), Facebook (62 Mln likes) and 70k people at “Old Trafford” each match-day. Another strategy would trace the basic element of the sport: competition. Promotion of green challenges, (already devised by “Fans Without Footprints”) like recycling contests, with a lists of awards.
Take 2 minutes to watch this funny video: "If we cared about the environment like we care about sports" shows perfectly the foundation of MNU project.
Source: Oliver Balch - The Guardian

Have a good week and see you soon on RE-cycling!

Digging the topic - part 3

From here to there

Hi everyone!

The last post I wrote on RE-cycling had interrupted, in a way, the "Digging the Topic" series that I was writing up. Hence, I think it's time to end the trilogy with the last piece of writing. With "Digging the topic - part 3" I will briefly give an overview on all the destinations of waste once collected from our houses, offices and premises. Therefore, following the guideline purpose of my blog, I will be focusing mainly on the MSW (Municipal Solid Waste).

Once collected, the waste starts a journey that ends up somewhere: the waste disposal methods explain in detail this somewhere taking into account all the possible options for the community to get rid of its scraps. Having a look at Figure 1, the Waste Hierarchy described in the newest Defra report “Waste Management in England” helps us to have a better idea of the term "disposal": the bottom of the arrow defines the disposal as an option with no energy recovery while, other disposal methods such as anaerobic digestion, gasification or pyrolysis, are ranked as other recovery because there is a production of reusable energy from their application.

Figure 1: waste hierarchy according to the "Waste Management in England" report (Defra) 

Recycling could be also considered as a disposal method because it is a (great) method to treat the waste. Anyway, we could generically list the disposal methods as follow:

1. Recycling (…and I don’t need to say what recycling is about)

2. Composting. The most complete definition I found out there was provided by Lau et al. in 1991: “controlled biological process which converts biodegradable solid organic matter into a stable humus-like substance” (Lau et al. 1991: 145). Another interesting paper written by Slater and Frederickson (2001), explains what composting means and involves. At this stage of the discussion, what is relevant among the huge amount of information provided is that composting refers mainly to kitchen and garden waste (more widely, it is a biodegradable-waste related method), it is a biological treatment, its output is used as fertilizers in agriculture or in reclamation projects.

3. Anaerobic digestion (AD). I am talking again about organic waste, yet treated in an oxygen-free environment (Alvarez et al. 2000). The outcomes of this technique are very interesting. In 1995, Braber presented a wide overview of the AD advantages, such as the considerable production of energy, reduction of CO₂ emission and, as well as for the composting, less land requirement.

4. Gasification and Pyrolysis. Here, taking a break in citing papers, I found an extremely useful webpage (www.gasification.org) which deals with this disposal methods. Basically, they both consist in burning waste but the former involves high temperature and an aerobic environment while the latter occurs at lower temperatures, it is anaerobic and it uses an indirect source of heat. The most important thing to say is that these methods allow high energy recovery ratios while the simple…

5. …incineration, an aerobic high-temperature waste combustion, often doesn’t. For fully understand the incineration process and its differences with gasification, I think it is time to link the first video.

6. Landfilling, which is the act of placing waste into specific portion of land. All official reports, environmental organization and, above all, the EU, describe landfilling as the last favourite way to treat waste. The reasons are quite straightforward if we consider all the disadvantages that it brings. In 1995, a number of these consequences have been listed by El-Fadel et al. as "gas and leachate generation, […] the migration of gas and leachate away from the landfill and their release into the environment, […] potential health hazards, vegetation damage, […], ground water pollution, air pollution, global warming" (El-Fadel et al. 1995: 1).

Well, the list above wanted to be an overview of the disposal methods together with a brief description of the relative main features. Therefore, concluding “Digging the topic – part 3”, I would say that this post has the double function to explain what the destiny of the rubbish is and, at the same time, to introduce automatically the following discussion: what are pro and cons for each method? In more generic terms, why is this specific sector of waste management so important? Hence, do we have to care about recycling? If yes, why? Looking back at Figure 1, it is clear how Defra wants to make clear that incineration and landfilling are the last favoured option to treat waste. At the same time, RE-RE-RE are at the top of the arrow so it looks like that a clear trail has been blazed. The following posts will be debating the questions above and I will try to understand what responsibility of the masses is within the waste process.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

2020 is getting closer and closer

Alarm bell from new Defra's report

Hi again!

Before starting out, I want to introduce this post with an apology: I realized that I haven't encouraged the discussion so far! Nothing dramatic, but obviously any comment, opinion and remark is more than welcome in RE-cycling!

Anyway, I was going to post the ending post of the "Digging the topic" series but, slightly late, I came across an important update about the recycling situation within the UK. I merely thought it was more appropriate to give fresh information rather then keep writing about definition and numbers.

On October 22nd, Adam Vaughan, the editor of environmentguardian.co.uk, published a piece of writing focused on the grade of recycled waste in England. Overlooking the debate between MPs the CEO stepped in, the article is mainly based on the recently released Defra's report "Waste Management in England".
It basically spins around the quantity of waste that has been recycled in recent years: even though the recycling rate had arose prominently between 2001 and 2007 (from 11% to 34%), it had then weakened (only 34% to 39% during the gap 2007 - 2010) and has ended up to an alarming stable value of 43% in the last years (table 1).

Table 1. Recycling rate (%) according to Defra's data (click to enlarge).

Why is this alarming? Well, here is the problem! Taking into account the "Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council", we must be able to achieve a recycling ratio of 50% no later than 2020. Article 11,2a (page 312/13):

"by 2020, the preparing for re-use and the recycling of waste materials such as at least paper, metal, plastic and glass from households and possibly from other origins as far as these waste streams are similar of waste from households, shall be increased to a minimum of overall 50 % by weight;"

Moral: we will never reach that ratio if we keep following the recent trend.

At this stage the consequent issues is: why has the recycling ratio stopped growing? Vaughan moves then across the possible causes that lead at this point, considering both the many different in-force recycling procedures in England (there are 400 of them out there!) and also the related government action, probably not strong enough anymore. Indeed, related to this aspect the MPs asserted that the Government has to lead a stronger promotion of recycling in order to redo the recycling rate rise again and match the EU target.

Thereafter, disclosing few information that I will broadly explore in future posts, Adam Vaughan touches upon two of the reasons why recycling is an important process. Following the guidelines outlined by the EU and the MPs, recycling is needed in order to:

1. reduce landfilling. Article 4,1 (L 312/10) of the Directive 2008/98 mentioned before says "the following waste hierarchy shall apply as a priority order in waste prevention and management legislation and policy: (a) prevention; (b) preparing for re-use; (c) recycling; (d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and (e) disposal". Reducing disposal means reducing (also) landfilling, which thus represents the last option in terms of waste management (as we will see, landfilling causes emissions of methane and higher ground pollution hazards besides taking up huge areas of land).

2. waste as a energy resource. Quite meaningful is what the MP Anne McIntosh released discussing the Defra's report: "How are we going to get rid of our waste? How are we going to find alternative sources of energy? What would you prefer – unsightly fracking wells with thousands of lorries trundling around with waste water or would you prefer to take energy from waste, where you’re both disposing of the waste and you’re both fuelling and heating". It looks like that a lot of stuff has to be done. The challenge consists in bringing England where Wales already is: Cymru recycling rate is at 54%...they can wait 2020 chilling out. See you soon on RE-cycling!

Digging the topic - part 2

How much waste do we produce?

Once described the typology of waste that we produce (have a look at previous post if you have not done yet), I would like to take into account some data about the waste production to better frame the topic.

If we consider the waste production on a European scale first, the European Commission website shows that, in 2010, 2.5 billion tons of rubbish have been produced in the EU-27 area. Figure 1 shows all kind of waste generated but, for the aim of this blog, I will focus mainly on the light green sector of the pie chart: this is the 37% of the total, that is 927 million tons, something like 1847 kg for each inhabitant. Why is this the main data of the pie chart? Because the MSW is included within this sector. As we can see, the recyclable waste covers the 10% of the total amount, which corresponds to 255 million tons of materials.

Figure 1: European waste production in 2010 according to the European Commission web site.
Within the 37%, the recyclable percentage is pointed out: 10% of the total, 255 million tons of the total. (click to enlarge).

If you want to go more into detail about the quantitative aspect of the waste production, the Main Table links of the European Commission website show several interactive tables, graphs and maps that can give a wider understanding about all the types of waste generation, treatment and classification. Here I show the map of the European recyclable waste production: in 2012 the countries that produced the biggest amount of recyclable products have been United Kingdom, France and Germany while the eastern part of Europe shows the lowest ratios (note that this is not the quantity of waste that has been recycled, but it is just the production of potentially recyclable material).

Focusing on the UK situation, the Defra report mentioned in "Digging the topic - part 1" says that an average of 430 million tons of waste is produced every year in Great Britain. MSW is 7% of this total, corresponding to 29 million tons. Comparing the UK value with the European data, we can assess that Great Britain produces around 1/9 of the European recyclable waste.
Similar quantity can be found in the recent Defra report "UK statistic of Waste 2010 - 2012". In 2012, UK produced 26.4 million tons of recyclable waste. Going on an even smaller-scale, I only consider England now: the UK Government web site and the report included on it "The role of waste prevention in moving to a more resources efficient economy" assess that 177 million tons of waste have been produced in 2010. Contrasting this data with the values explained in the "UK statistic of Waste 2010 - 2012" report mentioned before, we can notice that, of a total of 177 million tons of waste production, 22.15 million tons are MSW produced by England alone. More clearly, MSW of England is about 1/8 of the total amount of waste produced.

In sum: I showed here some data regarding the amount of waste production. I started with a European overview, then zooming on UK and finally on England only: in 2010, Europe produced 2.5 billion tons of waste of which 255 are recyclable. In the same year, UK produced 29 million tons of recyclable materials. Of this, nearly all the amount was produced in England (22.15 million tons).

The question now is: how should we behave with all this quantity of rubbish? Where do we place it? "Digging the topic - part 3" will be dealing with these questions.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Digging the topic - part 1

MSW: metal silicon and water or Municipal Solid Waste?

In the welcoming post, I tried to explain a few general concepts about what "recycling process" means, defining also "reuse" and "reduce" as two highly related and essential actions. Focusing on the waste, I basically pointed out that most of the rubbish that we produce has a second life.

At this stage of my blog, I would like to go more in depth about few more waste topics in order to have a more precise idea of the issue in terms of typology, quantity and treatment. Therefore, I divided the discussion in three parts. In "Digging the topic - part 1" I will address the waste classification, in "Digging the topic - part 2" I will briefly deal with the waste production while in "Digging the topic - part 3" I will analyse how the waste is treated once collected.

Listing the categories of waste is an essential starting point because it helps to create an overview of all the items that we constantly throw away. According to the UK Government website, the waste classification includes:
1. Construction and demolition waste (tiles, ceramics, bituminous mixtures, etc.);
2. Packaging waste and recycling;
3. Electronic and electrical equipment (batteries, televisions, laptops, tablets, furniture, WEEE, etc.);
4. Vehicle and oily wastes (consists of all the items related to ELV, “End of Live Vehicles”);
5. Healthcare waste (pharmacies, hospitals and clinic related waste);
A similar classification of waste is presented in the "Review of Environmental and Health: Effects of Waste Management" report (released by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affair - Defra) and it includes also agricultural waste as well as mine and quarry waste. Instead, the European Commission, suggests more distinct waste categories, including specific items such as POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutant), PVC or Sewage Sludge. Moreover, it splits the electronic devices in several different subcategories: batteries, WEEE (waste electrical electronic equipment), television, furniture and so on.
Nonetheless, the most evident and common element of all these classifications is represented by the Municipal Solide Waste (MSW), a term that includes sub-groups of waste like packaging or recyclables. It basically refers to all the waste coming from our houses, offices, schools and commercial activities (figure 1): plastic, paper, glass, textiles, shoes, food waste, cans etcetera. I will be using the acronym MSW quite often because most of the topics, processes and implication that I wish to talk about fall within this group. Moreover, the MSW is by far the type of waste that most commonly involves the humankind.

Figure 1: waste classification according to the "Review of Environmental and Health: Effects of Waste Management" report (Defra - 2004), modified. Main attention for the MSW, no quantity information are mentioned. (click to enlarge).

 

Last but not least, there is a different approach of waste classification which divides waste in two big categories: hazardous and non hazardous, depending if contains materials defined as "harmful to humans or the environment" (e.g. asbestos, solvents, chemicals, pesticides, etc.) or not. If we have, for instance, a plastic bottle contaminated with asbestos, it will be firstly considered as a hazardous waste rather then a simple MSW. However, this kind of waste classification needs a more careful consideration and I will discuss it properly in a future post.

Summarizing "Digging the topic - part 1", I described what kind of waste we produce by presenting the classification taken from the UK government (using both the website and Defra reports) and the typology offered by the European Commission. Among the main categories, I gave more attention to the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as it is a kind of waste that we most produce everyday: cardboard, paper, packaging, plastic, cans, etc.

I am going to post "Digging the topic - part 2" in the next days where I will give some data about how much waste we produce.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Introducing recycling, introducing this blog

A brief welcoming post about all these green bins

Starting for now with a simple description, we can define the concept of recycling as a process that consists in three main steps: waste collection, waste sorting and production of new items. This set of actions can be applied to a wide range of recycling products. If we mention, for instance, paper, plastic or glass we probably all think about the garbage subdivision that we should do everyday at home and, therefore, we can easily infer what the process means. However, if we take into account also food wasting, we need to extend the concept to other directions that can be less straightforward compared to the general idea of recycling that most of us have in mind. Furthermore, when we include in the process other environmental components like water resources and several types of energy the concept of recycling assumes an even broader meaning and needs a more careful approach.
The word "recycling" is often linked to two other words, “reuse” and “reduce”, and the three terms together give a wider sense to all the implications involved in this issue. Reusing wasted food to produce energy or reducing our own water usage in order to prevent water scarcity or, more simply, reusing shopping bags rather than getting a new one every time are only three of a variety of actions that we mention that give a general idea of what we intend for the recycling-reusing-reducing concept. These three “re”-actions rarely can be separated from each other in this context. To demonstrate this connection, I report the idea of Adam Vaughan that "manufacturing new products from recycled material rather than new virgin material almost always results in lower CO2 emissions". In this particular example, it is shown how the “reducing” action could be interpreted in two ways: as a tool related to “reusing” action (i.e., use again shopping bags reduces the waste production) or as an improving consequence of “recycling” process.

Through "RE-cycling towards an eco friendly society" I wish to explore more in detail the three steps listed at the beginning of this post, focusing on the recycling and waste process and on potential benefits derived from it. Is this fundamental in our society? Do we have to care about it? What does the process involve? How long does it take? How much does it cost?

Beyond these questions, I wish to present few practical cases (as the recycling method within our university and how the recycling in London is regulated), I will write about recycling initiatives and about any other related story.

See you soon on RE-cycling!