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!

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!