For us, recyclables are resources, for many people in the world, the very basis of life

As discussed inside Global WtERT Council we are now in the process of taking the small step towards the new website wasteculture.com. I am convinced that this also will help the common cause to foster WtE techniques who need more acceptance in society.

Waste from food and other rubbish in landfills accounts for around 10 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Environmental Programme.

A new JRC report has assessed the potential of various products to be regulated under the new EU Ecodesign regulation, aimed at making sustainable products the norm in Europe. The legislation could improve environmental and market sustainability.

Unsuccessful constitutional complaint against Tübingen packaging tax statute

Paper and cardboard will be collected separately from other dry recyclables.

Of the 30,000 fast food restaurants and six billion meals served per year, two million tonnes of waste were generated in the country.

The mayor of New York city claimed the use of garbage cans as a game changer for the city as they will eliminate billions of kilograms of waste from the streets.

The Waste Characterization Handbook provides a practical guide for planning and conducting municipal waste characterization studies to understand waste composition and use these data to design data driven methane mitigation strategies. It explains study planning, sampling, field procedures, and data analysis, and includes an Excel tool that helps visualize results and feed them into GMI tools such as SWEET, the AD Screening Tool, and the Landfill Gas Screening Tool for evaluating mitigation options.

Company’s investment will divert 1 million tons of recyclable material from landfill into the recycling stream eliminating the equivalent of 2 million metric tons of CO2 by 2028. Amazon’s support will provide 3 million households across the U.S. with curbside recycling.

The purpose of this report is to provide a strong and comprehensive knowledge base on waste management in Kosovo, with focus on municipal waste. The key data provided per municipality and region, provide a clear understanding of the current situation, the trends and their implications, and future plans.

The light packaging recovery plant, which is a key factor in the success of recycling in Mallorca, has been constantly improving operations since it opened in 2003. This plant represents a vital preliminary stage to enable the recycling of all the packaging waste deposited by residents of Mallorca in the yellow containers. In 2017, a series of improvements were carried out at the plant to optimise operations.

Packaging wastes arise as a result of the use of packaging materials, which are natural resources. Packaging wastes have an important share in solid wastes. For this reason, it is necessary to address the issue with a sustainable waste management plan, to promote recycling activities and to prevent pollution. Another important issue is the data logging system of packaging wastes. The fact that collection activities originating from scavengers can not be recorded, therefore, a proper waste management plan can not be created and it is not known exactly where the raw materials are recycled. Collection and recycling of packaging waste is important and necessary in order to ensure the continuity of sustainable development.

The REDWAVE Process Monitoring and Control System (PMCS) allows maximum automation of systems as well as optimisation of the entire sorting process

In its current phase (04/2014 - 12/2016), the Sustainable Municipal Services (SMS) program of the German Development Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit – GIZ) in Kosovo has the potential to provide in the medium term basic public services in the waste management sector for 70% of the population. Such an achievement would be to a large extent dependent on the success and development of an incentive-based competition in 17 selected municipalities (out of a total of 38 ), which was set up by the MESP in cooperation with the German Development Bank (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau – KfW). Responsible municipal bodies get access to investments provided that they implement reforms for performance development and make improvements in selected performance indicators. The latter aims at a financially sustainable expansion of services.

This article describes the problems of obtaining fuel – alcohol from food waste (peel and spin fruit) and farming (stems and honeycomb corn) and pulp and paper (waste paper and sawdust) industry.

This paper discusses in depth the opportunities, but also the limits and, above all the prospects for recycling efforts.

The Economics of Recycling Revisited: “Less might be more”

In order to treat household waste Romerike Avfallsforedling (ROAF) located in Skedsmorkorset north of Oslo, Norway required the installation of a mechanical Treatment facility to process 40,000 tpa. Together with a Norwegian based technical consultancy Mepex and German based technical consultancy EUG the project was tendered and the plant build against a technical specification. In 2013 the project was awarded to Stadler Anlagenbau and since April 2014 the plant is in operation with an hourly throughput of thirty tons. The input waste contains specific green coloured bags containing food waste which is collected together with the residual waste from the households. The process recovers successfully the green food bags before the remaining waste is mechanically pre-treated and screened to isolate a polymer rich fraction which is then fully segregated via NIR technology in to target polymers prior to fully automated product baling. Recoverable Fibre is optically targeted as well as ferrous and non-ferrous metals. All food waste is transported off site for further biological treatment and the remaining residual waste leaves site for thermal recovery. In 2015 the plant has been successfully upgraded to forty tons per hour and remains fully automated including material baling.

The waste disposal system in Poland is one of the least advanced in Europe. Despite great efforts over the last 20 years municipal waste landfilling has only reduced from 95 percent in 1991 to 73 percent in 2010. This still means that millions of tonnes of post-consumer waste continue to be landfilled.

The DRANCO technology was developed in the eighties as one of the very first anaerobic digestion technologies for municipal solid waste (MSW). A first demonstration plant was erected in 1984 in Ghent, Belgium. At present about thirty DRANCO installations are constructed in about fifteen different countries. This paper describes these DRANCO installations treating the organic fraction of MSW, integrated in a mechanicalbiological treatment plant (MBT). It does not describe DRANCO installations dealing with source separated biowaste.

Optical sorting appeared for the first time in 1994 in Germany, France and in the USA. Initially, it was limited to the recognition of the main packaging types, as found in the "yellow bin", using the NIR spectroscopy to differentiate molecular bonds: PET, HDPE, PVC, Tetrapak were the main targets. Colour sorting was later introduced for very fine colour nuances (e.g. clear vs light blue bottles). Today, most MRFs in Europe use Optical Sorting for packaging.

The Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach, Florida commissioned a white paper to address issues raised by the Sierra Club to the Palm Beach new 3,000 ton per day WTE facility. This comprehensive 82-page report prepared by Gershman, Brickner & Bratton (GBB) provides a wealth of information on waste-to-energy in general, and in Florida specifically.