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An overview of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in Poland has been presented. The processes of waste generation and composition have been described and a comprehensive review of MSWM in Poland has been provided, covering some of the important aspects of waste management, such as the current status of waste collection, transport and disposal in Poland. An additional aim of the present work was to identify the potential barriers and the factors affecting waste management as well as provide recommendations for system improvement in Poland and other similar developing countries. An analysis shows that the state of municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Poland is not yet as developed as in many other EU countries. Landfilling is still the predominant method used for the disposal of MSW. Composting and incineration are also used but refer only to a small percentage of the total. According to the latest data (31st December 2014), around 84% of MSW was collected and transported and that ca. 53% was disposed of in landfill, ca. 7% was incinerated at waste-to-energy plants, ca. 11% was treated at organic waste recovery plants and 23% was delivered to sorting. The average generation rate of MSW was 293 kg/capita/year. Generally, recycling in Poland is on the increase, especially concerning easily collectable and recyclable materials such as paper, plastics, glass and metals. Around 37% of MSW collected selectively is recycled.

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Sand has been considered to be something of an immeasurable quantity. There are many indications that this view is no longer valid and that the limiting of natural aggregates usage is doubly justified. Firstly, the extraction of natural aggregates is expensive and has a huge impact on the environment. The main issues in sand and gravel mining are the large areas that are affected, ground water level changes, illegal mining, unsuitability of desert and marine sand, and costs of transport. Secondly, metallurgical waste can be used as a substitute for natural aggregates. This is doubly beneficial—the waste is recycled and the use of natural aggregates is reduced. Waste is stored in landfills that take up large areas and there is also the possibility of ground and groundwater pollution by hazardous compounds. The research presented in this article focuses on the technological conditions of using metallurgical waste in its original form and as a component of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA). The use of metallurgical sludge waste or crushed or round RCA to produce concrete deteriorates the consistency and does not significantly affect the air content and density of the concrete mix. RCA lowers the density of hardened concrete. Metallurgical sludge waste or RCA usage adversely affect the absorbability and permeability of concrete. Concrete containing metallurgical sludge waste is of higher compressive strength after 7 and 28 days, with up to 60% of waste as a sand replacement. RCA concrete achieved higher compressive strength also.

Nuclear power can replace fossil fuels and will have a decisive impact on the change in the approach to conventional energy. However, nuclear (or radioactive) wastes are produced by the operation of the nuclear reactors should be safely and properly disposed of. This paper assesses the uranium resources and the global state of nuclear power plants and determines the energy mixes in different countries using the most nuclear energy. Furthermore, this paper analysed the nuclear waste management and disposal and the depletion of abiotic resources, and the primary energy sources of a basic production process using electricity mix and nuclear electricity for a basic production (PET bottle manufacturing) process. The life cycle assessment was completed by applying the GaBi 8.0 (version 10.6) software and the CML method. In this study, we limit our discussion to high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF) waste. We do not consider waste generated from uranium mining and milling, which is usually disposed of in near-surface impoundments close to the mine or the mill. The investigation of waste management methods is limited to European countries. This research work is relevant because determining abiotic resources is important in a life cycle assessment and current literature available on LCA analysis for nuclear powers remains under-developed. These results can guide and compare manufacturing processes involving a nuclear electricity and electricity grid mix input. The results of this research can be used to develop production processes using nuclear energy with lower abiotic depletion impacts. This research work facilitates the industry in making predictions for a production-scale plant using an LCA of production processes with nuclear energy consumption.

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In an attempt to reduce waste originating from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) which is becoming a serious environmental problem, the European Union enforced in 2000 the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive 2000/53/EC. Each European member state has to comply with the achievement of the following recycling and recovery targets: 80% and 85% by 2006 and increasing to 85% and 95%, respectively, by 2015. The required and achieved recovery and recycling targets for ELVs in Poland in 2011 have been discussed and compared. The data shows that the achieved targets of recovery and recycling were about 82% and 80%, respectively. Therefore, the barrier factors affecting management of ELVs have been identified and the route useful to comply ELVs recovery and recycling in Poland and for other developing countries has been presented. The experience shows that this goal could be achieved by energy recovery and materials recycling of automotive shredder residue.