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Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management is becoming a highly important issue of considerable complexity, considering the plethora of processes, technologies and strategies available, and taking into account the number and diversity of the stakeholders involved. As complexity increases in times of uncertainty, risks increase in the development and operation of waste management systems, requiring consistent management. The aim of this paper is to briefly demonstrate the application and importance of a risk management perspective in the design, implementation and further development of a robust and resilient municipal solid waste policy. We concentrate on a major Greek municipality (Patras) and outline the use of a risk management method, as well as discussing its benefits when applied in the framework of the existing solid waste management system.

The concept of biorefinery constitutes a significant contributing factor to the emerging transition toward a sustainable bioeconomy. In such a context, replacing oil and petrochemicals by biomass may involve several feedstocks, platforms, processes, technologies, as well as final products. This paper concentrates on the complex process of transferring the concept of biorefinery from laboratory to industry, and sheds light on the techno-economic and complexity management dimensions involved in this endeavor. Toward this end, adopting a systems perspective, the paper presents a structured and comprehensive framework, comprising the definition of the transformation process, business model development, techno-economic assessment, as well as strategic positioning and viability assessment, which may be employed to facilitate the engineering at large and launch a biorefining venture in a circular bioeconomy context. The framework is applied in the context of a biorefinery plant in a specific region in southern Greece, which is based on the valorization of olive mill wastewater (a ‘strong’ and quite common industrial waste in the Mediterranean basin), and produces biopolymers (PHAs) and bioenergy (H2).