Success Stories for Recycling of MSW at Municipal Level: A Review

Abstract

Waste management is increasingly considered one of the most critical environmental challenges on a worldwide basis. Municipal solid waste and packaging waste in specific is an important and growing waste stream. It has been widely recognized that recycling practices and in specific separation at source schemes should be adopted in order to achieve sustainable management of municipal solid waste and efficient resource use. Separation at source provides a promising option with environmental and economic benefits, as it contributes to the recovery of high quality materials with, eventually, cost savings for the waste management authorities. This paper provides a review and evaluation of all instruments, as well as strategies employed in operating waste management schemes at international level. More specifically, nineteen case studies are presented and assessed. Special emphasis was given in those best practice schemes that follow the waste hierarchical approach, namely prevention, preparing for re-use, recycling, other recovery (e.g. energy recovery), disposal. Additionally, local policies that encourage separate collection at source of at least four waste streams (paper, metal, plastic, glass) were taken under consideration. The factors found to influence recycling performance were the implementation of kerbside waste collection schemes, the provision of economic incentives as well as the use of legal instruments. Furthermore, the level of public awareness and engagement achieved, the population size as well as the duration of the implementation of the scheme were also found to influence the effectiveness of the applied schemes.

Issues and Challenges Confronting the Achievement of Zero Plastic Waste in Victoria, Australia

“…People will receive warnings by stickers on the bin as they do not comply with the regulations. Glass was the only material still collected by large containers placed on the street, whereas other cities still remained the kerbside collection for this material [42]. Other materials not collected by the program could be dumped into drop-off sites.…”

Energy Generation through Integrated Sustainable Waste Management- Case Study NAXOS 2018

“…The visitor editors of this VSI in Applied Energy Journal are specialists in the fields of vitality creation frameworks, squander the board and valorization including WtE advances [2][3][4][5][6], biofuels and bioenergy [7][8][9][10][11], biorefineries [12][13][14], squander the executives [15,16]. The article is planned for giving a short outline of the ongoing improvements and hotspots with potential arrangements.…”

The myth and the reality of energy recovery from municipal solid waste

“…But of equally serious concern are the emissions of highly toxic inorganics and organic compounds that occur in the landfill gas (LFG), of which several are also ozone-depleting substaces [83,86]. These include mercury vapour [199,171], highly toxic per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances [131], other toxic volatile organics [130] and malodorous hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans [55,100]. Dioxins have also been recorded among the LFG emissions [111,155]; their levels shoot up to several thousand times higher if some part of the landfill contents happens to catch fire [60,130].…”