Arguments and Facts of Waste Management Policy

L.Ya. Shubov, Doctor of Engineering Science, professor

National economic policy should ensure the cost-effective implementation of the efficient technical and environmental policy in waste management. Capital investments in the MSW problem solution should be focused on creating the most progressive model of waste management. It is an approach that allows minimizing payments for utility services for MSW collection, landfilling and recycling (the declared object of communal services reform is to improve the services quality while simultaneously lowering their cost). The tasks of the service are to provide quality services within the municipal service system in order to find a cost-effective rational solution of the MSW problem minimizing environmental risk of practical actions.

Waste management shall be understood to mean a technological process including system-related operations of waste collection, disposal (transportation), sorting, conversion, recycling and burial. When implementing this process in the frame of the city sanitation system (as a segment of communal services) economic matters are very important. The general strategic line of the municipal waste problem solution (every year about 300 kg of MSW per capita in cities) is known: to reduce the amount of wastes intended for burial by means of their involvement in industrial conversion and recycling.

EVALUATION OF SITUATION AND PROBLEM DEFINITON

Such countries as Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, etc. seem to hold the lead among European countries as for the solution of the MSW problem (which is an interrelated environmental, economical and technological problem). In these countries less than 20 percent of MSW are subject to burial (as per the Eurostat data for 2005), and the rest of the amount is mainly involved in waste recycling without using thermal methods (utility waste recycling, compost preparation and other) which makes up 45-60% of the total amount of the generated MSW. In most leading countries 25-30 % of MSW are incinerated. In 2008 in Sweden some redistribution of MSW flows took place: 39% of wastes were incinerated, about 20 % were buried, which seems to be related to the closure of one of the waste incineration plants (WIPs).

In Russia (except Moscow) 95-98 % of the generated MSW are buried; 80-85 % of MSW are landfilled from Moscow to dumps of the Moscow area (this is the level of twenty-five years’ ago). There exists a plan to increase the amount of waste incineration plants in Moscow to 9 in the coming five or six years (Moscow City Government Decree No. 313 PP of April 22, 2008), which will be able to take all the mass of MSW generated in the city (about 4 million tons/year), and so to eliminate the waste disposal for burial.

The value of construction of the six new WIPs amounts to 2 billions dollars (investment assets); real costs are a lot more. Apart from financial expenses the MSW incineration is characterized by the high environmental risk. As a consequence the implementation of measures reducing the waste flow not only intended for burial, but for incineration as well is utterly important (reduction in the WIP required efficiency, reduction in the quantity of plants).

In the world’s practice the waste problem solution in the housing and communal sector (taking into consideration modern demands of resource- and energy-saving) is considered as one of the priorities of the service activities. The technological process of providing services for the population in sanitary purification of the city from MSW is essentially one of its life-support systems. It stands to reason that the economical incentive of the activities in waste handling (soft lending, tax and other financial allowances) is often done in EU countries. The distinctive feature is that in EU countries waste management is centrally regulated at national and regional levels (whereas within the Russian Federation it is regulated at local authorities level).

The solution of the MSW problem falls within such a service sector of environmental-related activity in municipal services, public utilities, travel business and economical activity, which requires considerable costs. Environment quality is in many respects the labour product, that is, a product to be paid for. At the same time receivers of housing and communal services (primarily it is referred to the population) should be sure that payments for services are reduced to minimum in the frame of specified objectives of the MSW problem civilized solution (to find the civilized solution of the MSW problem means above all that the waste flow intended for burial and incineration must be reduced at the most).

To put it differently the economic policy should provide the cost-effective implementation of the efficient technical and environmental policy at MSW management. Capital investments in the MSW problem solution should be focused on creating the most progressive waste management model. This approach allows minimizing payments for utility services for MSW collection, landfilling and recycling (the declared object of communal services reform is to improve the services quality while simultaneously lowering their cost). The tasks of the service are to provide quality services within the municipal service system in order to find a cost-effective rational solution of the MSW problem minimizing environmental risk of practical actions.

WAYS OF MINIMIZING THE MSW PROBLEM SOLUTION COSTS

From economic positions it makes sense to distinguish two stages while solving the MSW problem:

• self-supporting (according to the foreign practice) stage of resource-saving in which the issues of the large-scale economically sound separation of recyclable materials from MSW with their subsequent conversion into marketable products are resolved; planned recyclable materials output (according to the calculations of Russian experts and foreign data ) is 40-50 %;

• stage of residual (after separation of recyclable materials ) cost-effective waste recycling as a result of which the mass of buried wastes does not exceed 20% (European practice’s level); in this stage the wastes are energy-recovered.

The second stage is not self-supporting (the profit from the sale of the useful production – it is referred mainly to the energy - does not cover WIP’s operating costs), and economic charges are covered with the sufficiently high fee for the MSW acceptance (at the Moscow WIPs there are about 2000 roubles/ton of incinerated wastes, while at European WIPs – up to 200 dollars/ton). The two-stage approach is a necessary condition for minimizing costs to solve the MSW problem. To improve cost efficiency of the production it is necessary to implement optimal process solutions at each stage of the MSW problem solution.

The analysis demonstrates that in Russian practice the need for the quality regulation of the technogenic raw materials at the entrance to the process fails to be taken into consideration (on the basis of appropriate waste flows generation), inevitably resulting in a reduced productive efficiency. A tendency to use one certain approach and (or) one certain ‘monotechnologie’ (whether incineration or fermentation or sorting etc.) to recycle the whole mass of solid municipal wastes representing the heterogeneous mixture of components differed in properties, size and risk level results in unreasonable increase in costs, impairs economic indicators and strengthens the negative environmental influence of the technology.

At the present time MSW management in Russian cities reduces to the organization of container collection of wastes and their timely disposal from sites of generation. One flow of municipal solid wastes is generated in the city (all wastes are collected ‘in the single heap’). However, no difference exists where such a flow should be sent – for burial, sorting or incineration. The MSW heterogeneous composition also is not taken into consideration.

If the whole MSW flow will be buried the recyclable materials will be lost (which means that a profit from the potential realization of useful components will be lost), the service life of the object of burial will be reduced, the environmental situation will be impaired, and MSW transport costs will be increased. If the whole MSW flow will be incinerated the recyclable materials will be lost, the plant’s efficiency will be artificially increased, capital costs and environmental risk will be augmented.

One of the features of the consumption residues problem solution is what MSW have no price. In principle, it is attractive for business in case it is planned to recycle valuable components which often become municipal solid wastes only after they have been single-used (paperstock, plastics, aluminum and tin containers, glass, etc.). In a number of Russian cities the special plants for manual sorting of the whole generated unprepared MSW mass for the purpose of recyclable materials separation are built. However, according to the practice, recyclable materials output is only 5-8 % (seldom 10-15 %) under such conditions, what does not cover (or hardly covers) operating costs, while loss-making production is unacceptable for business.

Figure 1 shows the dependence of MSW sorting object’s annual profit from the recyclable materials output (inclusive expenses). As it follows from Figure gains from recyclable materials sale begin to exceed losses during sorting when the useful production output is more than 10% (as compared with source materials).

Hence, manual sorting of the whole MSW generated mass is economically unacceptable (because of a small output of recyclable materials) and environmentally defective (working conditions are discomfort, recyclable materials are polluted). In this connection it is necessary to specify organizational conditions of efficient technical and environmental policy in waste management.

Figure 1 – Dependence of the sorting complex annual profit upon useful product output (inclusive of expenses)

ORGANIZATIONAL CONDITIONS OF REASONABLE MSW MANAGEMENT POLICY

European experience evidences that for the MSW complex use it is necessary to create the developed utility waste industry based on the organization of separate collection of MSW valuable components and to create and develop the specialized plants intended for sorting, thermal and biothermal recycling of waste and recyclable materials. The fundamental difference between European and Russian practices is that Europeans manage wastes on the basis of resource-saving and environmental safety criteria. As a result several waste flows are generated in the European city: flows of recyclable materials, hazardous components of municipal wastes (e.g. waste batteries, thermometers, mercury lamps, dye residues, etc.) and residual wastes. Each flow has its own way, own processing method. The tasks of minimizing the amount of buried and incinerated wastes are solved beginning from the MSW collection stage by separating resources suitable for recycling and specific hazardous components (their output is about 1 percent of the total MSW amount).

The European resource-saving programs that must be considered as the first stage of the MSW problem solution are carried out directly on the sites of waste generation and at the special materials recovery facilities or sorting complexes.

On the waste generation sites there exists a practice to collect recyclable materials in a separate way, component by component, when the unpolluted paperstock, packages, glass, plastic materials and metals are separately collected.

At sorting complexes the products of separate collection are exposed to the further “development” (basically by methods of manual sorting on the low-speed conveyer belt which is installed in the booth with enhanced working conditions - dust control, air conditioning, good illumination, independent power supply), and are prepared for further recycling (bailing, briquetting, stocking, centralized marketing).

Strange though it may seem, the established European system of the utility waste separate collection has no economic justification.

When creating the national system of the utility waste separate collection, account must be taken of foreign practice’s shortcomings: bulkiness of transport system of utility waste delivery at sorting complexes (separate transportation of each type of utility wastes), inconvenience for people (there must be 5 or 6 containers in the kitchen to collect wastes component by component), relative complexity of component-wise collection (it is difficult to remember in which container exactly the component should be placed). It is apparent that we must assume as a basis not the separate collection approach but the MSW management principle based on resource-saving criterion.

In accordance with this criterion one need to obtain in the source materials (at the waste collection stage) such valuable materials that allow providing the maximum output of useful products at the waste sorting stage. The organization of large-scale waste sorting when recyclable materials are separated will allow make a qualitative leap in the staged solution of the MSW problem.

Quite obvious that in the Russian conditions it is rather difficult to create a system of separate component-wise collection of population’s consumption wastes. This can be explained not only by the fact that the population is uneducated (in any case it is necessary to work with the people, and work on a continuous and stable basis) but also by the lack of appropriate conditions of life and technical facilities, domestic buildings equipping with specific garbage chutes, considerable man-hours and obvious shortcomings of the separate component-wise collection system.

In Russia the task of recyclable resources separation from MSW should be resolved otherwise. The analysis and performed tests show that in the Russian conditions the fractional waste collection is preferable to the component one both in domestic and non-domestic sectors. In accordance with the developments the participation of the population reduces to the kitchen waste separation in two bags – one for utility wastes (“clean garbage”) and the other for residual wastes (“dirty garbage”).

Unpolluted paperstock, glass, PETPH-bottles, polyethylene film, aluminum cans, etc. are collected to the bag intended for “utility wastes”. This bag is taken into the container for “utility wastes”, whereas residual wastes (“dirty garbage”) are taken into the garbage chute. In this case the differential fee for sorted out and residual wastes is established (ideally, the population should pay only for disposal of non-utilizable wastes). The “divide by two” principle facilitates considerably the whole waste management system, the collection of population’s utility wastes and their transportation.

Grounds for the organization of selective collection of recyclable materials:

• selective recyclable materials collection, prevention of their burial and incineration is one of the elements of the civilized waste management system;

• population is the principal person interested in the clean city and its suburbs having the right to expect quality services while finding the civilized cost-effective MSW problem solution;

• population should realize that the MSW problem cannot be solved in a civilized manner without people’s active involvement, since the new landfills must be opened and waste incineration plants must be constructed on a mass scale, resulting in further degradation of environment quality and abrupt increase in MSW communal rates;

• reduction in payments for the MSW disposal (the population should pay only for disposal of non-utilizable wastes);

• such raw material sources as secondary material resources (SMR) should not be neglected;

• social importance of creating the recyclable materials industry (new employments);

• environmental advantages of recycling recyclable materials as compared with primary raw materials (reduction in environmental industrial discharges and emissions);

• positive European experience, experience of St. Petersburg and the former USSR.

To accept, sort and prepare for further recycling “jointly” collected utility wastes, modern MSW sorting and compacting complexes must be constructed. Without such complexes the large-scale separation of the recyclable materials from MSW cannot be carried out. Consideration must be given to the fact that recycling plants do not accept the scattered paperstock, plastics, metals, etc. and require their bailing and briquetting. All these operations must be performed in a complex.

Apart from collected “jointly” utility wastes the wastes of the city non-domestic sector should be sent at the sorting complex (the domestic and non-domestic sectors are maintained by different garbage trucks). Non-domestic stock wastes have a lot of valuable components and scarcely contain food and plant residues.

Hence, there generates three MSW flows in the city: non-domestic sector wastes, utility waste of population’s container collection and domestic sector residual wastes. The population pays for the disposal of the MSW non-utilizable fraction. Non-domestic sector wastes and utility wastes of population’s container collection are sorted out at the sorting complex.

OPTIMIZATION CRITERIA FOR SEPARATNG RECYCLABLE MATERIALS FROM MSW

At the MSW sorting complex external production communications are mainly carried out with adjacent links of manufacturing chain that is MSW collection and transportation. The main external communication parameters are indicators of composition and amount of technogenic raw materials and finished product, quantity of received garbage trunks, subsystem output parameters (recovery of valuable components, cost of 1 ton raw materials processing, quantity of “tailings”).

The selection of the waste separation technological criterion is defined by economic considerations in many respects that is by comparing the recovered component value with sorting process cost.

As a generalized technological criterion for separating MSW as multi-component mixture the following formula based on the Fomenko criterion can be used:

ε – recovery of i component while sorting;

θ – content of i component in raw materials;

α, - content of i component in tailings;

γ, - output of i component while sorting.

The Fomenko criterion evaluates the efficiency of waste separation from the point of view of the completeness of valuable components recovery to appropriate products, however, it does not take into consideration the relative value of recovered components (all the components of separated mixture in the formula are equal without regard to their relative value).

If one introduces into the formula the value coefficients à_õ that take into account the value of each component one can obtain the generalized function of the waste separation value (to separate the given component):

In practice, this simple formula can be used to optimize the MSW separation mode. The integral expression of the sorting process effectiveness in terms of cost includes the amount of obtained separation products, recovery (the grade of raw materials use), productivity (the grade of equipment use), operating costs.

where P_i, - the mass of i component;

Q – the mass of recycled MSW;

α - i component value coefficient;

à - i valuable component content in the source material;

ò – number of recovered components .

The objective of process optimization is to obtain a maximum profit.

where Ö_ê – the cost of k product;

ó_ê – the product amount obtained from 1 ton of MSW;

3 - costs.

This formula can be presented as follows:

where k – the content of k component in «tailings»;

ó_ê – the output of «tailings».

Production cost depends considerable not only upon operating costs but to a large extent upon the MSW flow per 1 ton of end product (concentrate) i.e. from the valuable component recovery and content in the source component.

The necessary condition of the complex self-sufficiency is to send for sorting the wastes which are sufficiently enriched in valuable components. It was noted that profits from recyclable materials sale exceed sorting expenses when the useful product output is more than 10 percent. As the calculations show, the model of sorting the jointly collected population’s recyclable materials and wastes of the city non-domestic sector characterized by the high content of unpolluted paper, metals, plastics, etc. does meet such conditions. When the useful product output is about 50% (of the initial output) and the sorting facility efficiency is 70 thousand tons/year (two sorting lines) the complex payback period is 3 or 4 years. The MSW sorting and compacting complex becomes a center that integrates the system of waste and recyclable materials flows management.

Thus, control algorithm at the first stage of the MSW problem solution provides the stabilization of the process of waste collection on the basis of the technogenic materials quality. The task of obtaining the technogenic materials optimal characteristic is related to the waste disposal regulation based on the organization of waste separate fractional collection in domestic and non-domestic sectors of the city (this means the use of different garbage trucks).

At the initial period of the large-scale resource-saving program implementation the output of the fraction (recyclable materials received from the population) can be planned at the relatively low level 20-25%. In future the program implementation will provide the reduction in quantity of buried and incinerated wastes for 40% (up to 50% if the food fraction is involved in sorting and recycling). The better quality of the source materials the higher valuable components recovery and the lower production cost.

The separation of waste flows requires supplementary charges but the inclusion of the MSW sorting and compacting operations makes the system self-supporting.

Recyclable materials separated in the complex are delivered to the consumers for recycling (paper is intended for tar and ruberoid manufacturing, for manufacturing of cardboard, ecocotton, etc.; ferrous and nonferrous materials – for the remelting; glass – for materials of construction, glassware manufacturing; plastics – for manufacture of such items as a tile roof, regranulate. etc.). In a number of cases it is possible to organize as part of the complex the production areas for recyclable materials recycling but this matter needs to be additionally examined (such production areas can artificially restrict the marketing sphere because the other product types can be demanded).

The implementation of the large-scale resource-saving program is a key reserve for improving the economic efficiency of the sanitary purification system in the municipality and cities of the Russian Federation. The main task of the program is to reduce the amount of buried municipal wastes for 35-40% (up to 50%) while simultaneously creating the profit recyclable materials industry and reducing the transport expenses for MSW disposal. The social aspect of the program is to improve the environment quality and to provide new employments.

The basis of the resource-saving problem solution is the organization of the people’s active participation (it reduces to the kitchen waste separation in two bags), creation of the waste and recyclable materials flows management, construction of the MSW sorting and compacting complexes. The specific feature of the resource-saving stage is that it is self-supporting and does not use thermal methods of waste processing.

ÎN THE CONSTRUCTION OF WASTE INCINERATION PLANTS

It is hardly probable to do without thermal technologies when solving the MSW problem, it is important to define their optimal place in the common chart of waste complex management. The MSW incineration as well as the recyclable materials selective collection are the component parts in the solution of the MSW problem.

The implementation of expensive thermal MSW recycling technologies is appropriate at the certain stage of the sanitary purification system development when the recovery of recyclable materials will be maximum, and the construction of new sorting complexes will not result in decrease of the buried wastes amount. It is no surprise that European countries where the recycling industry is well developed are characterized as well by the developed industry of the MSW thermal processing. However, there is no one city around the world where more than two WIPs are used, whereas in Moscow the 9 such plants are scheduled to be constructed.

The mass media give enough attention to the construction of WIPs in Moscow presenting different points of view in this connection. The article titled “The smoke of garbage plants poisons the residents of Moscow ” and issued in Komsomolskaja pravda of December 19, 2008 is significant and quite representative in this regard.

If one analyzes different opinions presented in the article concerning the construction of waste incineration plants in Moscow one can make five conclusions:

• «political» orientation – all the followers of the WIP construction work in Moscow Government, all the opponents work in other structures (various environmental organizations, the Association of Moscow Garbage Collectors, high education institutions, etc.);

• the Department of housing and communal services and the Department’s officials who irresponsibly formed the Moscow government opinion in the course of making the decision concerning WIP construction are left behind the scenes;

• there is no distinct justification of measures aimed to solve the MSW problem in Moscow, and as a result the decision concerning the construction of the new 6 WIPs in the coming six years looks as a simple directive;

• neither followers nor opponents of the WIP construction do say nothing about the need for consolidation of Moscow and Moscow area efforts when solving the MSW problem solution in the Moscow Region (though the work in this direction is yet performed);

• in the article (and in other publications as well) there are quite a lot of inaccuracies, uncertainties and errors. For example, there is a statement that in Paris 13 WIPs are effective, meanwhile in fact there is no one – all the plants are situated in the suburbs, and only 3 WIPs provide serviced for Paris, and the largest is constructed as early as the 1960s and will be closed in 2010.

Little can be understood from the term automatic gas depression, the term recycling is arbitrary used, and the recycling can be both “unthermal” (the separation and recycling of recyclable materials, fermentation of the MSW organic fraction, etc.) and thermal (incineration is one of the types of the thermal recycling, and not the best), what results in mutual lack of understanding of the article characters. Aleksey Kiselev, Greenpeace Russia representative, tells about the MSW volume reduction during unthermal recycling of wastes. Ivan Malev, Moscow Nature Management Department, considers this as an amount of wastes involved in recycling.

It is necessary to take into consideration the experience of the leading countries to find the civilized solution of the MSW problem.

The followers of the incineration must give the explicit responses to the following answers (but they prefer to fence with a question):

• why the construction of WIPs is planned in Moscow in advance, meanwhile the organization issues concerning the large-scale separation of recyclable materials and such hazardous components as waste batteries, thermometers, mercury lamps, electronic scrap, etc. are nor solved (in such a case it would be necessary to build not 6 but only 2 or 3 plans while simultaneously improving their environmental safety and economical indicators);

• why Moscow should be the world’s “leader” with regard to the WIPs quantity in the one city (9 plants will adversely affect on the whole city’s life);

• which measures will be taken considering that 60 millions m³ of the oxygen-free combustion gas will be discharged in the atmosphere of the city (and its suburbs) every day (none gas purification installation can increase the oxygen content), and this gas has toxic substances concentrations and is heavier than air;

• which measures will be taken considering that not always when incinerating the unprepared MSW the temperature exceeds 850 °Ñ though such a temperature meet environmental requirements on dioxine and furan deterioration ( the reason is that some initial MSWs have the high concentrations of food and plant wastes).

The Paris matter must be particularly analyzed because Paris is selected as a model pattern: if there are 13 WIPs in Paris, hence, there is a reason to construct 9 WIPs in Moscow. We go the same way as the progressive France! But first of all France can not be deemed as the advanced country in waste management since this country practices the import of wastes from other countries for the purposes of their burial and recycling, besides, the recycling indicators of France are worse than the indicators of the leading EU countries. The balance of flows in France is as follows: burial – 36%, incineration – 34%, separate collection, sorting and recycling of recyclable materials – 30%.

Secondly, there are no 13 WIPs in Paris. To prove that it makes sense to look at the french island Île-de-France – the central part in the Paris Basin (its area can be characterized by the circle of 80 km medium diameter which centre is located in Paris). In the Paris Agglomeration there are about 10 millions persons. Within the Paris Region 19 WIPs are operate (see the table) and only 3 of them are intended for Paris servicing (they are situated in 8 km from the city centre). It is significant that 16 of 19 WIPs are built in the precedent century. One of the plants providing services for Paris is built as early as 1960s and should be closed in 2010.

So in the area of Paris there left only two plants, the major part of the other WIPs are situated at the distance of 30 to 60 km from the city.

Whereas the area of Moscow can be characterized by the circle of 35 km medium diameter, and within this area one want to build 9 WIPs which efficiency is 2 times greater than the total efficiency of all French plants! So neither technological nor economic policy in Moscow waste management is grounded. So called specialists responsible for the problem solution selected the most unprofitable (and environmentally hazardous as well) option of the technological development which has no analogues in the global practice. It can be stated that in Moscow there is a possibility of constructing expensive waste incineration plants but there is no responsibility and professionalism.