Narrow Results

The efficient management of waste is important in order to reduce negative externalities, such as air, water and soil pollution. A major challenge is the increasing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) produced by households. Municipalities around the world have implemented pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) schemes in order to incentivise the reduction of MSW. Although the literature has shown that these financial incentive schemes are often effective, they are criticised in practice for raising costs to society. This paper aims to assess whether or not this criticism is correct. A social cost-benefit analysis was conducted in order to take into account economic, environmental and social costs and benefits. Our results show that PAYT schemes reduce overall social costs and therefore positively contribute to the social efficiency of a municipality. The above criticism is not supported by empirical evidence, but in practice forms a barrier to the implementation of PAYT schemes. In order to remove this barrier, we encourage the readers of JEAPM to disseminate our findings to a wider audience.

Within the gamut of the neo-liberal economic ideology, private sector participation in urban service delivery is visualised as the ultimate solution to efficient and sustainable provision of the same. While private sector participation is being pushed vigorously in municipal solid waste management in Indian cities, there is a critical gap of literature related to its performance from a holistic dimension of sustainability. A robust study can only be conducted if the sustainability assessment criteria and indicators are expansively framed to enable critical studies to take place. Based upon a detailed analysis of existing literature on private sector participation in both generic and specific contexts of municipal solid waste, this paper elaborates on a comprehensive sustainability assessment framework for ex-post evaluation of private sector participation in municipal solid waste (MSW) management in the context of Indian cities but which is also possible to replicate or remodel as per contextual requirement in other developing countries.

Interviews with participants in the decision-making processes for major installations in six western European countries reveal criticism of the procedures from all sides. In particular, environmental impact assessments were criticised for their lack of independence from the proposer, failure to assess alternatives to the proposal adequately, incomprehensibility to lay-people and failure to consider social factors. There was also criticism of general lack of public involvement in the decision-making process. Consideration of these criticisms lends support to calls for revision of the European directives on environmental impact assessment and their implementation in national laws.

Absence of effective waste management measures leads to multidimensional consequences like environmental pollution, spreading of epidemics and land degradation. Along with an increase in waste generation, there is no corresponding increase in waste management measures in India. Innovative methodologies are required for addressing waste management and related issues. This chapter intends to develop an innovative waste management model for India. The authors reviewed the literature on waste management models across the globe with a focus to devise a waste management model suitable for India. The authors proffer a six-level Social Enterprise–Government–Private (SEGP) partnership for municipal solid waste (MSW) management. The focuses of various levels of the model are the reduction of plastic use and waste minimization, helping the poor, waste sorting at source and transferring it to colored waste bins, development of waste collection infrastructure, revenue generation from waste and development of waste management infrastructure. The revenue generated from the SEGP model will overcome the funds’ deficiency-related problems of the government for waste management. The model intends to address the core objective of MSW management with a focus on solving a set of social challenges, such as poverty alleviation, unemployment, pollution and contamination of rivers and oceans.

In the processes of high microbiological complexity and operating extreme conditions, as thermophilic-dry anaerobic digestion, the application of specific microbiological techniques is the principal tool to accomplish the start-up and control of the equipments. The estimate of microorganisms number in mixed cultivations is very complex, since the diversity of these populations is extreme. Therefore, it is convenient to use several procedures of quantification. DAPI technique is representative of main microbial groups contained in the digester in each organic loading rate studied. While than autofluorescence microscopy technique was not representative of the total methanogenic population or specific. Therefore, the utilisation of a specific technique to determine the methanogens was necessary. FISH technique has allowed to quantify total methanogenic population or specific (H₂-utilising methanogens and acetate-utilising methanogens) by ARC915, MB1174 and MX825 probes, respectively.

The aims of this paper are to determine the composition of municipal solid waste (MSW) at the Robinson Deep landfill site (LS) and estimate the economics of setting up a recycling facility. The waste composition study was conducted during the summer period of 2015 at the LS. This was done to determine the quantity of organic wastes that are generated daily as a basis for the waste to energy (WtE) proposition and the quantities of the entire wastes generated for the recycling facilities plan in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ). The samples were classified into nine broad categories. The categories include; paper, organics, plastics, metals, glasses, textiles, construction and demolition (C&D), special care and other wastes. The results of the analysis were classified into two services. The services are Dailies refuse (DR) non-compacted and Round collected refuse (RCR) compacted wastes. The results obtained showed organic wastes to be 14% for the DR and 34% for the RCR. The 14% organic waste generated from the DR was attributed to the consumption patterns of people mostly at work. People in offices tend to buy more packaged food items and a smaller amount of organics are disposed of since wastages are less. The 34% organic wastes from the RCR was attributed to the fact that the majority of the people tend to prepare every of their basic meal from their homes and surplus are made; hence, when the surplus could not be consumed, it is disposed of, as a result, more organics are generated. The economic valuation of the recycling facility was also carried out and this was done on all the waste components to estimate the total cost of setting up a facility to divert all the entire MSWs generated. Based on the results obtained, the total capital investment (TCI) was R 35,643,262.73.

Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is an important, practical and challenging environmental subject. Regionalization of MSWM program is more complicated due to the involvement of multi-municipality and multi-facility issues. Therefore, an effective technique capable of solving regional MSWM problems is necessary for decision makers. This paper employed linear programming techniques to establish a optimization model which is able to achieve regional MSWM strategies with the minimum costs. The results of investigating a real world case study in central Taiwan indicate that regionalization of MSWM program is more economical and efficient.

Under the hierarchy of waste management, landfilling is the least desirable option, but it is still commonly practiced. Although biodegradation processes ensure neutralization and stabilization of waste, but because of the long-term period of waste degradation, landfills pose threat to the environment. In order to minimize detrimental influence on the surroundings, landfills should be properly constructed and managed for all the operation time and after the closure. The chapter presents the standards for landfill construction and operation binding in the European Union.