A Goal-Oriented Characterization of Urban Waste

Abstract

More stringent requirements for the protection of the environment coupled with new incentives for materials recovery, lead modern waste management practice on the line of a more differentiated approach. Separation, or more precisely, non-mixing at the source, is one of the most promising strategies. However, before deciding which categories of urban waste should be collected separately, it is useful to have more detailed knowledge regarding the characteristics of waste. A 5-year investigation has produced enough information to answer such questions as "if one decides to convert food and garden waste to compost instead of burning them, how much less cadmium would be released into the atmosphere?" or, "if the quantities of mercury released into the environment should be drastically reduced, which categories of waste should be collected and treated separately?" This paper discusses sampling and analytical techniques and defines what is a representative sample. It presents the methods applied to determine the annual flow of various chemical elements from 52 waste categories from a European urban area. The results determined through this approach are compared to the total outputs in the gas, wastewater, cinders and fly ashes of the incinerator which currently burns these wastes.

Food for thought: Comparing self-reported versus curbside measurements of household food wasting behavior and the predictive capacity of behavioral determinants

“…For generator estimates quantities of food are estimated by a member of a household. A number of researchers recommend that direct measurement involving the collection, manual sorting, weighing, and statistical analysis of samples collected at the point of disposal be used for quantifying waste (Maystre and Viret, 1995;Rugg, 1997) and specifically for food waste (Abdulla et al, 2013;van der Werf and Gilliland, 2017).…”

Physico-chemical characterisation of material fractions in household waste: Overview of data in literature

“…The most parameters analysed were found in Boldrin and Christensen (2010) (41 parameters; source-segregated garden waste fractions), in Eisted and Christensen (2011) (39 parameters; Greenlandic household waste fractions) and in Morf et al (2013) (39 parameters; MSW via waste product analysis). The most material fractions were investigated by Riber et al (2009) (46 fractions), Rotter (2002) (41 fractions) and Maystre and Viret (1995) (41 fractions). The majority of publications (57) investigated fewer than five waste material fractions, while 45 publications did not subdivide the investigated waste into fractions at all.…”

Evaluation of recycling programmes in household waste collection systems

“…Forty-three factors reported to influence household waste composition are presented in Table 1. A few studies have indicated that the factors mandatory/voluntary programme (Jenkins et al 2003) and socio-economic status (Maystre & Viret 1995) are insignificant. The factors shaded grey in Table 1 have a direct influence on sorting activities, while the remaining factors have indirect effects on the output.…”