Environmental management by the learning curve

Investigations on mechanical biological treatment of waste in South America: Towards more sustainable MSW management strategies

“…Its reduction is actually one of the aims of an MBT system. Secondly, since landfilling is the most recurring MSW disposal option in South America, the use of mechanical-biological pre-treatment could have a great impact in terms of reducing the needed sanitary landfill volume (Adani et al, 2004;Fehr, 2003;Mbuligwe et al, 2002), reducing the gaseous and liquid Table 1 MSW average composition (% ww ) in different countries of South America (Acurio et al, 1998) Acurio et al, 1998). emissions during the landfill operation (Bockreis and Steinberg, 2005;Mü nnich et al, 2003;Robinson et al, 2005;Zach et al, 2000), and enhancing the waste body stability, which can result in significant advantages in the aftercare phase of the sanitary landfill (Stegmann et al, 2002).…”

“…The socio-cultural, economic and political conditions of each country can determine different priorities at a national level. Thus, different targets or process parameters for the treatment of the local MSW may be set (Fehr, 2003;Mendes et al, 2003).…”

Complex Risks from Old Urban Waste Landfills: Sustainability Perspective from Iasi, Romania

“…Thus, landfills remain the most applied MSW disposal method around the world, but it becomes a less cheap option because of increasingly stringent legislation in developed countries; consequently MSW started to be increasingly diverted from landfills to the managerial options (e.g., Fehr 2003;LFD 1999;Giusti 2009), which require that landfills can only be used for inert materials, encouraging the use of MSW with high organic content to be used for the production of gas. Incineration and recycling represented 18 and 25%, respectively, in 2000 in Western Europe and increasing, whereas the percentages for Central and Eastern Europe were 6 and 9% but lack of data does not allow for identifying a clear tendency (Giusti 2009).…”

“…During the last decade of the 20th century, MSW ceased to be regarded as a merely technical problem, and has begun to be seen as a wider, serious management problem (Fehr 2003). When longtime ignored, the waste problems can easily become intractable.…”

Managing Waste Through Managing People

“…The author chose to focus on a double-step source-separation in order to obtain pure biodegradable material for recycling, which would thus be diverted from the landfill. Tests of separating bio-waste were performed in sample communities with surprising results [8], [11]. Approximately 80% of residents responded positively to the request for separation.…”