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

Adapting EVIAVE methodology as a planning and decision-making tool in Venezuela

“…The highest average ERI value was for human health and environmental society, which was classified as high risk. These results confirmed the health problem generated by the landfills studied, and highlighted the totally inadequate operational structure, particularly regarding the sanitary conditions, of the vast majority of waste disposal sites in South America and the Caribbean [1,3]. This signifies that the health of people living in areas adjacent to the site is at a very high risk of being affected by emissions from the landfill.…”

“…Consequently, we were able to conclude that there were no statistically significant differences in the ELI for each state (p-value = 0.921 > 0.05). This indicates that waste management problems are similar in all the states, and confirm that waste management practices are a serious problem in South American countries [1][2][3][4][5]. This is particularly true in Venezuela, where municipal waste treatment is based on disposal in uncontrolled or semi-uncontrolled conditions [7][8][9]27].…”

“…the landfilling of untreated, unsorted waste as the main waste disposal method. Not surprisingly, this has led to severe public health problems as well as environmental pollution [1]. Consequently, waste disposal has become an extremely serious issue in South American and Caribbean countries, especially in urban areas [2][3][4][5].…”

Baseline levels of bioaerosols and volatile organic compounds around a municipal waste incinerator prior to the construction of a mechanical-biological treatment plant

“…In addition, the emission of greenhouse gases during MBT processes is minor (Amlinger et al, 2008;van Praagh et al, 2009). In fact, the bio-mechanical treatment of MSW is an increasing option in the European Union, as well as in some developing countries of South America (Rada et al, 2005;Bezama et al, 2007;Pan and Voulvoulis, 2007). On the other hand, the composting of organic waste has been demonstrated to be an efficient way to reduce the material to be disposed/incinerated.…”

Potential gases emissions from the combustion of municipal solid waste by bio-drying

“…The high water content of MSW will reduce the efficiency of its energy recovery. In this context, the bio-drying technology has been used to remove water with the help of microbial activities [6][7][8][9][10]. Although the bio-drying is a time consuming process, it has shown a great improvement of heating values for MSW, favorable for energy recovery [6,11,12].…”