Abstract
The diversion and recovery of organic waste are one of the most significant opportunities and challenges for reducing the environmental impacts of waste disposal internationally, as recognised by the United Nations’ SDG 12 that seeks to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. This issue is particularly pertinent to developed countries, like Australia, who have a high propensity for waste removal arising from their industrial and domestic use of products, materials and organic consumables. Through the use of GIS technology, using modelling software developed by the Global Methane Initiative, a series of simulations were undertaken to determine the viability of an anaerobic digester for the City of Greater Geelong (COGG), located in the State of Victoria (Australia), where organic materials constitute over 25% of all waste land-filled. Using only municipal organic waste, the modelling concluded that the COGG would generate between AU$6M-AU$11M/annum from the sale of biogas/methane. In addition to this revenue stream, COGG would have an Annual Projected Net Emissions Reductions of 3797 Mt. This paper further considers the development of a geospatial database to identify and locate concentrated organic waste resources in COGG, the design and development of a software tool to help quantify the production of food waste, and the development of an economic model to value the organic waste stream of COGG arising from the implementation of this proposal.
Highlights
We are drowning in a sea of waste, both on land and in our waters (Allam & Jones 2018)
In this paper we focus on the City of Greater Geelong which is the largest local government area in the BSWWRRG
With the option of creating Anaerobic digesters, as is demonstrated after simulating the two adopted calculation model
Summary
We are drowning in a sea of waste, both on land and in our waters (Allam & Jones 2018). In 2018 the World Bank concluded, on current patterns, that global waste will increase by 70% by 2050. The Bank pointed to its escalation due to rapid urbanization and growing populations and projected that global annual waste generation is expected to increase to 3.4 billion tonnes over the 30 years, up from 2.01 billion tonnes in 2016 (Kaza et al 2018). It was developed countries, despite only comprising 16% of the world’s population, generated more than one-third (34%) of the world’s waste. The World Bank concluded that ‘solid waste management is critical for sustainable, healthy, and inclusive cities and communities, yet it is often overlooked, in low-income countries’ noted that ‘while more than one-third of waste in high-income countries is recovered through recycling and composting, only 4%
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