Solid waste management in urban space: the volume-weight relationship

Patrycja Przewoźna,Alfred Stach,Piotr Jankowski

doi:10.3934/environsci.2020036

Abstract

One of the most significant and growing negative pressures on the environment is the amount of generated waste. Surprisingly, the literature on this topic is mainly focused on monitoring the waste weight instead of volume, which is crucial for waste management in urban space. This paper is dedicated to this issue in two ways. First of all the study shows the difference in waste generation rates monitored in Poznan - a major city in Poland, during one year of field research focused on waste volume and its relationship to administrative data about waste weight. Secondly, it describes the volume-weight relationship based on the collection point sensors and a dynamic weighing system installed on a garbage truck and proposes a more accurate weight to volume conversion method.

Highlights

EPA’s 1997 report, “Measuring Recycling: A Guide for State and Local Governments”, was a guide to facilitate standardization of MSW data collection at the local level, which included volume-to-weight conversion factors for comparing recovery efforts between municipalities, regions and states
The factors are valuable when planners work with the national recovery data presented in EPA’s sustainable materials management report series
Of particular interest are products known to have been source reduced through light weighting since the early nineties such as plastic, glass and metal packaging

Summary

Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery

EPA’s 1997 report, “Measuring Recycling: A Guide for State and Local Governments”, was a guide to facilitate standardization of MSW data collection at the local level, which included volume-to-weight conversion factors for comparing recovery efforts between municipalities, regions and states. The factors are valuable when planners work with the national recovery data presented in EPA’s sustainable materials management report series. The goal of this update is to identify more current secondary data measurements of the various products. Some factors included on the original table are excluded from the revised table due to lack of updated data. The original Appendix B table included 12 materials categories; the updated table provides factors for 15 material categories, including the following

Yard Trimmings

Source cubic yard