International Waste Research Articles

Methods of biological waste management generated by patients

The development of radiation medicine in the Russian Federation has resulted in the improvement of the regulatory and methodological framework for radiation safety regulation. The main obstacle for the development of radionuclide therapy in the Russian Federation is the liquid radioactive waste management (mainly urine and faeces of patients) generated during radionuclide therapy on an ambulatory basis (day patient department). The paper presents a brief analysis of the current domestic and international regulatory liquid radionuclide waste management documents. It has been shown that there is no strategy for solving the problem of utilizing biological waste from patients during radionuclide therapy. Long-term task for ensuring the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population of the Russian Federation could be the solution for the problem.

Societies in Smart Cities: Lessons Learned from Waste Management

Urbanization continues to gather pace creating wicked problems. Waste management is one such issue which is incongruent to the ambition of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities. This paper draws on two case studies of local councils, Canterbury-Bankstown in Australia and Christchurch in New Zealand, to discuss how the councils are tackling the international waste management challenge as part of their creative smart city programs. In doing so, the paper identifies lessons that shine the light on the use of technology and data, funding, community, and government engagement.

The Impact of China’s Tightening Environmental Regulations on International Waste Trade and Logistics

In recent years, China’s influence as the dominant importer of waste products has reshaped global waste trade through restrictive programs such as Operation Green Fence in 2013 and National Sword in 2017. These restrictions have greatly affected not only China’s import of waste products but also the international trade and global logistics of these products. China’s import restrictions in 2017 decreased the country’s import of waste plastic by 92% and used paper by 56%. It also increased the unit value of these two categories of waste by 27% and 13%, respectively, showing an improvement in the quality of imported waste. Most of these impacts originate from intensive margins. The restrictions diverted the flow of waste mostly to the low- and middle-income countries of the East Asian and Pacific regions along with Europe and Central Asia, as their imports increased by 161% and 266% for waste plastic and 101% and 77% for used paper, respectively. Compared with Operation Green Fence, the impact of the 2017 National Sword has been much higher, with shipping companies faced with a lack of products on backhaul routes and forced to change their longstanding practices.

Treat, Dump, or Export? How Domestic and International Waste Management Policies Shape Waste Chain Outcomes

Illegal or unwanted waste disposal methods such as dumping and export are prevalent in practice. To minimize the negative impact of these methods, policymakers have implemented laws and regulations designed to combat them. Even so, violations are rampant as a high degree of heterogeneity between firms and proprietary information render monitoring imperfect. Decentralized waste disposal chains, a common form of inter-business organization in this sector, compound this problem as firms also have limited information available on the other waste chain partner, which creates complex interactions between firm behavior and policy interventions. Against this background, we analyze the effects of domestic and international waste regulations targeting dumping and export, respectively, on firm incentives and compliance. We develop a two-tier waste chain with a manufacturer that generates waste and an operator that treats it. The manufacturer's waste quality and the treatment operator's efficiency are private information. Both can avoid compliance cost by violating regulations where the manufacturer can arrange for the export of the waste and the operator can dump it. We characterize equilibrium waste outcomes and examine the impact of the regulatory climate. Our analysis reveals that primarily focusing on penalizing dumping by treatment operators can worsen waste chain outcomes. Solely focusing on penalizing low-quality waste exports, a common intervention in practice, can also backfire. Instead, penalizing manufacturers for downstream dumping should be given consideration. In addition, the asymmetry in export burden between waste quality levels should be reduced, which improves both waste outcomes and treatment operator profits.

WASTE CLASSIFICATION ASSESSMENT OF NUCLEAR STEELS FOR FUSION POWER APPLICATIONS

Fusion power is an attractive option for the world’s future energy needs. An important goal for fusion is to avoid the severe radioactive waste issues associated with nuclear fission. However, the neutrons produced in the fusion plasma reaction impinge on the surrounding reactor structure causing nuclear activation. It is hoped that activated material from fusion facilities can be disposed of as low level waste 50-100 years after operation ceases, but recent work suggests this may be difficult to achieve. This work presents inventory simulations for a number of potential fusion steels, for two neutron irradiation conditions typical of the DEMO reactor concept. The results are used to determine if the steels meet low level waste regulations, for a number of different international waste management systems. These results show that steels do not appear able to consistently meet low level waste requirements when exposed to near-plasma neutron fluxes. They have more success when exposed to lower fluxes, but traditional steels will still struggle to meet low level waste requirements in a fusion environment.

Retail Seafood Waste Prevention: Reducing Retail and Consumer Fresh-Fish Waste by Cooking Directly from Frozen

More than 30% of fish caught from the world’s oceans are never eaten by consumers adding a significant but unnecessary strain to the sustainability of global fisheries. Although a lot of this loss occurs at sea, in developed countries, a significant amount happens at retail stores and in households. People can help with this problem if they find and use new ways to interact with their retailers and with the way they store and cook seafood at home. Consumers can primarily purchase seafood that has never been frozen, was previously frozen, or is still frozen. Nearly all retail waste occurs when consumers do not buy seafood within a few days after it is in the unfrozen, display cases, forcing the stores to dispose of the fish in landfills or sewage plants. An estimated 220 million 4-ounce meal portions of the most popular seafood in the United States including shrimp, salmon, and cod meet this fate. This number can be reduced to the direct extent consumers can be persuaded to buy and cook from frozen. Retailers are motivated to sell more frozen seafood because profit margins are reported to be higher and labor and disposal costs are lower. Many stores also benefit from their brand’s sustainability image, and contributions to corporate, national, and international waste reduction goals. Their challenge has been to educate and encourage consumers to choose frozen before fresh. Taste-testing evidence gathered in this study demonstrated that consumers could adopt easy, new culinary skills to cook seafood from frozen that tastes just as good as what they are used to. Our studies also highlighted other consumer benefits, including: less fish handling required, simple preparation, easier meal planning, water savings, and higher levels of food safety. Based on these results it will be beneficial for stores to commit resources to consumer education and promote more frozen seafood sales in other ways that satisfy their management goals. Increasing consumer adoption can drive changes at the store level that will provide measurable contributions to seafood waste reduction.

Chinese Engagement Abroad in the Scrap Business

This paper explores the changing nature of Chinese engagement abroad in the scrap business. Based on primary sources and interviews conducted by the author, it identifies the factors that, at different times, led Chinese scrap dealers and recyclers to extend the scope of their professional activity beyond the borders of their home country. Drawing on recent scholarship in discard studies, the author argues that it is necessary to move beyond the environmental dumping narrative in order to better understand Chinese national policy and its implications. This narrative serves as the main official justification for the bans on imports of recyclable waste that the central government adopted in recent years. However, there is good reason to believe that, by adopting a highly restrictive stance on the international waste trade, the central government sought first and foremost to bolster the municipal solid waste management sector within China. In turn, official support for domestic industrial players makes it possible for some Chinese corporations to emerge as providers of waste collection and recycling services at the international level. The trend, described in the paper, has already begun. It marks a shift from globalisation from below to globalisation from above.

The effect of ownership on sustainable development and environmental policy in urban waste management: An explicatory empirical analysis of Italian municipal corporations

AbstractThis paper investigates the effect of ownership on sustainable development and environmental policy in Italian municipally owned corporations (MOCs) dealing with urban waste management, trying to understand if multiple ownership can generate better performance compared to single ownership and if the presence of private partners could be crucial in this. The research question is answered by analyzing 41 MOCs of the largest Italian cities operating in urban waste management. In this specific sector, public administrations have tried to improve their offer in terms of sustainable development, environmental policy, and efficiency. The paper covers the Italian case study, where urban waste production per capita is higher than the European average figure. The waste cycle management service is operated in Italy at local level through totally publicly owned companies (monoadministration or multiadministration), mixed (public–private) companies, or via a full externalization achieved by means of public tenders. Through a multinomial ordered probit panel, we show that MOCs with multiple owners perform better than those having a single owner and perform much better with the presence of a private partner, confirming those academic findings according to which collaborative arrangements can increase efficiency, do better than public sector bureaucracy, and lower the costs of service provision. The results of this paper can be used by academics, practitioners, and policy makers alike. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study that applies this perspective to the analysis of the current international waste management scenario with relation to MOCs having multiple ownerships.

Product, Packaging and Waste Management Database (BDO): A New Public Service and its Application at the Local Level in Poland

In Poland, a new register was established in January 2018, namely the Product, Packaging and Waste Management Database (in Polish – BDO). Its creation was partly necessitated by the implementation of Directive 2012/19/EU on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and Regulation (EC) 1013/2006. The BDO is not only the Register of Notifications and Decisions regarding International Waste Shipments and the Register of Facilities with Issued Pre-Consent, but it is also a waste management tool. The article qualifies the BDO register as a public register under the assumption that, in relation to its recognition as a public register, it can fulfil an additional public utility function, defined as a public service of general interest provided by public authorities. Moreover, the BDO register allows its database content to be searched according to subject terms. It also constitutes a database that fosters the development of B2B services at the local level as it may facilitate searching for local waste collection, transport, recovery (recycling), and disposal providers in accordance with the proximity principle.

Regulatory pluralism: positing priority actions in waste and recycling management

ABSTRACT The annual management of 67 million tonnes of waste and recycling streams poses significant environmental pollution and regulatory challenges to Australian governments. While the Australian government has carriage of waste and recycling policy and coordination, operational aspects rest with state-territory and local governments. This research examined stakeholder perspectives and, while lacking in individual and community client data inputs, exposed regulatory limitations, waste and recycling problems and issues, and forward trajectories for waste policies and programs. Regulatory pluralism theory served as the study’s lens, showing that the rapid rise in waste production and reduced waste transfers to China will require a composite of improved waste regulations, landfill and waste handling management practices; additional recycling behaviour modification incentives; and domestic and international waste and recyclate markets development. In addition, the analysis highlighted the important leadership role for the federal tier of waste governance in product stewardship reform, and the advancement of waste and recycling infrastructure development under new national cabinet and federal reform arrangements. Importantly, from the theory perspective, the research built into the cumulative tradition of pluralistic regulatory systems development.

International trade of waste in the sector-spatial dimensions

Introduction. Global circular trade involves countries that specialize in exporting goods in which they have a comparative advantage and import other goods from their trading partners. This process of international exchange requires the transportation of goods from the country of production to the country of consumption. Therefore, the expansion of international trade is likely to increase the use of transport. It is confirmed that the leading countries in the export-import of waste in various industries are at the same time components of circular core, around which circular value chains are formed.The aim is to do a systematic analysis of the spatial-component structure of trade in waste and scrap and to identify leading countries, development priorities in industries (pharmaceuticals, clinical, household, rubber waste, polymers, silk and cotton waste).Results. The paper analyzes the spatial-component structure of trade in waste and scrap and identifies the leading countries, development priorities in the industries (pharmacy, clinical, household, rubber waste, polymers, silk and cotton waste). The main problematic aspects are illegal waste trade and growing smuggling, which cause serious negative social consequences and actualize the inclusive component in substantiating the paradigm of the global inclusive circular economy. It has been investigated that waste reduction combined with prudent use of resources has the potential to address the gap due to natural resource scarcity and global growing population or consumption. It is substantiated that the formation of circular trade will contribute to: the definition of priority materials for trade and the required level of processing capacity; harmonization of material quality standards; promoting the demand for used goods and secondary raw materials; removing unnecessary regulatory barriers and avoiding environmentally harmful activities such as non-compliance, poorly regulated nature and informal recovery.Perspectives. Further research on international waste trade in the sectoral-spatial dimension will need to be continued in the context of the environmental and economic impacts of COVID-19, which diversifies and increases the amount of medical waste.

Current state and potential valorisation of ship-generated organic waste in Quebec, Canada

The Quebec residual materials management policy implies the banning of organic waste disposal or incineration from 2022 onwards. This policy also applies to domestic ship-generated organic waste. However, little is known about the current state of ship-generated organic waste management in the province of Quebec. This study aims to analyse the current situation and propose sustainable strategies for ship-generated organic waste valorisation in Quebec. Using the available data, it was attempted to estimate ship-generated waste quantities in Quebec, after which the current practices of domestic ship-generated organic waste management in Quebec and Europe were inventoried, along with international waste management practices. Five waste valorisation scenarios were then proposed and compared in terms of advantages and disadvantages, required equipment, and associated costs and revenues. It involves: 1) composting on board of the ship, 2) centralised composting, 3) composting at the port, 4) centralised biomethanation, and 5) biomethanation at the port. The current available data on ship-generated waste quantities in Quebec did, however, not allow selecting an optimal scenario. The information provided in this short communication can serve as a valuable basis to guide future research efforts and decision-making in this regard. Furthermore, the current management of international waste was found to be complex and costly, although biomethanation of such waste could offer a suitable and more sustainable solution. Finally, it was concluded that a good cooperation between ships and ports is crucial to the implementation of any sustainable waste valorisation strategy.

Have China's regulations on imported waste paper improved its quality

Since 2013, the Chinese government has implemented a series of waste paper import regulations with the aim of improving the quality of imported waste paper. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of these new regulations on the quality of imported waste paper. The study analyzed the asymmetric effects and dynamics between China's domestic and imported waste paper prices and between import price and the quality of imported waste paper based on the asymmetric ARDL model. The results revealed that the Chinese and international waste paper markets were integrated and that both long-run and short-run asymmetries were presented in the relationship between these two markets. Furthermore, the results indicated that the quality of imported waste paper reacted differently to the positive and negative changes in import price, and a decrease in import price will lead to an increase in the quality of imported waste paper. China's waste paper import regulations weakened the integration relationship between the Chinese and international waste paper markets and caused the import price to drop. Therefore, it implies that China's new waste paper import regulations promoted the quality of imported waste paper, which is beneficial to the mitigation of environmental contamination.

REHABILITATION OF LANDFILLS: DESIGN LAB AT THE INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON WASTE ARCHITECTURE 2019

​In 2019 Arcoplan Associates organised the third edition of the International Workshop on Waste Architecture / Waste Management in Landscape and Urban Areas conceived as a parallel event of Sardinia 2019, 17th International Waste Management and landfill Symposium. The first day of the event was devoted entirely to oral presentations, whilst the second was taken up by a practical design and planning workshop. The design lab was coordinated by Studio Arcoplan with the collaboration of Stefanos Antoniadis, research fellow at the University of Padova. During the lab participants had the opportunity to apply theoretical notions learnt during the oral sessions to an actual case study promoted by a company, and to exchange views and opinions with colleagues and experts as part of a working team.

Transnational Plastics: An Australian Case for Global Action

Mitigating plastic pollution requires international cooperation because significant volumes of plastic waste are transported across jurisdictions both as waste exports and drifting ocean plastics (OP). Here we estimate which nations are (1) sources for overseas OP reaching Australian waters and (2) destinations receiving OP from Australian sources. We then provide actionable recommendations for mitigating plastic pollution in Australian waters and beyond. We estimated that the vast majority of overseas OP reaching Australia is from Indonesia, and that most of the Australian-sourced OP reaching overseas territories is entering New Zealand. Key actions for mitigating the OP issue in Australia include better governance, upgraded enforcement and increased investments to reduce fossil fuel-based plastic production and to drastically improve both domestic and international waste management infrastructure and operations.

Fending off waste from the west: The impact of China's Operation Green Fence on the international waste trade

AbstractChina launched the first Operation Green Fence (OGF) on 1 February 2013 to fend off inflows of illegal waste. The main objective of OGF was to enforce waste trade policies already adopted by China and thereby restrict illegal waste imports. We use a gravity model of international trade with annual bilateral waste trade data at the 6‐digit HS code level to assess the impact of OGF on the international waste trade. First, we study the direct impact of OGF and find that the intervention resulted in a 26% drop in low‐quality waste exports to China from developed countries. Second, we assess the impact of OGF on exports from developed countries to developing countries, excluding China. We do not find a statistically significant effect of OGF on low‐quality waste exports from developed countries to developing countries (excluding China). We also test the waste haven hypothesis and do not find evidence that waste exports were disproportionately diverted to countries with lax environmental regulation.

Production, disposal, and efficient technique used in the separation of heavy metals from red meat abattoir wastewater.

The availability of clean water from the already scarce sources is threatened by continuous addition of contaminated industrial and of abattoir waste into watercourses globally. The aim of the current study was to reduce the amount of waste produced, to decrease pollution derived from discharge of effluent meat wastewater, and also to minimise environmental health risk. This was all achieved by successfully synthesising a natural biopolymer chitin chitin-chitosan derivative derived from crab shell waste. Characterisation of the chitin polymer using physicochemical properties like yield, ash content, degree of acetylation, solubility, intrinsic viscosity, and molecular weight indicated that crab shell waste was a good source of chitin. This polymer was later deacetylated to form chitosan and then cross-linked with s-methylbutylamine to form chitin-chitosan adsorbent. The effectiveness of the above-modified product in purifying meat wastewater was conducted by means of comparative testing using hydride gas atomic absorption spectroscopy. The results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis showed that chitosan cross-linked s-methylbutylamine was efficient in removing the following metal ions: Cu (II), Zn (II), Cr (II), Pb (II), and Cr (II). The highest removal percentage was Cr (IV) and Pb (II) (95.45 and 92.66%), while Zn (II) and Fe (II) were 87.32 and 67.48%. The lowest percentage recovery of 38.55% was observed for the metal Cr. From the current study, it was evident that the cross-linked can significantly reduce the metal concentration in meat wastewater before it is released in the aquatic environment. Therefore, properly permitted international waste disposal methods should be employed to reduce adverse effects on the receiving environment.

River, lake and sea traffic safety issues regarding waste generated during disasters

This publication present questions related to river and sea traffic safety and waste management in disaster situations taking into consideration domestic and international waste management policies, river and sea transport industry recommendations, instructions, and provisions. The principal objective is to examine how applicable are the technical security solutions and regulations to enhance safe and efficient waste management to meet of today's challenges.

Dynamics of Integration between Chinese and International Waste Paper Markets

ABSTRACT China is the largest importer of waste paper in the world and is highly dependent on the international market. Thus, the relationship between Chinese and international waste paper markets affects the supply of fiber materials in China’s paper industry. This study examined the dynamic relationship between the two markets and the impact of newly implemented policies on both markets. We used unit root tests, cointegration test, vector error correction model (VECM) and frequency-domain Granger causality test to investigate the integration between Chinese and international waste paper markets and identify which of the two markets is the price leader. The results revealed that the two markets were integrated after controlling for structural breaks, and the Chinese market acted as the price leader. Since the supply of waste paper and wood pulp is insufficient in China to meet the fiber demand of the paper industry, waste paper import restrictions have significantly affected the supply of fiber materials in China’s paper industry. Therefore, the Chinese government should fully consider the benefit of market integration and make full use of international waste paper resources to satisfy the large domestic demand for paper products.

The important role of marine debris networks to prevent and reduce ocean plastic pollution

Societal change is needed to prevent and reduce the growth in the amount of solid waste entering the sea. Marine debris networks cover a broad range of activities in order to protect our oceans. By following a common vision and a collective systematic approach they are capable of creating synergies between all relevant stakeholders that result in reducing the flow of waste into our oceans. Thus, they are key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. During the 6th International Marine Debris Conference in San Diego in 2018, different marine debris networks from different parts of the world presented their activities, achievements and challenges. This led to network representatives agreeing to collaborate as members of an International Waste Platform. This platform aims to harmonize objectives, share knowledge, join forces and help new networks to emerge.