Solid Waste Processing Facility Research Articles

Benefit‐Cost Analysis of a Nonmetropolitan Prototype for Solid Waste Resource Recovery

AbstractThis study focuses on the recovery of energy and materials from solid waste at a coal‐burning steam‐electric plant located in a nonmetropolitan county in Northeast Ohio. The results of the analysis suggest that the resource recovery prototype involving a new solid waste processing facility and modification of the existing steam‐electric plant is an economically feasible investment. This conclusion is substantiated by sensitivity analysis of five key technical and economic parameters under four alternative benefit‐cost and internal rate of return criteria.

Accommodation of Interests of the State, Business and Civil Society in Environmental Projects Implemented Through Public Private Partnership in the Russian Federation

Environmental projects have a number of distinctive features, among them an increased capital/output ratio, relatively high risks, lengthy payback periods, and outcomes that are hard to evaluate using financial indicators. Public private partnership (PPP) appears to be a viable approach for the implementation of such projects; however, existing mechanisms for the accommodation of long-term interest of the state, business and civil society are inadequate to ensure their success. In this context, the author presents an algorithm of multi-criteria analysis to evaluate the social efficiency of PPP-based environmental projects, which takes into account the impact of both financial and non-financial outcomes and includes crowdsourcing public opinion into the final decision-making process. Special priority is given to the assessment of multiplicative effects, as their role and impact on the feasibility of investment are often underestimated. The author’s conclusions and recommendations are illustrated using the case study of a construction project for a municipal solid waste processing facility.