Solid Waste Management free essay sample

Management is an area that is drawing a lot of attention in urban areas. It is acknowledged that while the problem is acute, the financial support is inadequate. This project was conceptualized to demonstrate what could be done with waste generated locally, with minimal investments. This pilot plant is expected to provide significant impetus to the eco-friendly initiatives in the institution. The input to the system comes from the food waste that gets generated by the College Hostel. The system generates bio-gas using anaerobic decomposition. A separate compression unit also has been developed for compressing the bio-gas generated. The system is one of the very few attempts to use food waste as input. The applications that were planned to be demonstrated by the pilot are: ? Use of the bio-gas generated for cooking food in the Hostel ? Illumination of mantel lamps ? Running of an automobile using compressed gas. Overview of solid waste management in developing countries: Solid waste management is becoming a major public health and environmental concern in urban areas of many developing countries. T was the time when we organized study trips in order to learn bout the establishment of selective waste collection system started in Hungary in 1996. We actually designed on the site the systems and facilities still in operation, and they serve as best practice I respect of todays developments. At that time we had neither experiences nor time to control our ideas, however they have been verified in practice thereon, as the systems we have built as pioneers in Hungary still operate effectively and efficiently in line with their planned capacity. Based on the above experiences, ten years ago I decided within the new circumstances to restart my work mimed at obtaining a scientific degree in the field of waste management. That was the time of Hungary accession to the e, and due to Hungary commitments towards the e and the grants available, waste management has become a separate sector of the industry. This might have been the reason of my research work becoming more specific field, but to explore as indicated in the title of thesis technical, economic and legal interrelations, as well as to put forward development proposals. Hope that this goal of mine has been reached according to the readers of my work, too. Finally, I sis to express my thanks to the colleagues working at the faculty 2 of technical Consciences of the mistook university, especially to my thematic leaders and my colleagues and friends whose support and positive attitude contributed greatly to writing this thesis work. Background of the Research and Objectives as a result of accelerated socio-economic changes, both the developed and the developing societies have to face several new challenges in the form of local and global problems. N particular, the management and the decontamination of waste are tasks that require more attention and resources due to the counterterrorist lifestyle. Until the early asss, the regulations in force allowed for performing waste management services with simple meaner and technologies, therefore there was no need for securing professional background and equipment necessary today. N the second half of the decade, as the environmental regulations were made more stringent, the cheap services used earlier (transportation, collection, dumping) have become more expensive because of the necessity to perform technical developments. The logistics of collection and transportation had to be optimized, and the sparing of storage place due to the increased investment costs of the dumping sites required he introduction of effective compacting technologies. S a practicing professional, I have seen even in the middle of the asss that in the field of waste management in contrast with the sector of waterworks there were no models of industrial administration and we missed the professional experience related to this specific sector. The lack of the above hindered effective the planning of investment projects for modern systems, the selection and the sizing of adequate technologies, and the performing of efficiency calculations. The potential solutions included the ransoming of planning and sizing methods used in other specific fields in particular, technical consciences, systems of mining procedure technologies as well as the partial adaptation of foreign waste management systems. In my Job, I gained first hand experience about the level of applicability of optimization calculation models used in the case of establishing shafts or in transportation systems in the mining industry, in the planning of a waste selection site or a secondary raw material collection system. Y knowledge accumulated in the course of the above work and expanded on a continuous basis inspired the elaboration of the starting points of the present research, namely: how to plan a complex solid waste management system on municipality level that can be operated objectives, long term community interests, and global commitments use of natural and human resources. Then Methodological Basis of the Research the sustainable The methodological basis of the research includes knowledge and experiences accumulated in natural sciences, technical consciences and environmental sciences as a new discipline emerged around the borderlines of the former as well as the fields of economic sciences. N the course of studying the ecology system approach formed in the second half of the past century, I realized that although the biosphere can secure homeostasis for itself through organic feedbacks I. To grant that the important parameters of physiology remain within a specified threshold and to tend back towards the optimal value upon an external influence this does not mean that no waste is created in the ecology systems, as stated by some experts . To the contrary, the treatment of waste is an essential part of maintaining stability. N the course of billions of years, the processes of material and energy supply have been plopped successfully in an experime ntal way through self-regulation based on the feedback of information, resulting in a system selecting automatically the rate and the method of the waste to be returned into the primary processes and to be taken out of the circulation. This process is based on natural and organic feedback methods, on the basis of which the natural ecosystems can decide and regulate what is the matter to be recycled after full decomposition, and what are the parts to be stored temporarily or for ever. The man-made economy striving with similar problems today could follow the example of the ecology system operating for lions of years. Thus 1 c. P. So ©pa ¶logy, J. (2002): Pair  ¶kola ¶gig: AZ par  ©s a k ¶reenter capitols ¤nag Ã'ËœGrandson ¤as. (Industrial ecology: rethinking the relation between industry and environment) magmas doom ¤NY 2002. December. 4 in the case of the waste problems of the modern societies, we should not aim to recycle everything, but to maintain a state of dynamic equilibrium. T is useless to make excess sacrifice and to use excess resources to recycle materials, rather we have to make decisions on the basis of a given level of demand about what to return inversely into the primary economy. Therefore we need a system where the decisions on handling actually needless materials are based on adequate information collection and feedback. Waste management is an activity of a relatively short history, lacking its own methods. Thus it is necessary to examine the applicability of the methods of those scientific fields the characteristics if which are similar to the problems emerged in environmental and waste management. The area of technical consciences is a field like that, offering a method formed on the basis of knowledge and experience accumulated through several centuries, determining the actual potentials of exploiting and processing raw materials, on the basis of evaluating information collected from various fields of technology, economy, Thesis natural- and social sciences. It meaner more than a technical-technological system 1 . Analogies with the field of waste management. By taking into account individual characteristics and specialties, it can be used effectively in the elaboration of system approach-based procedures of municipality solid waste management . When the problem of waste was raised, the attitude to waste treatment was like an unregulated, prehistoric situation. T that time, space was sparsely populated, thus the management of waste was not problematic at all: the materials deemed unfit for further use were decontaminated aside the dwelling areas. With the increase of the population and the development of settlements with long term dwelling, the first regulations emerged, primary in the field of enforcing the principles of public health. In that period, the primary aim was to remove waste from the living quarters, in order to limit the danger of infections and diseases in the areas of high population density. The results were due to the development of removal techniques, but the storage of asset emerged as a task forming a serious professional challenge. When the aspects of protecting the environment were raised induced due to the pollution of the immediate dwelling quarters more attention was paid to where the removed materials were placed, in order to prevent further and greater 2 The statements connected to the thesis are detailed under subsection . 2. Contaminations e. G. The water bases in the neighborhood of a settlement. This way, waste management has become an individual duty of the population of the settlement, including the tasks of waste collection, transportation, processing and decontamination. The aims of compliance with the public health and environmental regulations in force, and the minimization of environmental burdens remained important Thesis 2. For waste management, but a new priority has emerged due to the socio-economic changes: the enforcement of environmental-economic principles has become more important, such as prevention, recycling, re-utilization and re-use. Modern industrial societies had to realism that in the age of less and less natural resources the environmental activities can mean actual savings, and they can be the fundamental tools of modernizing the economy and increasing competitiveness. Consequently, the attitude towards materials and waste had to be changed as well, focusing more on the conscious management of natural resources in contrast with the wastage of raw materials. Figure 1 . Summarizes the problems and the relevant socio-economic answers related to waste production, clearly illustrating the cyclical character of the process. Figure 1 . : The main phases of managing waste as a problem source Source: edited by the author There is a present and increasing demand for the utilization of waste as secondary raw materials and source of energy. That is why we have to pay a special attention to he treatment and further utilization of communal solid waste and industrial waste, as those materials mean a source of energy renewing regularly 6 in the short run while the amount of mineral raw materials decreases constantly. Realizing all the above, the environmental and waste management approach has emerged in respect of the treatment of industrial and communal solid waste: The essence of production-integrated environmental protection is the prevention of creating industrial waste which requires treatment and deposition. En of the most effective methods to achieve this is the closed waste management within the industrial site. The most important element of product-integrated waste management is the creation of the optimal conditions for closed-cycle material management of waste, by designing the products for best recycling performance. Figure 2: Waste management system for solid communal waste Source: CSS ¶eek-B ¶ham- Kiss OHO :4. The demonstrated process shows that the collection of communal solid waste is significantly different from that of industrial, production waste, created in a much larger amount. En of the reasons is that production-technology waste is usually created in a concentrated way in large volume. The waste is generated in the course of processes managed and supervised by experts, and prior to collection, adequate pre-treatment methods often take place in accordance with 7 the requirements of hand over. Industrial waste is usually more homogeneous than communal solid waste, and it contains much less or dont contain at all biologically degradable materials which may cause serious problems in the case of storage. Stories and companies must keep records and make reports on waste: it is a registered and controlled process. This type of waste is a significant amount in the awe material and waste management on national level, however, in respect of the topic of the thesis this is not the mai n issue despite of being more significant on the level on the national economy. The recording, placement and the decontamination of industrial waste is well regulated in the laws in force and there is proper professional background for the implementation of such regulations. Summing up, the treatment of industrial waste in the framework of production-oriented environmental protection is significantly more efficient and easy handling category than the treatment of solid household waste. N the case of communal waste generated by the population and by the institutions, the way of waste creation and collection is different than the practice related to industrial waste. The special features of the process are: it mostly takes place on public ground, in the public, the provision and the use of the services is mandatory. Because of the special character of the product-integrated waste management process, in the course of the collection and the treatment of the waste, the tracing of the waste requires constant control, since we cant regulate in details the activity itself. Breathless, this task cant be professionally to perform waste management on their territory. It supports the idea of establishing an organization suitable for the coordination of this duty with due account to all of the influencing factors (prices, technical parameters, regulations etc. . Based on the examination of the results of ecology and of technical consciences, it has become clear for me that the waste management problems mentioned The government decree 164/200 . (X. 18. ) korma. Deals with the records related to waste. According to the law, the producer, holder and the handler of the asset shall keep up-to-date records by site concerning the quantity and the composition of all waste produced during its activity, received by other meaner, handed over by others, and handled by him. Scores must be reported annually not later than the 1st of march after the relevant year, and the failure to make the report results in the obligation to pay waste management fine. Users must use the public service of waste transportation on the basis of the act Chili of 2000 taken effect on 1 January, 2001. The model proposed for the coordination of the task in shown in subsection . 4. 8 4 above can primarily be solved by applying the system approach that has already proved its benefits elsewhere. The creation of a system-model begins with defining the element suitable for the collection and the systemization of information, since we need input of adequate quantity and quality to start a series of decisions aimed at the establishment of a regulated system. It is followed by the definition of the part where the data and information are processed, supporting well founded decisions. Finally we must define the system element responsible for giving feedback to the commissioners, in order to pass a relevant decision. After defining the logical foundations of the system-model, I chose the methods of analyzing documents and preparing case studies to perform the necessary elements of the research. At the same time because the solutions with system approach always require the application of a multidisciplinary knowledge base I used the knowledge of planning and analysis gained in my technical, environmental, and economic studies. Presentation of the Research and the Results The first step of creating the system model in the phase of sensing and data election we need to apply a complex system of information collection and processing: in my system this is the waste analysis which can be used as a kind of stock estimation, in the course of which we can monitor the amount of the waste- components available as well as their composition according to personifications, in order to manage the depository capacity or to determine the amount of reusable materials. Waste analysis, therefore, must be one of the determining bases of raw material management and of technological planning. To supply adequate data for sections to be made in the course of planning, it takes more detailed examinations When the waste analysis used in the planning is not more detailed than the standard, the information available will surely be less than enough to elaborate the most effective I. E. The optimal technology line. That is why I propose on the basis of the experiences of the research performed to make a detailed waste analysis before planning regional systems or other waste processing facilities, in order to separate the screen fractions 6 ms 21420-29:200 9 under 150 mm into smaller fractions, by using screens of decreasing size by 10-15 ms, and to analyses those fractions by material components on the basis of their biological, chemical, and physical features. The next steps of the system model are data analysis, processing and evaluation. It can be performed by applying the approach used in raw material management and system approach. Raw material management meaner a complex decision preparing, managing and implementing activity encompassing all phases of the all the processes during the activity, including the harmonistic of economic demands with the raw material resources available on the basis of the laws of supply and demand. Waste management requires the same system approach, as there we have to plan systems by answering the question what expenditure is worth spending on obtaining from the waste the materials for further use? Actually today almost everything is feasible technologically, but we have to examine if the obtaining of materials for further use is profitable or not. Consequently, well founded decisions also in the field of waste management require calculations with a similar function as the exportability calculations used for a long time in the management of raw materials and mineral stocks. One should also take account of the fact, however, that Thesis the task of waste collection and treatment is a mandatory service to be performed and 4. Used on the basis of statutory obligations . Therefore, in the case of waste management, this process requires a complex cost-benefit analysis which in contrast with raw material management offers analytic and decision-making support not for deciding on exportability, but for choosing the operational method granting the most effective way of complying with the various obligations. T present, the waste treatment procedures complying with he laws in force are extremely complex and complicated, therefore they require a high amount of funds to invest, the local governments obliged to perform such waste treatment can only make with the help of significant support from the e or the government. N addition to that, the costs of operating the projects can not be covered by the incomes resulting from waste collection and treatment and from the income from selling secondary raw materials and energy. That is why various 7 8 9 10 The statements connected to the thesis are detailed in subsection 4. 1 . See the provisions of act Chili of 2000. See the details of the relevant calculations in subsection 2. 1. 6. The statements connected to the thesis are detailed under subsections . . 2. And 4.. 10 principles, in the course of planning waste management systems and during making decisions on obtaining secondary raw materials, the calculations used in the primary raw material management must be corrected the following way: the costs of transportation and preparation altogether the costs of waste treatment should not exceed the amount of the actual price on the world Thesis 5 market plus the amount of subventions in force in the relevant period. Consequently, while in the case of raw material management the efficiency of the exploitation is determined by the world market price, in the field of waste management, it is state intervention through subventions and sanctions that determines and influences the technical level of the waste management systems as well as of the potentials of enforcing long- term environmental aspects. The world market price is formed by internal market automatism based on the relation between supply and demand. The proper operation of the subvention system requires a mechanism similar to the market rising automatism, in order to make decisions and apply the necessary corrections on the basis of comparable information in place upon the waste analysis and the cost-benefit analysis performed. Fixing subventions is a complex and dynamic process of analysis and optimization, in the course of which we must take into account the reasonable and the sustainable utilization of both the economic and the natural resources. T meaner that when the level of the subventions is extremely high, the economic resources are used in a wasteful way, and when the level of the Venetians is too low, then due to reasons of efficiency the formation and the operation of environmental and waste management systems, necessary for the protection of natural resources, are Jeopardized. S a result of the tools of traditional marketing formed after the recurring overproduction crises in the late 19th and the early 20th centu ries, the actors of the economy automatically perform the collection and the feedback of information necessary for the production and the distribution, for the sake of safeguarding the market balance. On the other hand, the collection of information needed for the elaboration of the adequate form and the level of the subventions is not very important for the business organizations, however, it is necessary for making the right decisions. This duty can be performed by CEO- marketing formed in the last decade the ideology of which is very similar to the philosophy of the 1 1 I propose to set up a regional coordinator organization to perform the functions presented, within the legal framework detailed in the dissertations 1 . A practical example for that is the in Communal Solid Waste Management Kiss Tabor: Efficiency ND System Procrastinating network of agricultural integrators, organized and supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development 2. It Thesis 6 self-regulating system cigarettes operation of the biosphere, and the set of its should be different in the case of the management by covering not only the business sphere, identical with the traditional associations as well, as they tools is almost the local governments and thermosetting methods. Due to this two cant be handled regulations pertaining to the companies. Therefore the level of it would be much teeter to use the concept of coordination, which meaner the process state-induced or external interventions for the determination of subventions, Just of harmonistic the mutual interests of more parties, thus fulfilling an intermediary like the traditional marketing facilitates the formation of balance between supply 13 function between public administration and And demand in the business sphere. The business sphere . Figure 3: Structure of the coordination model I propose to set up a regional coordinator organization to perform the functions presented, within the legal framework detailed in the dissertation . A practical example for that is the existing network of agricultural integrators, organized and Thesis supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development . It should be 6 different in the case of waste management by covering not only the business sphere, but the local governments and their associations as well, as they cant be handled The statements connected to the thesis are detailed in subsection 4. . Integration: cooperation regulated in general by a medium or long term contract for one year or more, based on the mutual economic interest of the parties, where one of the interacting parties (the integrator) offers market- and/or production security for the other contracting party (the integrated party), and gives various services and/or financing to support the private agricu ltural producers 1 or companies. The integration can be either horizontal (between agricultural producers of the same production activity) or vertical (between activities built on each other concerning a give product line), or a combination of the above. The participants of the integration take common risk to a certain degree. 1 (Source: based on Annex 5 to the Decree /2003. (l. 24. ) FEM.) 13 The global problems occurring more often in the late asss, early asss raised a demand for requirements of market rationality in many non- market sectors as well. Using the tools of marketing is the (forced) answer to those challenges. On the other hand, the significant functional dysfunctions of the developed market economies result in a theoretical demand for a new definition of marketing: instead of / in addition to a market tool serving the purpose of profit making, marketing is seen as a general servant of the public good. In theory, the hilltops and supererogations in 11 The statements connected to the thesis are detailed in the tools of 4. 2. Their original or adapted form can manage the preparation and the implementation of an exchange of 12 type. However, decapitation regulated in general anomaly found and interpreted in the integration: organic development of marketing can by medium or long term contract for one any framework of or more, based on the (Errors 1995:144) year coordination on the market mutual economic interest of the parties, where one of the control 2 11 figure : Structure of the coordination model Source: edited by the author acting parties (the integrator) offers market- and/or production security for the other control 1 reacting party (the integrated party), and gives various services and/or financing to support the private agricultural producers or companies. The integration can be either horizontal (between agricultural producers of the same production activity) or vertical (between activities built on each other concerning a give product line), or a combination of the above. The participants of the integration take common risk to a certain degree. (Source: based on annex to the Decree 1200. (I. 4. ) fem.) 12 according to the regulations pertaining to the companies. Therefore it would be much better to use the concept of coordination, which meaner the process of harmonistic the mutual interests of more parties, thus fulfilling an intermediary function between public administration and the business sphere. It is the essence of the coordination model to promote the enforcement of the idea of system approach and the long term community requirements e. G. By fixing the adequate level of subventions and at the same time it does not exclude indeed, it includes he competition forming the market balance. Through the feedbacks and interactions generated by the coordination organization, the cooperation between the participants of the system can be regulated, by defining the way of collecting, forwarding, processing and using information. In addition to that, it offers feedback of results to the decision makers and regulators, and it controls the implementation of the objectives in line with the Joint interests. Thus, it creates and operates information channels, allowing the information to react automatically to the cooperation, in a short time upon the change. Can create a cooperation framework able of self correction and implementing effective self regulation, enforcing in the long run the interests of natural-economic sustainability. On the basis of the recent years experiences, it has become clear that we miss from the structure of the institutional system of waste management a central participant in charge of coordination on national level, who can coordinate the actors of the pr esent waste management market, and who harmonies the implementation of the various tasks resulting from the ex.s and the national commitments mentioned above in reticular the e projects. This organization should also coordinate the demands for development and create optimal (cost effective) economic conditions in respect of both the investment 1 The global problems occurring more often in the late asss, market sectors as well. Using the tools of marketing is the (forced) answer to those challenges. On the other hand, the significant functional dysfunctions of the making, marketing is seen as a general servant of the public good. In theory, the philosophy and the tools of marketing in their original or adapted form can