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1 December 2008
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Without doubt, waste management will be one of
the hardest difficulties that the general public will encounter in Cyprus.
This is a slide of a presentation
I made, showing some of the abuse that is, unfortunately, common in this
country. In particular, the drum shown in the last two images is, alas,
typical of the worst case. It originally contained a viscous industrial
cleaner. It was left, as you see it here, by a roadside, open. Remembering
that it is impossible to completely drain a drum, there was probably at
least half-a-litre left in it when it was dumped. The EU-regulatory
labelling in the last image shows clearly that the product was not only
toxic, but dangerous to the environment. In fact, the product was based on
octyl- and nonyl-phenoxylates which are extremely hazardous to many forms of
sub-mammalian life. It may be asked why this case is bad when the residual
substance is contained in a drum; it can be seen that the drum has started
to rust and it would require only a winter or two for it to be rusted
through, with no containment. At the very least, these examples demonstrate
total irresponsibility on the part of the polluters.
Entry into the EU will force
Cyprus to change all that. All waste will have to be managed correctly.
Although this slide, from the same
presentation, illustrates how household waste is managed in a non-EU
country, the photographs could have been taken in Germany, Sweden or most
other EU countries. They were taken in Romanel-sur-Lausanne, a village where
I used to live, with a population of about 3,000 souls. The waste "stockade"
is only one of three or four similar, in strategic spots around the village.
The way this worked is that householders were expected to sort out their
rubbish. Twice a week, there was a door-to-door collection of household
garbage (scrap food and anything that was un-recyclable), which was used to
generate electricity. In some Communes, this had to be placed in special
bags with a printed vignette, as a means of perceiving the collection tax;
this encouraged householders to minimise their waste because the more bags
you fill, the more it costs. Once every three months, there was a collection
of bulky objects (furniture, bicycles, non-electrical appliances etc.), a
separate collection of electrical appliances, except refrigerators and
freezers. The last-named were collected regularly, on demand, but they had a
special tax imposed on them, for destruction without liberating any
ozone-depleting chemicals. All the recyclable material was taken to the
"stockade", by the householders. The last image shows the village "voirie",
where hazardous materials could be taken to be disposed of. Not shown is a
composting site, where garden refuse could be taken, to produce a fine
compost for the villagers' use.
This may seem a costly exercise,
but the village authorities actually sold all the recyclable waste, which
paid for all the costs involved in maintaining the stockades, collecting the
filled bins (about once per week) and so on (you can see that the ground of
the "stockade" is paved and kept clean).
The twice-weekly household refuse
collection goes straight to a special incinerator which serves the whole of
the Lausanne region (about 150,000 population), the heat from which is used
to generate about 10 per cent of the region's electricity requirements and
to provide heating and hot water to a large University hospital complex.
(See essay on
Renewable Energy.) This is also a paying proposition and, above all, it
reduces the landfill volume by about 90 percent. Scrap wood is also sent to
the incinerator, whether it be from forest management, building and
demolition sites or broken furniture from the quarterly bulky objects
collection. More details on this can be found on my
visit to Tridel.
Hopefully, the two slides, shown
above, will be typical of a "before" and "after" scenario in Cyprus. It will
be a very hard struggle to achieve this, with constant publicity needed over
ten or more years, to change the mindset of the people. Happily, there are
signs that this is beginning to happen.
Many of the Cypriot landfills are
a total disgrace and do not conform to EU requirements. There is often no
control of the way they are managed or the waste that goes into them. EU
regulations are very strict in that they have to be constructed in a manner
that can be safely capped and with separate landfills for hazardous,
non-hazardous (domestic) and inert wastes. However, the volume of landfilled
waste must be reduced progressively to 35 per cent of the current levels
over a number of years. This implies maximum recycling and incineration.
Greece was fined €20,000 per day for about a year because of a single
non-compliant landfill on one of the islands, with both industrial
(hazardous) and domestic waste being deposited in the same landfill.
It is interesting that the UK
taxes the use of landfills, over and above operators' charges, at the rate
of £15/tonne (figure valid from 1 April 2004). This must surely be a good
incentive to minimise landfill use. On the other hand, it may incite illicit
dumping elsewhere, which is dangerous.
The easiest way of reducing the
volume of waste is by recycling as much as possible. One polypropylene bag
given to you in a supermarket may weigh only 5 g, but if you count the
millions that are consumed every week, the annual tonnage is large, probably
in the region of 500 to 1,000 tonnes. This could be cut down significantly
without any inconvenience to the consumer. The first action is to motivate
consumers to empty them carefully and then sort them into reusable (clean,
untorn) ones and others, which can be used for waste paper basket liners or
similar or, if they are totally unusable, placed in a pile for sending to a
recycling bin. A few only, dirty ones, may end up in the dustbin. The next
time you go shopping, take your good ones with you and use them, instead of
new ones; each bag should, on an average, be good for three to four trips to
the supermarket. The supermarkets themselves can make new ones available
only on request; better still, they can charge, say, 5 cents each for them
as an incentive towards recycling. If they make them tougher, so that they
can make at least a dozen journeys, it would be worthwhile to charge more,
say 15 cents. One supermarket chain (Carrefour) in Cyprus does sell very
robust, reusable bags with an offer of free replacement when they are no
longer usable, their cost being very low. We have had one of these capacious
bags and have used it, even abused it, for over a year. An even better
alternative would be to have empty cartons (also reusable) available: this
is common practice in Europe and avoids the need for bags altogether. One UK
supermarket chain sold robust plastic boxes (I think for £5) which were
estimated to be good for several hundred trips. They fitted into the
trolley, so that the purchases could be placed straight in them at the
check-out, and made packing the boot of the car almost instantaneous (and
faster check-outs). This is just one simple way that everyone can do, with
no inconvenience.
Recycling plastics is a problem
because there are so many different types which should not be mixed. Many
items have a two to four letter code adjacent to a recyclable sign,
indicating the type of plastic it is (non-exhaustive list):
|
Symbol
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Plastic (trade names in
italics)
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|
PE
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Polyethylene, Polythene
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|
HDPE
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High-density polyethylene
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|
LDPE
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Low-density polyethylene
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PVC
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Polyvinyl chloride
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|
PP
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Polypropylene
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|
PS
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Polystyrene
|
|
PET
|
Polyethylene teraphthalate
Terylene
|
|
PC
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Polycarbonate Makrolon
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PMMA
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Polymethyl methylacrylate
Perspex, Plexiglass
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PTFE
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Polytetrafluoroethylene Teflon,
Fluon
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Wherever possible, the ideal would
be to keep each type of plastic separate but there are no separate
collections in Cyprus.
PET drinks and mineral water
bottles are a special case. They cannot be reused for hygienic reasons. The
caps and rings should be discarded with PVC, PP or PE, according to their
markings and the bottle flattened as far as is possible. They can then be
chopped up and melted for making clothing fibres, ropes and other quality
items. Unfortunately, the supply exceeds the demand so, inevitably, the
remainder are preferably incinerated. However, a Japanese company has
recently announced that they have found a way of breaking the plastic down,
back into its original chemical components, meaning that new bottles can
safely be made from old. It is too early to say whether this process will be
viable.
In some European countries, a cash
deposit is placed on bottles, to ensure they are returned, rather than
simply thrown away. This could be considered in Cyprus.
This is the one success story in
Cyprus, at least in terms of drinks cans, with at least a 65% recycling
rate. The reason for this is emotional, combined with the Cypriots'
traditional love of children. The proceeds from the collection of cans go to
the purchase of equipment for the Makarios III Childrens' Hospital in
Nicosia. This success shows that it can be done!
What is not always appreciated is
the fact that aluminium recycling does not stop at drinks cans; aluminium
foil, including containers for pies, etc., used aluminium frying pans that
have lost their anti-stick properties, and anything else in aluminium can be
added to the cans collections.
Just think of the tons of
newspapers (and bureaucratic paperasserie issued by the government!)
that are read once in Cyprus and then thrown away, not to mention cardboard
used for packing. This is all recyclable. In fact, there is a mandatory
obligation to recycle up to 45 percent of all packing materials (non-paper,
as well as paper) under EU directives. Why should this valuable material be
simply thrown away and lost for ever in a landfill (probably emitting
methane into the bargain)?
This is defined as any waste
material that could damage the environment. This includes products like used
hydrocarbons, car batteries, dry batteries, accumulators, paint, all
chemicals, heavy metals, solvents and many others. The handling of hazardous
waste requires skill in identifying the nature of the product and the safe
disposal. Let us take a car battery as a typical example. To start with,
lead is a highly toxic metal and all lead compounds must never be allowed to
enter into nature. Apart from the obvious immediate danger, there is also a
risk of underground drinking water sources being contaminated. The outer
case is usually some form of plastic and it can be recycled after emptying
and cleaning. The liquid inside is dilute sulfuric acid with some
solubilised lead sulfate. This has to be neutralised with caustic soda: a
small (harmless) excess of soda to a pH of 7.5 will cause all the lead salts
to precipitate as lead hydroxide and they can be filtered out and recycled.
If the sodium sulfate solution is acceptable for disposal, as is, then this
can be done, otherwise it will have to be concentrated by an ion exchange
mechanism or in evaporation beds, drummed and landfilled in a licensed site
for chemicals. There will be solid sediments at the bottom of the battery,
consisting mainly of lead salts and oxides and particles of flaked-off lead.
These have to be recovered. The plates consist of a lead framework with lead
oxide inserts. The metallic lead can be recovered for recycling by melting
it and the oxides skimmed off. All the lead salts and oxides from these
processes form an extremely rich lead ore that can be smelted into metallic
lead for re-use. The dross from this process must be skimmed, drummed and
landfilled, still as hazardous waste. Finally, the separators, a porous
plastic, can be incinerated in a suitable installation which will recover
the sequestered lead in the ash. It is obvious that these processes cannot
be done by just anybody, and an expensive infrastructure is required. This
includes the licensed landfill, which must be totally sealed in a lined
concrete structure with extensive waste water treatment for all the run-off.
On no account should rain water falling on the landfill be permitted to
escape into the ground. Similar restrictions apply to all other hazardous
waste. If it is combustible, it should be used as a fuel additive in
appropriate installations, such as cement kilns equipped with flue gas
scrubbers and precipitators (never in installations without these).
This is a special consideration
and I have devoted a whole essay on this problem.
This is a particular case, because
all old refrigerators, freezers, chillers and air-conditioners contain CFCs
(ozone-depleting
gases) in the cold circuit and in the foam insulation. More modern ones
may contain HCFCs (also ozone-depleting) or HFCs (greenhouse
gases). They are therefore all polluting if not recycled correctly. EU
regulations are very strict on this matter: it is illegal to dispose of this
equipment except through a means whereby the polluting gases can be fully
recovered for recycling or destruction. This is usually done by placing the
item in a crusher which is fully enclosed in a gas-tight compartment, so
that all the gas can be withdrawn and collected from both the compressor
circuit and the foam insulation. Perhaps better, another way is to cut the
pipework with a special tool with a gas-tight surround to extract the gas,
then dismantle the foam, which is then pulverised in a vacuum container to
extract the gas from it. This method has the advantage of easier recycling
of all the parts at a lower capital cost, but does require more labour.
Some countries charge a recycling
tax on all cold equipment, as it costs a typical €50 (CYP 35) to correctly
recycle a household fridge.
Some countries have had problems
providing a sufficient number of qualified recycling facilities for
refrigeration equipment. In the UK, for example, there is a mountainous
backlog of equipment awaiting destruction. One
report has
stated that illicit destruction has taken place by throwing many old fridges
over a bridge into the Clyde, in Glasgow, certainly easier and cheaper than
legal recycling, but not good for the ozone layer. However, it is believed
that this case may have been a criminal scam.
It is illegal to ship
refrigeration equipment containing CFCs to other countries.
The EU has strict directives in
force governing the disposal of cars and other road vehicles. All fluids,
batteries, tyres and sources of heavy metals must be removed before
recycling the metal. Of course, the removed materials must also be recycled
or destroyed correctly. This has yet to be fully implemented in Cyprus.
Cyprus has a long and painful way,
both for the country and the individual, before it can pretend to even
approach the standards that are in force in the EU and other Western
countries. It will require a radical change of mindset before many persons
realise that waste is a serious matter. I forecast that this will become a
serious bone of contention between the country and Brussels, unless
important changes take place rapidly. It has a long way to go before the
roadsides and countryside meet Singaporean norms of cleanliness - maybe we
should have the Singapore police controlling littering (and driving!).
Waste News
Waste
Management
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