POSTING 5: Site survey and recommendations

 POSTING 5: Site survey and recommendations  

 

 

Emeric: 

 

First, I really like to make this project with my teammates. We managed pretty well every week to make the best posting we can. We always managed to find a time in our schedules to arrange a meeting and it was quite good. It was a bit frustrating to didn’t have the opportunity to work with them in real life. 

 

Concerning the project, I think it is very good to make a project like this because it allows us to work on a project that is close to reality. It teaches us to work in a team and to develop many skills on the subject. I think that the timeframe of one week to post is good. What could be very interesting for a project like this is to meet some enterprises to see the process for real. It was also great to have your evaluation every week on the previous posting because it allows us to not make the same mistakes the week after. 

 

 

As we know, the European union throw away 2.7 billion tonnes of waste. They are a lot of type of wastes, it could be hazardous waste, waste streams like construction and demolition waste or waste electrical and electronic equipment, ect... However, there is a big challenge with waste management because we need to avoid a linear economy and turn to a circular economy. For that, we need to recycle and re-use our waste. Some Member States manage to recycle more than 80% of their waste, showing the potential to use waste as one of the EU's main resources. This improved waste management would make better use of our resources and develop the economy by creating new jobs.  

This requires a much higher priority to be given to waste management, reuse and recycling. In order to achieve these goals, the economy must be made aware of the life cycles of products. Integrate the circular economy from the early stages of product development. Also, public investments are needed in high-quality waste treatment and recycling facilities. Some initiatives are already advancing this project, including a ban on the shipment of illegal waste. Also, energy recovery is now limited to non-recyclable materials. Landfilling is strongly discouraged and recycling is pushed to the maximum possible. 

 

 

Candice:  

 

During this project, we learn to create and implement our action plans to meet our client's needs. This project allows us to learn on our own, and to think on our own. Maybe if the situations were different, I would like to work face to face with my teammates, and I would also like to visit recycling plants, especially recycling plants for metals waste.  

Finally, maybe we could have talked more about the circular economy and link it to our project.  

 

 

In the concept of circular economy, waste is seen as secondary raw material. This type of economy will drastically reduce the disposal of waste and create a new type of economy, more respectful of the environment. Today according to the European Union, only 40% of our solid waste are recycled or reuse. This means that 60% of solid waste are disposal into landfill or incineration plants. But some state members are way more advance in recycling, indeed some of them have a rate of 80% of recycling which means it’s possible for all the country to develop recycling plants. But it also means that each government need to take concrete action to develop recycling and to finance the construction of recycling plants.  

And I also think if states want to recycle more, there must be a demand for the secondary raw material from recycling. For this, it is necessary to promote the circular economy. Indeed, If the recycling rate increases significantly but the manufacturing habits do not change at the same time, then the recycled material will not be used.   

  

 

Tina: 

 

This project has proved the complexity of waste management and the many different things to consider. I believe our team has done well in finding the correct requirements for different types of waste and worked towards treating the waste in a way that is beneficial to the environment. However, some improvements could be made for future considerations. 

 

Part of the EU roadmap includes that ecosystems should be restored. Although constructing a new living space is not restoring the ecosystem, the removal of hazardous waste from the area will be improving the natural biota and soils. Something to consider would be the steps for the removal of the contaminated soil. Along with this, the site is near a pond near a small stream. Possible contamination could have happened in the form of runoff or leaching from soils. Removing the waste will stop the continuation of this contamination. However, the building of a residential area also increases the risk of runoff to the stream, along with polluting the groundwater. The area was also previously used for forestry.  

 

The roadmap also includes that a full recycling economy should be implemented. Our handling of the metal cans and the t-shirt has followed this thinking. However, the oil paint has been sent for incineration. This does not follow the waste hierarchy. The wooden table also did not follow the waste hierarchy. Although we have stated that furniture recycling is almost non-existent, there are techniques to restore furniture, and this has been done within different thrift stores. For example, in the UK, you can take old furniture to ‘Furniture Medic’, which will even repair fire and water damaged furniture (Furniture medic., n.d). If government subsidies were given to start-up projects like this in multiple locations, it would lead to an increasingly circular economy by bringing an end of waste to another product.  

 

The EU roadmap also aims towards reducing hazardous waste. Currently, 98 million tonnes of hazardous waste is thrown away each year (European Commission., 2011).  For our situation, the paint found need not have been hazardous if simply another type of paint was used. This would follow the aims by preventing the waste, to begin with.  

 

Medical practices generate a high volume of waste, and medical waste incinerators are in the top four sources for carbon dioxide and mercury emissions (Alumuneef et al., 2003). 

Single-use waste is said to cost more in the long term and when considering the life cycle of the products. Solutions should be considered for either making medical waste biodegradable or reusable. This would shift away from linear economy thinking. 

 

Effective waste management works toward a circular economy by managing waste in a hierarchy where reuse and recycling, which put materials back into their life cycle and back into the economy, are prioritised. Bringing an end of waste, as set out by the EU Waste Framework, allows material that has a waste status to be used for other purposes. This allows them to re-enter the economy.  

 

Lessons learned were that disposal of waste is more complicated than we imagined. There are a lot of considerations and requirements, along with resources for removal and permits. Dealing with waste appropriately requires knowledge of the type of waste that is being dealt with, the specific requirements and also, quite importantly, knowledge of how that material behaves in the environment. With the knowledge, it is easier to understand why there as such strict requirements in dealing with different types of waste and what happens if it were to end up in the environment. 

 

 

 

Juline: 

 

This work was very pleasing. We had an organized schedule with my teammates and every member was involved in writing posts, even in difficult tasks. 

 

Personally, I learned a lot about medical waste treatment, and particularly about the different methods of sterilization of infectious waste. Moreover, I didn’t know at all the laws and regulations in Europe neither in Finland for waste treatment, waste holders or the creation of a landfill. 

 

If we had more time, we could detail more the project steps, scope and possible methods that could be applied. 

 

Today waste management has been largely developed and this system works very well in a lot of European countries. But it can be improved. Circular economy can be spread by increasing recycling. More recycling bins can be added in cities, for example, recycling bins for plastics, that are not widely developed. Moreover, some people are not aware of sparing or recycling. In Finland, a lot of people are buying plastic bags at supermarkets or don’t sort waste. Using different bins for waste allows circular economy to spread: products don’t end as landfills and material and energy recovery are widen. 

 

However, some wastes are still challenging because of their toxicity and harmfulness. For example, medical waste cannot be reduced without impacting the safety of patients and medical staff in hospitals. Infectious waste can’t be recycled and have to be definitively destroyed or disinfected. These kinds of waste are the bigger stakes for tomorrow world. 

Moreover, some waste treatments are still not enough developed like for radioactive waste. We don’t know yet any techniques to avoid radioactivity and the best disposal at this day is burying. 

For the future landfilling should be avoided and recycling methods improved to spread re-use of materials. 

 

Vilja: 

 

This was a great project; it gave a good insight into what can be expected if we choose to pursue a career within environmental consultancy. At the beginning of our case study, I was thinking that I chose the most “boring” waste type as it was difficult to find any information regarding the wooden furniture disposal, it often falls into this grey area between solid waste and wood waste, which is often construction and agricultural wood waste. Nevertheless, now I think that for me as an engineer lack of information was still very educational, there is a lot of things to consider in making waste management more efficient. Overall, I think that our team worked really well together. Although we were quite constrained in time, good communication and equal distribution of workload made it good teamwork. 

  

It is clear that sooner or later we need to switch to circular economy because our resources are not infinite. It is easy to see why, for example, furniture waste recycling hasn’t been made a priority. Up until recently, furniture was made to last, to be passed on from one generation to another, to increase in value as a vintage piece. Today it is more common to buy new pieces rather than repairing them mostly due to the fact that it will be cheaper and less hassle. The complexity of raw materials used in furniture making also poses a challenge for recycling. 

  

The EU roadmap to a resource efficient Europe highlights the need for sustainable consumption and production in order to improve the quality of products and changing consumption habits. There is already legislation concerning electronic appliances (e.g. washing machines, dishwashers, etc.) to be repairable rather than disposable. Finland soon will start separating and recycling textile waste. At this stage of implementation, enforcement is, of course, very important. 

  

In the EU landfilling is highly discouraged or even banned. Therefore, sending waste to landfills in Asian countries, Turkey or hazardous waste to Russia shouldn’t be an option. Developed states like the EU should be taking the waste to turn into energy and take some burden from developing countries. 

 

References: 

 

Almuneef, M. and Memish, Z.A., 2003. Effective medical waste management: it can be done. American journal of infection control, 31(3), pp.188-192. 

 

Furniture Medic. n.d. Fire or Water Damage - Furniture Medic. [online] Available at: <https://www.furnituremedic.co.uk/about-furniture-medic/commercial-services/fire-water-damage/> [Accessed 24 April 2021]. 

 

European Commission. 2011. EUR-Lex - 52011DC0571 - EN - EUR-Lex. [online] Available at: <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52011DC0571> [Accessed 26 April 2021]. 

 

European Commission. 2008. EUR-Lex - 02008L0098-20180705 - EN - EUR-Lex. [online] Available at: <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02008L0098-20180705> [Accessed 26 April 2021]. 

 

Kaiser, B., Eagan, P.D. and Shaner, H., 2001. Solutions to health care waste: life-cycle thinking and" green" purchasing. Environmental Health Perspectives, 109(3), pp.205-207.