You better eat it

Prioritize Diversion of Biodegradable Waste from Landfills

In Germany, energy generation from waste has been a significant part of the country's energy mix for several years now. Waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities convert municipal solid waste (MSW), industrial waste, and biomass into electricity and heat, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills.

Activated coke was prepared by mixing sewage sludge and waste poplar bark biomass from furniture manufacturing. The physical activation method of these feedstocks with steam for 1 h at 850 °C was implemented.

With the new report on methane emissions, the European Parliament supports bold actions to minimise the damages methane causes to the environment. The waste sector cannot be left out of the process.

Hospital and medical wastes are disposed in tens of thousands of dedicated incinerators or are autoclaved to destroy pathogens and then landfilled. However, over a hundred cities which have waste to energy (WTE) power plants fueled by municipal solid waste, use these plants to co-combust medical wastes. This report identified forty one such plants, located in a dozen nations, which in total co-combust about 90,000 tons of medical waste annually. The medical waste represented an average of 2.4% of the total amount of wastes combusted in these WTE power plants. Generally, the medical wastes are collected at the point of origin in puncture resistant, leakproof and sealed containers which are transported to WTE plants and are mechanically conveyed to the WTE furnace.

India, a country known for its rich cultural heritage and diverse population, has made significant strides in waste management and cleanliness over the years

I just want to congratulate Bowman and Gibson for their article on methane emission from landfills. The actual methane emissions from some landfills serving Indianapolis were included in a recent nationwide study of methane emissions from landfills, by N.J. Themelis and A.C. Bourtsalas of Columbia University. Please see more about this study, in your "Context" question below. Prof. Nickolas Themelis, Columbia University

Together with the recognition of anaerobic digestion, the broader inclusion of Waste-to-Energy in the EU Taxonomy would have been a positive signal for the whole waste management sector.

Management of the sanitary landfills represents one of the main challenges of the waste sector in Kosovo. At present, around 70% of the waste is disposed in sanitary landfills under semi-anaerobic conditions without gas collections. Non-adequate management of the sanitary landfills is a common practice of the waste management in the country.

Hungarian municipal solid wastes (MSW) management has developed tremendously over the past 15 years. More than 3,000 landfills and dumps had been closed, just to mention one improvement. However, still, lots of work is necessary to accomplish the EU’s ambitious aim of decreasing landfilling and increasing recycling and composting.

In February 2019, the German Federal Cabinet adopted the 'National Strategy for Reducing Food Waste', setting a framework for the future direction of this initiative. Among other things, it stipulated that an inter-ministerial "Indicator 12.3 Working Group" should prepare the data bases and methods for nationwide balancing of food waste generation (baseline). Based on existing 2015 data, this status quo analysis will be used as a starting point to agree on milestones for the respective sectors.

Sewage sludge char was used as the catalyst to realize the selective production of aromatics in the pyrolysis of waste mixed plastics.

Anaerobic co-digestion of residual cabbage and cauliflower mixed at a ratio 1:1 (w/w) was investigated in two continuously stirred tank reactors under mesophilic conditions to ensure stability and enhanced methane generation. The experiments, including start-up, inoculum acclimatisation and treatment of the waste mixture, were carried out over a 65-day period.

The current situation of the organic solid waste in Tunisian cities drew attention to the need of an appropriate and updated waste management model allowing to overcome the environmental concerns. Indeed, the generation of solid waste (SW) is related to various features of urbanization and rapid growth of population rates.

While the preservation of the environment has become a topic of major concern, the pollution of water and air by industrial waste continues meanwhile to widen. Anaerobic digestion is among the best technologies for the effective treatment of this organic fraction. Our study focuses on anaerobic digestion of DS; it consists to determinate sludge composition, to evaluate the methane production, biodegradability, to control the process stability and to estimate the electrical potential power.

The Editor Ange Nzihou is the head of WtERT France. Several Co-authors are members of WtERT.

The quantity of FW generated in many sectors (households, hotels, supermarkets, restaurants…) increased with the economic development and demographic growth in Morocco. Mismanagement without any efficient treatment of this waste involves environmental risks in terms of greenhouse gas emission and organic pollution. The AD is one of the most viable treatments for organic FW since it combines the treatment of waste and production of biogas as renewable energy.