Solid waste management has emerged as a big challenge for the Mediterranean country of Tunisia. The country, having an estimated population of around 11 million people, produces more than 2.5 million tons of garbage each year. Tunisia is experiencing an average increase in waste volume by 3% with per capita waste generation in urban areas being 0.8 kg per day. Biodegradable organic fraction constitutes around 68% of the MSW stream.

Over the past 15 years, there have been significant advances in particle sorting systems, but development of bulk sorting systems has received less attention. The amenability of ore to bulk sorting is dependent on the heterogeneity of the deposit and the ability of sensors to estimate the properties at the bulk scale.

Due to the slow biodegradation of plastic and the increasing amount of produced material, recycling of plastic waste is of major importance to reduce the negative impact on the environment that an ever-growing world population causes.

In the field of machine vision, sensor-based sorting is an important real-time application that enables the separation of a material feed into different classes.

This paper describes the field demonstration of a new on-conveyor sensor for bulk sensing and sorting of copper ores. The sensor is based on certain classes of Magnetic Resonance (MR), that although well understood for many decades, to the author’s knowledge have not previously been exploited for on-line quantitative measurement in the mining industry.

The light packaging recovery plant, which is a key factor in the success of recycling in Mallorca, has been constantly improving operations since it opened in 2003. This plant represents a vital preliminary stage to enable the recycling of all the packaging waste deposited by residents of Mallorca in the yellow containers. In 2017, a series of improvements were carried out at the plant to optimise operations.

The REDWAVE Process Monitoring and Control System (PMCS) allows maximum automation of systems as well as optimisation of the entire sorting process

In January 2017, the Ontario Government began implementing North America’s first circular economy waste diversion regimei ("Circular Economy Framework"), which included Independent Producer Responsibility ("IPR").

Source segregation forms the essential precondition for recycling. Separate collection systems applied in industrialised countries are less suited for developing countries.

Glasses from the optical specialised glass industry often contain considerable amounts of rare earth elements (REE) like Lanthanum and Yttrium. These are usually bound in the shape of a silicate matrix.

In order to treat household waste Romerike Avfallsforedling (ROAF) located in Skedsmorkorset north of Oslo, Norway required the installation of a mechanical Treatment facility to process 40,000 tpa. Together with a Norwegian based technical consultancy Mepex and German based technical consultancy EUG the project was tendered and the plant build against a technical specification. In 2013 the project was awarded to Stadler Anlagenbau and since April 2014 the plant is in operation with an hourly throughput of thirty tons. The input waste contains specific green coloured bags containing food waste which is collected together with the residual waste from the households. The process recovers successfully the green food bags before the remaining waste is mechanically pre-treated and screened to isolate a polymer rich fraction which is then fully segregated via NIR technology in to target polymers prior to fully automated product baling. Recoverable Fibre is optically targeted as well as ferrous and non-ferrous metals. All food waste is transported off site for further biological treatment and the remaining residual waste leaves site for thermal recovery. In 2015 the plant has been successfully upgraded to forty tons per hour and remains fully automated including material baling.

Imagine that you are the mayor of a city named Metropolis and are in Charge of School logistics. Before doing so, you might have to ask yourself a few essential questions. What kind of transportation will you provide? Who will it benefit: students, staff or both? Where will the service be provided? When will it be provided: in the evening, morning? And finally, how much will it cost? All these essential questions need to be answered before starting to implement this project and to buy your buses. By doing so, planning, financing, building and operating the chosen mean of Transportation will become an easier task. After that, your political decisions will direct the choice of implication of private sector on the different aspects of your project.

Waste Management is ubiquitous in our everyday life. Economic prosperity and the abundance of materialistic goods imply the generation of waste. In parallel the public awareness for environmentally sound solutions in the field of waste management is raising. This context imposes challenging conditions for political leaders. Often politicians are confronted to take decisions about concepts or investments in waste management without independent expertise. They are approached by vendors of waste treatment technologies or concepts, claiming high environmental and energetic performance, combined with profitable cost – benefit rates.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) known as trash or garbage consists of food waste, paper, cardboard, plastics, PET, glass, textiles, metals, wood and leather, nappies, slug, ash, etc. are arising from human and animal activities. The rapid development and urbanization of China have resulted in an increasing volume of MSW. So the problem of MSW management has become a major social problem, but one the other hand, because of their intrinsic properties, MSW are often reusable and may be considered a resource for energy recovery. The delivering quantity of household waste averages 179 million tons in China, and the amount of untreated MSW over the years has reached 7 billion tons.

X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) is an element sensitive detection method and all kinds of materials can be separated as long as they are different in at least one element with an atomic number of Calcium or higher. Due to this capability XRF-Sensors can amongst other things be used to separate different kinds of glass (lead-glass, ceramics,…), different metals (e.g. “meatballs” in scrap preparation) or in mining plants to separate metal rich from dead rocks.