Efficiency, quality, sustainable prices, and availability of public services contribute to determine the quality of life of citizens (Kirkpatrick and Lucio, 1995). Among these services, the municipal solid waste services, due to its direct influence on the urban environment, to the resulting cost on the citizens, and to the competing private companies, still necessitates significant improvement with regard to efficiency and resources (human, financial and structural) allocation.

As one of the cornerstones of sustainable materials management, integrated solid waste management strives towards the harmonization of economic, environmental and social benefits by appropriately steering post-consumer material flows. The adequate management of waste streams from society requires the integration of different technologies into a system, which minimizes the hazards on human health and the environment and maximizes the resource recovery, while being economically and socially sustainable.

Linear and integer programming can be a useful decision support tool when optimizing solid waste management systems. Optimizing the haul, transfer and final disposal of MSW through linear programming has been a typical optimization problem since the ‘70s, when emphasis was given to finding the optimum collection routes (Truitt et al., 1969) as well as to determining facility locations and capacities (Esmaili, 1972; Kirka 1988; Or and Curi, 1993).

System impact comparisons are made at all levels of society. At the individual level: should I buy a small economical car and rent a bigger one when I need to transport bigger items, or shall I buy a bigger car? At the industrial level when facing escalating labor costs: should my enterprise invest in a new production unit in a Low-Income Country (LIC), or should I robotize my existing enterprise in the High-Income Country (HIC)? Often we tend to make these impact comparisons or parts thereof rather intuitive and equally often our impact comparisons turn out to cover only those aspects of the system which are relatively easy to compare. It goes without saying that this way we may miss out on elements which are of importance.

Each inhabitant in Stavanger produces an annual amount of about 430 kg of household waste (see table 1). More than 80% of this is collected at the household from a 3-bin system. In addition hazardous waste and smaller WEEE-goods are collected from each household twice a year. Almost all other types of waste can be delivered to one of the 48 unmanned recycling points or at the manned recycling station. The level of source separation amounts to the quite high portion of 65%. The separated waste is mainly recycled into new materials, including compost. (Session A6: Waste collection)

Santander is one of the most important tourist cities of northern Spain, with an estimated population of 185.000 inhabitants. As a modern European city, Santander performs municipal solid waste management satisfactorily, and has implemented a separate waste collection system since 2003. Currently it has an average production of municipal solid waste of 1.14 kilograms per inhabitant per day, with a recycling rate of 39.9, 22.7 and 30.0 per cent of paper and cardboard, packaging, and glass respectively. (Session A6: Waste collection)

After three years of negotiation between the institutions of the Community on 29 May 2006 the new Regulation (EC) o 1013/2006 on Shipments of Waste has been passed by the Council.

The waste hierarchy is an easy and comprehendible tool for supporting decision making in solid waste management. The waste hierarchy gives priority to waste reduction, reuse and recycling, incineration and landfilling but the basis for this priority is quite uncertain (McDougall,F.R. et al., 2001;Rasmussen,C. et al., 2005). Thus, it has been the aim to evaluate waste management systems by their environmental profiles by using life cycle assessment.

SUMMARY: The population on earth is growing in urban and rural areas. More people generate more waste. More waste needs more installations. New sites are not popular and have to be established at remote areas. This means long transportation distance.

Hochiminh city is the biggest economical, industrial, commercial, export and service center of Vietnam. Thanks to the advantage of the geographical position, climate, soil, land and waterway transportation systems, Hochiminh city obtains the highest economic development rate (12 – 15%/year) of the country. The city has become the main force for not only the Southern Major Economic Region but for the whole country, too.

Solid Waste Management: Identification of a new sanitary landfill site, comparative site rating and Environmental Impact Assessment, rehabilitation/final closure of existing dumpsites

The definition of the concept of waste laid down in Directive 75/442/EEC on waste constitutes the keystone of all sectoral regulation on waste products, including the Community rules pertaining to the trans-frontier movement of waste. The definition runs as follows: ”any substance or object in the categories set out in Annex 1 which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard” is deemed to be waste.

The use of pure plant oils (PPO) as a transportation fuel has a number of advantages not only compared to fossil fuels, but also compared to other bio-fuels:

The amount of waste exportet from the Netherlands to Germany has increased heavily during the last years from 526.000 tons in 1998 up to almost 4 million tons in 2003.

Kuwait city, located on the Arabian Gulf, with a total population of circa 2.5 million (only of which 0.8 million are Kuwaiti nationals), is considered to be a fast growing city.

The article investigates the extent to which EU regulations relating to the law on State aid apply in Switzerland in the aftermath of the conclusion of the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU. Specific consideration is given to the State measures implemented in relation to the “Swiss” airline.