AWD Publications:WASTE MINIMISATION PERFORMANCE MONITORING: AN AUSTRALIAN
PERSPECTIVE
Stephen Moore and Shin-Yu Tu
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Need for Waste Minimisation Performance Monitoring in Australia
A series of Conventions, Regulations and policies in Australia relating to waste
management require the collection and reporting of solid and hazardous waste
generation data at the international, national, regional and firm level. At the
international level, Australia has an obligation to collect and report waste
data in accordance with OECD Council decision C(90)178/FINAL of 31st January,
1991 and the Agenda 21 recommendations (UNCED, 1992) .
At the National and State level, governments as well as industry umbrella groups
have established policies that require the monitoring and reporting of waste
generation. Government policies include:
-
The National Waste Minimisation and Recycling Strategy, which includes a target
of reducing the quantity of waste (on a per capita basis) being disposed to
landfill by 50% of 1990 levels by yr 2000.
-
The national Kerbside Recycling Strategy, which includes recycling targets for
particular materials by 1995
-
The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (February 1992) signed by
Commonwealth, State and Local Government clarifies their roles and
responsibilities and provides a mechanism for a cooperative national approach
to the environment.
-
The ANZECC National Packaging Guidelines set targets of reducing packaging
waste requiring disposal by 50kg per capita (approximately 5% p.a.) of the
amount sent for disposal in 1991.
Industry umbrella groups have also developed policies to guide their members in
improving environmental performance. Many of these include requirements for
waste generation data collection and monitoring, often associated with the
setting of benchmarks and the monitoring of their achievement. Examples include
the Australian Manufacturing Council's Best Practice Environmental Management
and the Australian Chemical Industry Council's Responsible Care program.
1.2 The Australian Waste Database ( AWD )
It can be seen from the brief review in Section 1.1 that there is a wide
spectrum of requirements for the collection and reporting of information on
waste generation and management in Australia; similar requirements no doubt
exist in many other countries. The danger in Australia, and internationally, is
that, through a lack of coordination and standards, information will be
collected in forms that do not facilitate aggregation and comparison across
industry sectors, nor across State and National borders.
The Australian Waste Database (AWD) project was initiated by the CRC for Waste
Management and Pollution Control Ltd and the EPA of Australia to establish a
database on waste generation in Australia which can be used by State and
Federal environmental and waste management agencies, and other interested
organisations, to set and monitor the achievement of national waste
minimisation targets.
To achieve this aim, the following objectives will need to be met:
(a) Review and establish nationally agreed classification systems for various
groups.
(b) Establish a protocol for sampling and characterising urban solid wastes.
(c) Establish a national waste generation database to provide fundamental
information on the generation of different types of waste ( urban solid waste
and manifested hazardous waste) by region and in relation to relevant
parameters.
1.3 Scope of this paper
In this paper, the authors want to address some difficult and fundamental
questions relating to the need for national waste databases ( ie waste
minimisation performance monitoring ) and the extent to which they can be used
for improved regional environmental management. The questions are :
-
Is it useful to set waste minimisation targets ? ie have we asked the right
question ?
-
What issues need to be addressed in establishing individual numerical targets
for waste streams and materials in waste streams ?
-
What methods can be used to collect and manage waste generation data ?
Detailed descriptions of the manner in which the AWD will collect and manage
waste data are provided in reports produced by the project and are available
from the authors on request. General issues and approaches only are covered in
this paper. The paper concludes with some suggestions for ISWA involvement in
coordinating possible international activities in the field of waste
information standardisation.
2 WASTE MINIMISATION TARGETS
2.1 Targets in General
2.1.1 Advantages in setting targets
The importance and prime advantage of setting targets for waste minimisation has
been that they focus the attention of the various players involved, and move
the management of wastes in the preferred direction. The 'reduce by half by Yr
2000' phrase is easy to remember and challenging enough to cause organisations
to drastically re-evaluate their material use/waste generation. This is what is
required; marginal improvements, while important, may not be enough to achieve
the desired ends. The remainder of this review is concerned with a
critique of the setting and monitoring of actual targets, but this general
comment should be remembered to provide a proper perspective on the issues
discussed.
It is also important that resources spent on collection of data do not exceed
the potential benefits of such collection. Targets should be set covering the %
of population covered directly by data collection procedures, and an
appropriate range of communities and industries from which data is collected.
2.1.2 The context in which targets are set
The various targets on total waste stream quantities being disposed, reductions
in the quantity of certain goods (packaging) in the waste stream, and increases
in recycling rates of certain materials all generally aim to increase waste
minimisation, which is at the top of the preferred hierarchy of waste
management, now a principle adopted by most Australian State environmental
authorities.
Waste minimisation can be seen as one of the principles to assist in the
achievement of sustainable development in the field of waste management; and
sustainable waste management could be defined as control (minimisation,
treatment and disposal) of emissions to within environmental protection limits
and an appropriate contribution to conservation of resources (Brunner &
Baccini, 1992). A recent international workshop on Materials Management and
Regional Sustainability (Brunner & Baccini, 1994) concluded that in order
to do this in a sustainable way (ie, indefinitely into the future), we must go
beyond managing waste materials as a separate system, and move towards managing
materials as a whole in regions.
When we have an understanding of the material flows in a region we know which
input goods are significant, where the stocks of certain materials are
accumulating (for possible future disposal as waste or as a resource), and
where both current and future waste emissions will arise under different
materials management scenarios. We can then design materials management systems
to most efficiently satisfy the dual objectives of controlling emissions and
conserving resources. We might then be able to derive (rational) waste
minimisation targets for specific materials and (rational) waste reduction % to
landfill disposal, because this is what is required by the sustainable
development criteria of emission limits and resource conservation.
With landfill prices in Australia ranging from US$5 - 30 / t for urban solid
waste, it is difficult to argue that there is a scarcity of the resource
"landfill space". It would appear, therefore, that waste reduction to landfill
and material specific recycling targets are, or should be, set on the basis of
the sustainable waste management objectives of resource conservation and the
potential for certain materials in certain quantities to cause unacceptable
emission levels.
Concentration of monitoring resources on ambient environmental quality and waste
outputs will only provide a (very good) understanding of the problem after it
has manifested itself in the monitoring data. Authorities and institutions then
need to react to remediate the now identified problem, and to change the
system so that the problem does not continue to occur. Experience has shown
that this may take 30 years in the case of problems that can be remediated
(Phosphorus eutrophication of lakes for example), while in cases such as ozone
depletion, remediation may not be possible. Therefore monitoring and target
setting at the waste/output end of the materials management system is not
enough. Indeed, because of the inherent difficulties associated with measuring
all the attributes of waste ( Section 2.1.3 ), a strong argument can be made
for only measuring the core material, stripped of the messy higher
levels of meaning, for which our measuring instruments are sorely deficient.
2.1.3 Inherent difficulties associated with defining "waste"
Solid Waste is defined as a material which has negative value to its owner in a
particular place and time. This means that the one material (eg scrap tyres) :
-
may be a waste to a particular owner now, but be a resource to the same owner
in the future,
-
may be a waste to one owner, but be a resource to other owners in different
locations and/or times.
Solid waste is more than just a material that can be measured by scientific
means alone; it also has attributes of economic value which are dependent on
the location of the material in space and time. Additional attributes of solid
wastes are acquired through their political/institutional setting; for example,
the management of solid waste is influenced by the type of institution
(private, local government, state government) given responsibility for it
beyond the owner. Thompson ( 1994) argues that wastes also acquire meaning
through their cultural context - the one material can evoke very different
psychological reactions from people in different cultures. These different
levels of meaning associated with solid waste make measuring and recording it,
and undertaking inter-regional comparisons, a complex exercise.
There needs to be an efficient allocation of resources to monitoring all parts
of our materials usage, not just materials when they become wastes, so that the
best data for proactive environmental management can be obtained. This may take
some time, and in the interim the monitoring of waste generation and disposal
(and environmental effects) with feedback to waste production processes
(industrial and household) should continue so that materials management, of
which waste management is a sub system, moves in the preferred direction. This
also means that resources would be better spent on establishing
regional/country materials accounting systems than on refining waste generation
data collection so that errors are reduced from the current +/- 20 - 30 %(?) to
say 10 - 15 %, but not 2 - 3 %.
2.2 Specific Targets
In setting waste minimisation targets, such as a reduction by 50 % in waste
generation/disposal (?) to landfill, and in setting recycling targets for waste
materials; there are some fundamental issues which need to be addressed, namely
:
-
What is 100% ?Should the base year (1990 in Australia ) starting point be the
same for all communities, or the (different) 1990 level for each community (the
difficulty of knowing the 1990 level is appreciated).
-
How is recycling % defined ?Difficulties associated with setting recycling
targets for waste materials include :
-
how should/can waste reduction through light weighting and reuse be included in
these targets.
-
how can imports and exports be accounted for; both between regions in Australia
and between Australia and overseas.
-
Are all means to the end of reducing waste generation/disposal equally
preferred, or do some have priority and perhaps some should not be counted at
all. For instance, how should the following be treated:
-
waste reduction associated with economic recessions,
-
incineration to reduce waste to landfill, with and without energy recovery,
with and without metal recovery,
-
recycling activities which consume more energy and materials than are "saved",
-
waste reduction per head by increasing people per household, or vice versa ( it
may be that households are more significant than people as a unit of waste
production for some waste streams and material types).
2.3 Accuracy of Data
The current poor reliability of waste data in Australia arises from a number of
factors (Moore et al, 1993); in summary :
-
The lack of a consistent solid waste classification system, leading to
uncertainty over what is included or excluded in apparently similar waste
streams.
-
The different methods used to measure the quantity of waste arising, leading to
different levels of confidence in the accuracy of the data
-
The purpose for which the data is being collected, leading to bias.
The Australian Waste Database project should lead to direct and early
improvement in the first two sources of error, and it is hoped will indirectly
influence the third source of error in the medium term, through information
feedback having a positive influence on data collection procedures.
3 DATA SOURCES
3.1 General Approaches
There are a range of methods that have been, and are currently being, developed
to obtain information on waste generation, disposal and recycling rates. There
is no one best method for collecting information on waste generation rates, and
where possible (including regard for the resources available), the principle of
data redundancy should be built into the study; i.e., a number of different
approaches to determining the one result should be attempted in order to
improve the confidence in that result and the understanding of the system being
analysed. Reliance on single methods can often mask significant omissions
because of bias inherent in the method.
The AWD project will document in some detail the variety of approaches that are
being developed. A summary of the main methods currently available is provided
in the remainder of this section.
3.1.1 Waste generation and disposal quantities :
Waste stream arisings and disposal quantities (t of waste stream/region and
month or year) may be determined by :
-
Directly weighing (or inferring weight by counting trucks with assumed waste
weights) waste from identified sources at the gatehouse of waste treatment and
disposal facilities. Records kept by the operator of the landfill may then be
accessed by :
-
Undertaking a questionnaire survey of the whole sample population of :
-
waste generators, who have contracts with the disposal facility
-
waste regulators at the State level, who receive data associated with
Regulations
-
owners of waste landfills and treatment facilities.
-
Indirectly accessing the databases now being established by each State
authority responsible for regulating waste management.
-
Selectively sampling a small representative number of facilities and/or
councils, possibly in conjunction with Australian Bureau of Statistics ( ABS )
regular surveys.
-
Reviewing Waste Management Plans prepared by Councils and regions.
-
Materials balance techniques, whereby information on the import of goods and
materials into a region, their use within the region, and export from the
region is used to build a model of the storage of materials and production of
wastes in the region. The model can only be made as fine as the statistical
data will allow, and so the system boundary is often that of the country.
3.1.2 Waste composition
Composition of the various waste streams can be assessed by one or a combination
of the following methods ( Brunner and Ernst, 1986 ) :
Direct sampling and sorting studies, using a variety of sampling
approaches (at the point of generation, at transfer stations, incinerators and
landfills). The techniques for the domestic waste stream are becoming better
defined, but there is still much development work to be done for Other
Domestic, Other Council, Commercial and Industrial, and Building and Demolition
waste streams. These studies can only report on the material types in the waste
stream, and some of the dominant elements, such as carbon and nitrogen. The
method is not well suited to trace element analysis.
Market analysis, or regional materials balance models, to provide
estimates of materials (such as paper, plastic) that would be expected to
report to the waste streams. The total waste generation calculated by this
method, as described above, is determined by summing all the material types in
the waste streams. The method involves the identification of significant
processes in the regional materials management system, identification of the
flow of significant goods, and then the materials balance of the system from
knowledge of the material composition of the goods and the transfer
coefficients of materials through processes (Baccini & Brunner, 1991).
Waste treatment process materials balances, using existing facilities
such as incinerators and composting plants as "instruments' to analyse the
waste stream being processed into its component elements (C, P, Cl, Hg, Pb, Fe,
Al etc). Brunner et al (1986) have analysed the composition of the products of
waste incineration plants in order to derive the transfer coefficients
(partition coefficients) for a range of elements in solid waste streams. Once
transfer coefficients are established for a particular facility, it is then
only necessary to sample one product (eg fly ash) in order to derive the
composition of the raw waste for selected elements.
All three methods have particular advantages and disadvantages, and the method
providing the most reliable answers within resource constraints, for the
particular question being asked, needs to be employed.
3.2 Sources of Data
Studies undertaken in Australia to date rely on questionnaire survey methods of
various bodies. This section has attempted to outline the full scope of waste
(and materials) data collection possibilities, and has indicated the techniques
that have been used in these survey based approaches and the approach that the
AWD will take. "Survey fatigue" of the data suppliers and the considerable
resource input by the surveyors, means that these questionnaire techniques on a
broad scale should not continue into the future. Hence the need for the
approach being developed by the AWD, whereby existing data collection processes
will be standardised and coordinated at a National level. Supplementary surveys
of samples of some of the various statistical populations may need to be
instituted, and ongoing surveys of recycling material users will be necessary.
Table 1 presents a summary of the various data sources and the use of these
sources by the AWD. This should provide a useful basis for discussion on the
data collection methods that should be used, and may explain why the
information from various sources will inevitably have some differences.
Table 1 : Application of Material Data Collection Techniques to Various Material
Parameters
Materials Regional Regional National Composition
\ Balance of Urban Solid Recycle Recycle of Urban
Material Regions (1) Waste Stream Quantities Quantity Solid Waste
Technique Quantities Streams
\ Type
UNITS t material t waste kg material % of material
type/region stream/region type/person + recycled type as a %
+ year + (month region +(year material in of waste
or year) or month) goods stream, by
weight.
kg material
type/person
+ week
MFA of * (4) AWD
processes
MFA of * * * *
regional
systems
Survey whole AWD
statistical
Population
Survey * [AWD] (2) [AWD]
sample of
statistical
Population.
Access AWD AWD
existing
Regulatory
databases
Access (AWD) (3) (AWD) AWD
Regional
Waste
Management
Plans
Direct AWD
Sampling and
sorting
studies by
various
Notes :
(1) In practice, the MFA (Materials Flux Analysis) technique considers using any
and all sources of data, with data redundancy preferred where possible.
(2) To be included in AWD if undertaken by , for instance the ABS.
(3) To be included in AWD if State authorities require Waste Management Plans
and aggregate data in a form suitable for the AWD.
(4) * means technique is applicable, but not part of scope of AWD.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In designing regional and national waste data collection systems for waste
minimisation performance monitoring, the inherent difficulties associated with
measuring waste must be recognised and addressed. Ad hoc and on-going
questionnaire surveys are unlikely to yield reliable results because of "survey
fatigue", and therefore alternative mechanisms which have other inherent needs
and benefits ( such as the collection of levy revenue which is subject to
financial audits and laws governing fraud ) should be utilised.
In the medium term, the difficulties associated with measuring waste, and the
reactive environmental policy response that waste monitoring produces, can only
be overcome through comprehensive systems of regional materials accounting.
Knowledge of our use and misuse of materials in all their life stages, rather
than only when they are raw materials and when they are wastes, is necessary
for proactive environmental management policy development.
In the short term, the demands for national waste monitoring by international
agreements and conventions requires the development of international waste
management reporting standards so that comparisons between countries can be
better made. Currently this is hardly possible because of the plethora of waste
terms and definitions, and because of the region specific higher levels of
meaning associated with waste materials. Such standardisation of reporting of
waste materials should keep in mind the use of the data for future regional
materials accounting purposes.
ISWA is in a unique position to be able to initiate and steer the development of
appropriate international reporting conventions in the field of waste
management, and the authors commend this worthwhile task to the ISWA executive.
5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Australian Waste Database referred to in this paper is a project in the
Waste Minimisation Program of the CRC for Waste Management and Pollution
Control Ltd., which has been established and supported under the Australian
Governments Cooperative Research Centres Program. The project is funded by the
Environment Protection Authority of Australia and the CRC for Waste Management
and Pollution Control Ltd.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the inspiration provided by many discussions
with Prof. Paul Brunner from the Technical University of Vienna, and are
thankful for the opportunity to participate in the Materials Management and
Regional Sustainability workshop organised by TU Wien and ETH - Zurich in 1994.
The authors are also indebted to Dr Graham Low, School of Information Systems
at UNSW, for the many discussions on the meaning of waste data. The authors
accept full responsibility for the views presented in this paper.
The authors are Senior Lecturer Waste Management, and Research Assistant AWD,
respectively, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052 Australia.
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Baccini, P & Brunner, P; 1991; Metabolism of the Anthroposhere,
Springer Verlag, Berlin.
Brunner, P & Baccini, P; 1992; Regional Materials Management and
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203 - 212
Brunner, P & Baccini, P, 1994; Materials Management & Regional
Sustainability, Summary of outcomes of an international workshop,
Vienna April 24 - 28, 1994, TU Wien Institute for Water Quality and Waste
Management, and ETH - Zurich Chair for Resources and Waste Management.
Brunner, P & Ernst, W. E., 1986; Alternative Methods for the Analysis of
Municipal Solid Waste, in Waste Management & Research, Vol 4, pp
147 - 160.
Moore, S. J.; Kung. B, Tu, S-Y; Toong, P; v d Broek, B; 1993; Establishment of a
National Waste Database for Australia, Proc. 7th National Local
Government Engineering Conference, Adelaide, 30 August - 3 September, IEA,
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UN Conference on Environment & Development (UNCED), Agenda 21, June 3
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Thompson, Michael 1994, Guest editorial in Waste Management and Research, Vol 12
No 3
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