AWD Publications: shortened version
APPLICATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN WASTE DATABASE TO
REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Stephen Moore and Shin-Yu Tu
CRC for Waste Management & Pollution Control Ltd.,
University of New South Wales Sydney 2052 Australia
Key Words : Australia; database; environmental management; waste
ABSTRACT
The CRC for Waste Management & Pollution Control has established a national
waste database for the Environment Protection Agency of Australia over the past
three years, with cooperation from State environmental protection authorities.
The aim of the Australian Waste Database is to establish an accessible waste
generation and disposal information system to be used by a range of
organisations for improving the management of waste. The objectives that needed
to be accomplished to establish the Database were to establish a uniform
classification system, to develop guidelines on the sampling and
characterisation of wastes, and to establish a PC based relational database.
This paper outlines the structure and operation of the Australian Waste
Database, and then explains how it can be used, along with other tools such as
Life Cycle Assessment and Regional Materials Flux Analysis, for improving
regional environmental management.
International Conference on Advances in Strategic Technologies
12 - 15 June 1995
Faculty of Engineering
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Bangi, 43600 Selangor, Malaysia
Ecologically Sustainable Development ( ESD ) has become a guiding principle for
environmental management in Australia. Following the Rio Earth Summit and the
production of Agenda 21, Australia formed a series of ESD working groups to
analyse the implications for a range of sectors in the economy. These consisted
of agriculture, forest use, energy production, energy use, fisheries,
manufacturing, mining, tourism, and transport. In addition cross - sectoral
issues were addressed. The Council of Australian Governments (Prime Minister,
1992 ) agreed that ".. future development of policies and programs should take
place within the framework of the ESD Strategy ..". New South Wales has
included ESD principles in their Environment Protection Act ( 1992).
While this general agreement on broad principles has been reached, there remains
a great deal of work to be done in "operationalising" the principles into
practice, where they affect the day to day decisions of regulatory authorities
and project proponents. This paper examines the implications of ESD principles
for waste management, which is a cross-sectoral area of importance to regional
environmental management. In particular the paper addresses two questions :
-
How do ESD principles influence the practice of waste management?
-
What data are required to enable implementation and monitoring of these
principles in waste management ?
The paper concludes with an outline of how the Australian Waste Database ( AWD )
will meet some of these data needs and argues that a move to a more holistic
materials accounting is required for successful implementation of ESD
principles in regional environmental management.
ESD DERIVED GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR WASTE MANAGEMENT
Guiding principles for waste management derived from ESD principles are
suggested in this section. The data that will be required to enable these
principles to be implemented are also described. Each of five major ESD
principles; namely, intergenerational equity, intragenerational equity,
biodiversity, the precautionary principle and global issues, are dealt with in
turn ( refer Moore, 1995 for a more detailed treatment ).
Intergenerational Equity
ESD Principle : Intergenerational Equity is normally stated as the
fundamental definition of ESD, namely that "the current generation should not
compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs in material
and non-material terms ".
Application to Waste Management : Application of this ESD principle to
waste management would lead to the requirement that all waste produced by this
generation be managed in such a way that the next generation (taken as 30 years
from now) incurs no liability by way of environmental quality degradation
and/or the cost of remediating environmentally degraded assets.
The principle could be extended to state that we should try to leave future
generations with potential assets from our waste management processes rather
than potential liabilities. In this regard, the establishment of monofils to
accept waste treatment residues high in potentially valuable materials, could
provide future generations with an asset when markets and technologies change
(Brunner and Baccini, 1992). Indeed, recyclables collected now, without an
economic market, could be stored in dry cells for future use when scarcity
and/or technology make them economically attractive to mine.
Data Requirements : The data requirements of this guiding principle are
to compile an inventory of waste repositories, and to report on the composition
and state of the materials in each repository, so that statements on
liabilities ( wastes not yet at final storage quality ) and assets ( in
monofils ) could be made.
Intragenerational Equity
ESD Principle : Intragenerational equity requires that the distributional
effects of development on the allocation of benefits and costs need to be
considered, both in the introduction of economic growth policies and projects,
and in policies aimed at other aspects of ESD (such as reducing greenhouse gas
emissions by increasing fuel costs).
Application to Waste Management : The principle of intragenerational
equity applied to waste management would require the costs and benefits of the
waste management system to be equitably shared among individuals in the
community.
Past poor management of waste by indiscriminate dumping and landfilling has
created contaminated sites with local environmental problems of contaminated
groundwater, soils and air. This has provided benefits to parts of the
community (through artificially low waste disposal costs) and obviously placed
very high costs on individuals and small sections of the community affected by
the contaminated site.
In regions where a comprehensive waste management system has been introduced,
there are still difficulties with the implementation of this principle.
Environmental costs may be born by a small number of individuals in the
community, and it is this issue which makes the siting of new treatment and
disposal facilities so difficult.
If this ESD principle is to be implemented, a means of arriving at a more
equitable distribution of the costs needs to be developed. In newly
industrialising countries, the principle can be accommodated by having the
treatment and possibly the disposal facility for hazardous wastes located
within the industrial estate, which is normally separate from the residential
areas, thereby enabling the benefits and costs to be born by the one group,
with the whole community receiving a benefit. This is more problematic in
cities, including most Australian cities, with dispersed industries and a
legacy of poor planning that allowed residential areas to be located adjacent
to industrial areas. It is also obviously difficult for urban solid waste.
Data Requirements : Data required to enable this principle to be
implemented includes information on where waste is being generated and where it
is being treated and disposed of.
Conservation of Biodiversity
ESD Principle : Biological diversity encompasses three levels (ESD
Working Group Chairs, 1992) :
-
genetic diversity - the total range of genetic information contained in the
genes of all living things
-
species diversity - the variety of species of organisms on earth
-
ecosystem diversity - the variety of habitats, biotic communities, and
ecological processes and interactions that characterise the biosphere.
Changes in biodiversity have been a feature of geological time frames, as
indicated by the geological record. However, when the rate of change can be
measured in time frames of decades, there is concern that the natural capacity
of ecosystems to respond may be exceeded. If this occurs, then the benefits and
values associated with biodiversity may be threatened.
Application to Waste management : Implementation of the biodiversity
principle would require that the management of wastes not impact on species and
ecosystem diversity. This could require routing of hazardous waste truck
movements to avoid sensitive areas within regions, and the establishment of
emission standards that would not impact on ecosystems. Current good practice
in treating and disposing of waste requires that emission standards are adhered
to. These emission standards are usually based on what Best Available
Technology (BAT) can achieve. Conventional risk analysis usually indicates that
the risk to human health from these emission levels are very low, and
relatively low compared with other similarly calculated risks to health from
anthropogenic sources (this should not be interpreted to mean that these risks
levels are "acceptable", a relevant and complex issue not dealt with in this
paper.) However, ecotoxicology has not yet been able to confidently provide
acceptable emission standards for the host of substances contained in waste
emissions to the environment (Baccini & Brunner, 1991), and there are
consequently limits to the practical implementation of this principle in the
area of waste management.
Data Requirements : Data requirements for this principle would include
the mapping of ecological resources, and overlay mapping of emissions from
waste management and other anthropogenic processes in order to enable
assessment of the potential for adverse impact on biodiversity. This is a
complex and difficult area, and our science is not sufficiently developed to a
stage where we can rely on ecotoxicological risk based approaches. More
pragmatic materials flux analysis (Brunner and Baccini, 1992) may be an
appropriate interim solution.
The Precautionary Principle
ESD Principles : There are a number of definitions of the precautionary
principle, and it is perhaps the most poorly developed of the ESD principles. A
conference (Institute of Environmental Studies, 1993) on the precautionary
principle highlighted the current developing nature of this principle, with a
range of perspectives provided in the Proceedings. The definition now commonly
adopted in Australia is that agreed to in the InterGovernmental Agreement on
the Environment (1992):
"Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack
of full scientific knowledge should not be used as a reason for postponing
measures to prevent environmental degradation.
In the application of the precautionary principle public and private decisions
should be guided by :
-
careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible
damage to the environment; and
-
an assessment of the risk weighted consequences of various options."
Application to Waste Management and Data Requirements : There will be
difficulties in operationalising the precautionary principle in the waste
management ( and other ) fields, because of the political judgements required
in the determination of what is a 'serious' threat, and problems of identifying
irreversible damage in advance. Data on waste quantities and characteristics
will at least reduce some of the sources of uncertainty in dealing with this
class of problems in waste management, where the precautionary principle may
have to be introduced.
Global Issues
ESD Principles : The Brundtland report (WCED, 1991) had a particular
focus on the relationship between underdevelopment and threats to global
environmental sustainability, concluding that without growth and development,
environmental problems in underdeveloped countries, which have global
implications, could not be addressed. The Chairs of the ESD Working Groups
refer to the need for Australia to address this nexus in its overseas aid
program, and then concentrate their discussion on two aspects of global issues
:
-
International agreements and obligations in the environmental area as well as
the influence of trade agreements on global environmental issues.
-
The global and cross-border dimension of some environmental problems,
particularly greenhouse gas emissions , ozone depleting substances,
biodiversity (rainforest destruction) and some emerging issues in waste
management.
While Australia often contributes a relatively small total contribution to
environmental problems with a global dimension, the per capita contribution is
often high (for instance greenhouse gas emissions), because of the structure of
the Australian economy.
Application to Waste Management : The implications of complying with ESD
principles aimed at minimising global environmental degradation, in the waste
management field include:
-
Complying with international agreements on the transport of hazardous waste
across borders, such as the Basel Convention.
-
Treating hazardous organic wastes in such a way as to minimise greenhouse gas
emissions in a region.
-
Ozone depleting substances such as CFCs and halons being taken out of service
should be considered waste, and be treated appropriately.
-
The acceptability of achieving hazardous waste management goals by moving
chemical processes that produce the waste to another region or country, needs
to be considered in the context of global issues; in some cases a nett
deterioration may result.
Data Requirements : Implementation of the above principles requires the
monitoring of interstate and international waste movements in Australia; and
recording the contribution of waste management processes to greenhouse
emissions. Relocation of waste producing industries to other regions could be
tracked by monitoring waste types produced by industry sectors by region;
however, more comprehensive materials accounting ( including raw materials and
products ) is likely to yield a better understanding of this final aspect.
IMPLEMENTATION OF GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR WASTE MANAGEMENT
The previous section has indicated how ESD principles could be applied to derive
a set of guiding principles for waste management, and has also indicated what
data would be needed to be able to monitor the success of the implementation of
these principles. However, this leaves unanswered the question of " how can
these principles be implemented ?", i.e. what are the means to achieve
the desired goals ? This section briefly reviews some means which may be
appropriate in enabling these ESD derived waste management principles to be
implemented. The means themselves will also have data requirements, and these
are briefly described.
The means have been grouped into the areas of : Materials minimisation; Cleaner
Production; Waste Minimisation ( or Pollution Prevention ); Waste Treatment and
Disposal. There are overlaps between these areas and there are no generally
accepted clearly defined boundaries : each area can be thought of as belonging
to a continuum of environmental and waste management means or tools.
Materials Minimisation
There is increasing agreement that it is our use/misuse of materials ( and
associated energy ) to support our style of living that is the root of our
environmental problems, and also the source of some potential solutions
(Brunner and Baccini, 1994). If we can redesign our economy to support the same
or enhanced functions that our society needs and desires, with reduced
materials consumption, then this alone would be consistent with the ESD derived
guiding principles for waste management. A number of materials accounting
techniques have been developed to measure whether a particular economy is
moving in this preferred direction, including :
-
Material Intensity Per Service Unit ( MIPS ), developed by the
Wuppertal Institute (Lehmann and Schmidt - Bleek, 1993), measures the weighted
total mass of all materials ( including an allowance for energy ) consumed in
providing a unit of service.
-
Sustainable Process Index ( SPI ), developed by Narodoslawsky from
TU Graz (Narodoslawsky et al, 1994 ), computes the total area to embed a
process into a region in a sustainable way.
-
Materials Flux Analysis ( MFA ), developed by Baccini and Brunner ( 1991
), measures the flux of materials in goods through a region over time.
Identification of the sources and stocks of materials in the " anthroposphere "
can lead to prediction of future waste streams and enable anticipatory
environmental management policies to be developed. Unsustainable waste
emissions can be identified by comparison of anthropogenic emissions with
natural geogenic "emissions".
In each of these materials accounting approaches, waste data is an important (
but not sufficient ) data requirement. Additional information on materials and
energy balances of important processes in regions is required in order to
complete the analysis.
Cleaner Production
UNEP defines Cleaner Production as " ...the continuous application of an
integrated preventative environmental strategy to processes and products so as
to reduce risks to humans and the environment. For processes, this means
conserving raw materials and energy, eliminating toxic raw materials, and
reducing the quantity and toxicity of all emissions and wastes before they
leave a process. For products, cleaner production means to reduce impacts along
the entire product life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.
Cleaner production is achieved by applying know-how, by improving technology,
and/or by changing management attitudes. " (reported in Scaife, 1992 ).
Reducing the amount and toxicity of emissions from all life cycle stages of
products will certainly move the economy towards ESD.
Life Cycle Assessment ( LCA ) is the primary tool for implementation of Cleaner
Production by the means described in this definition. LCA requires compilation
of raw materials and energy used, and emissions produced in order to design
improvements in existing processes or to compare options for new processes and
products. The use of LCA in Cleaner Production is similar to the use of MIPS,
SPI and MFA for regional environmental management. The difference is one of
scale. Logically, the micro scale LCAs of all products and processes in a
region could be summed to yield the macro scale MFA for a material in a region.
Practically, this is not possible and the two approaches are likely to be
developed separately to answer the questions they were designed for. They can
be considered as complementary, in that the macro materials accounting
approaches identify the particular materials, goods and processes in a region
that are important for regional environmental management; LCA and Cleaner
Production can then optimise the environmental design of these target goods and
the industrial processes that create them.
LCA requires information on waste emissions from a series of generic unit
processes, either at a region specific or a general level, so that inventories
of emissions for a particular product made by a process composed of a number of
sub-processes can be derived.
Waste Minimisation
In accordance with OECD practice, waste minimisation is taken to include waste
avoidance/elimination, waste reduction ( quantity and/or toxicity ), reuse and
recycling. It focuses on the production of goods in a particular industrial
process, without the attention to upstream and downstream effects that is
encompassed by Cleaner Production. Waste minimisation can therefore be seen as
a sub-set of Cleaner Production. More recently the concept has also been
applied to wastes arising from the process household. Waste minimisation is
consistent with ESD principles ( see Moore, 1995, for a detailed treatment of
this), but it does not provide guidance on the most efficient path to ESD, nor
does it provide confidence that waste emissions are not simply being
transferred to another region or media.
Means to achieve waste minimisation include reuse and recycling of waste
materials within and between processes; and source reduction techniques of
material substitution, product redesign, and process efficiency improvement.
Monitoring of the effectiveness of various waste minimisation policies and
techniques at the regional and facility level require measurement and reporting
of waste streams. An appropriate reporting system for waste minimisation has
yet to be developed and receive wide acceptance.
Waste Treatment and Disposal
Because of the existing stock of goods in the anthroposphere ( Brunner and
Baccini, 1992) and because of entropy considerations, it will always be
necessary to use waste treatment and disposal in regional waste and
environmental management systems, although the "size" of the contribution from
this system element may decline over time as goods designed for recylability
reach the end of their life. Waste treatment and disposal can be compatible
with ESD provided the emissions from these and other processes ( transport etc
) do not exceed the sustainable regional loads for various materials. It is not
easy to determine what these loads are, and until risk based ecotoxicological
approaches become more refined, geogenic reference values may provide a
pragmatic alternative.
Measurement of waste stream amounts and their composition is important if waste
treatment and disposal processes are to be designed to ensure final emissions
to the environment do not exceed these acceptable levels. Examination of the
above complementary approaches to waste and regional environmental management
indicates that, once tools like Materials Flux Analysis and Life Cycle
Assessment are introduced, waste streams can be characterised by a combination
of direct sampling and analysis and indirect materials balance approaches. Some
level of direct waste measurement and reporting will be required.
AUSTRALIAN RESPONSES
The finalisation of the work of the ESD working groups, its application to waste
management, and the development of the National Waste Minimisation and
Recycling Strategy created a clear need to establish data collection and
reporting systems, so that the achievement of targets defined in these
strategies could be monitored. A series of related programs have been initiated
to address these information needs, including :
-
ERIN ( the Environmental Resource Information Network ) is an Internet site for
the distribution of information on a range of Australian environmental issues.
The ERIN home page is at the URL http://kaos.erin.gov.au:80/erin.html.
-
A proposal for a National Pollutant Inventory ( NPI ) is being developed to
provide a comprehensive report on the sources and composition of emissions from
industrial, transport and household processes in regions. The Australian Waste
Database, covering urban solid waste and manifested hazardous waste will form
two of a possible six moduled NPI. ( CEPA, 1994)
-
A system of State of the Environment reports is being established, reporting on
waste generation and other environmental issues.
The remainder of this paper describes the development of the Australian Waste
Database, an integral part of this suite of responses to Australia's
environmental information needs. It has been designed to satisfy the data needs
of the ESD waste management principles, and the data needs of the means of
implementing those principles ( cleaner production etc.) described in preceding
sections of this paper.
THE AUSTRALIAN WASTE DATABASE
The Database will consist of three modules; namely, solid waste streams,
recyclable material recovery rates, and manifested hazardous waste ( Moore et
al, 1994).
Solid Waste Streams and Composition :
This is a record of the monthly arisings of Municipal Waste, Commercial and
Industrial Waste, and Building and Demolition Waste streams, as recorded by
gatehouses at waste facilities, and reported to the State EPAs as required by
various regulations. Waste arisings from these sources will be aggregated by
region and waste disposal facility type. A variety of reports by region, waste
type, generation rate, and disposal route will be produced by the Database. At
various times, samples are taken from each of the streams and subjected to
material type, and physical and chemical analysis. Data from these analyses
will be reported in this module of the Database. At present there are no
regulatory requirements for the conduct of such composition studies, and the
Database will be reliant on voluntary submission of data from those conducting
the studies.
Recyclable Material Recovery Rates
Data on recycling rates of various materials will be reported in this module of
the Database.
Manifested Hazardous Waste Streams
Aggregated summaries, by industry type and region, of each type of manifested
hazardous waste will be recorded in this module. Reports on waste type by
period, by region, and by industry group are being produced. An example of part
of a report is shown in Figure 1.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has described the waste management principles that can be derived
from ESD principles, and has then suggested how these waste management
principles could be implemented. Implementation by a range of means, from
materials minimisation approaches through cleaner production/waste minimisation
to waste treatment and disposal, will require a set of spatial and temporal
information on wastes and materials.
The waste information system to be established by the Australian Waste Database
is a necessary, but not sufficient, system to meet the information needs of a
comprehensive regional waste and environmental management system. The AWD will
need to be integrated with a comprehensive materials information system if we
are to progress from merely monitoring the impact of waste management policies,
towards an anticipatory style of regional environmental management.
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. 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.
REFERENCES
Baccini, P & Brunner, P; 1991; Metabolism of the Anthroposhere,
Springer Verlag, Berlin.
Brunner, P & Baccini, P; 1992; Regional Materials Management and
Environmental Protection, Waste Management & Research, Vol 10, pp
203 - 212
Brunner, P & Baccini, P, 1994; Materials Management & Regional
Sustainability, Summary of outcomes of an international workshop,
Vienna April 24 - 28, 1994
CEPA 1994; A Proposal for a National Pollutant Inventory, AGPS, Canberra.
ESD Working Groups Chairs 1992, Intersectoral Issues Report, AGPS, Canberra.
Institute of Environmental Studies 1993; The Precautionary Principle, Conf
Proc. 20 - 21 Sept. University of NSW
Lehmann, H; Schmidt-Bleek; 1993; Material Flows from a Systematical Point of
View, in Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, Vol 2 No 8, August 1993, pp
413 - 418.
Moore S J, Kung B, Tu S-Y, Toong P, vd Broek E 1994; Towards the establishment
of a National Waste Database, Proc. AWWA/WMAA 2nd National Solid and Hazardous
Waste Conference, Australian Water and WasteWater Association,
Melbourne.
Moore, S J 1995; Regional Hazardous Waste Management Systems, Master of
Engineering Science thesis, University of Adelaide.
Narodoslawsky, M; Krotscheck, C; Sage, J 1994; The Sustainable Process Index
(SPI) : A Measure for Process Industries, in MM-ARS Workshop, op cit.
Prime Minister of Australia, P J Keating. 1992. Statement on the Release of
National ESD and Greenhouse Strategies, 8 December 1992, Number 138/92.
Scaife, P 1993 ; Implementing Cleaner Production, Proc. UNEP Asia Pacific Cleaner
Production Conference, Melbourne.
UN Conference on Environment & Development (UNCED), Agenda 21, June 3
- 14 1992,Rio
WCED 1991; Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Melbourne
Figure 1
Manifested Hazardous Waste Generation per Employee in the Manufacturing
Industries in Melbourne in 1991.
|