Cut the flab!

Hong Kong has  launched a ten-year plan to reduce waste by 40 percent per person as part of efforts to catch up with other leading Asian cities and avert a looming environmental crisis. With a population of more than 7 million, the city currently sends 1.27 kg (2.8 pounds) per person per day (or 9000 tonnes) to three huge outdoor landfill sites which are set to reach capacity by 2020.

The government's 'blueprint' document proposed reaching its reduction target by expanding recycling, levying duties on household rubbish and improving waste-related infrastructure.

The government hopes to recycle 55 percent of the city's waste, incinerate 23 percent and place 22 percent in landfills by 2022. In 2011, 52 percent of waste was put into landfills and 48 percent recycled.

But the proposal to build an incinerator is unpopular with residents and some environmentalists.

Other possible measures include an expansion of food-waste recycling, a waste separation and collection system, a charge on construction waste and landfill extensions.

Taipei is being cited as an example where a volume-based waste fee system helped reduced waste per person by 65 percent from 2000 to 2011, according to Taiwan Environmental Authority statistics. What is important as Hong King rulers realised is to involve the community in the exercise by creating awareness first. Without that, any grandiose plan remains just a plan. Look at what is happening in Bangalore. A lot of noise and what have you - many parts of Bangalore, the residents have no clue what you mean by segragation! Many others still dump their garbage in the drain...

Garbage exports?

We truly live in a small world. After dumping industrial and toxic trash in the developing world all these years, Europe is now shopping for garbage to keep its cities, schools and homes heated. What better place than the developing world to shop for garbage!

Reports indicate that northern Europe needs more than 700 million tons of trash to keep its waste-to-energy plants running. Most of its current demand is either domestically met or from garbage shipped from southern Europe. Yet, the demand is far more than what neighboring countries can spare after meeting their domestic needs.  

As more waste incinerators are being built in Sweden, Norway, Austria and Germany to meet the growing demand for heating public places these countries are left with two options - either encourage households to produce more trash or else import garbage from across the world. Easier to import when garbage is mounting in the poor world. A company in England is already shipping some 1,000 tons of garbage to keep its systems running.
Since incinerators have cornered environmental controversy in India and for rightful reasons, there exists an opportunity to explore feasibility of exporting as much as 109,589 tonnes of garbage that piles our streets on a daily basis.  Win-win solution? Will we see nations fighting for garbage? Jokes apart, many fear the quality of garbage and lack of segregation in developing world could be a detractor.

What a waste

As a city like Bangalore struggles to tackle its 5000 tonnes of waste generated daily, with residents near landfills up in arms, it seems a logical solution to turn this waste to wealth. In the UK a 60MW energy-from-waste plant in Cheshire backed by Tata Chemicals and E.ON has just been given government approval. Consent was required for the construction of the £250m plant at Lostock, Northwich, after taking into account concerns around its potential health and visual impacts, as well the implications for traffic safety and the local environment. The Lostock plant deals with about 600,000 tonnes of waste-derived fuel a year. This waste has had all the economically recyclable materials removed and would otherwise be sent to landfill for disposal.

There are already umpteen such plants around the world generating power and it would make sense to study the pitfalls and learn well in time. Plans are on in Bangalore to set up a biogas plant among some other waste to energy plans with biomethanation plants taking 3 months to set up. Even these will not be effective if segregation is not done. Supreme Court guidelines say WTE can be an option only if the waste cannot be recycled or composted. Much of the waste, if segregated, can be composted. Segregation will have to start at homes.
So what is a better option – to compost or generate power? Any ideas?

Growing waste

Growing prosperity and urbanization could double the volume of municipal solid waste annually by 2025, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) for its Vital Signs Online service. Although some of this waste is eventually recycled, the doubling of waste that current projections indicate would bring the volume of municipal solid waste—or MSW—from today’s 1.3 billion tons per year to 2.6 billion tons.

MSW consists of organic material, paper, plastic, glass, metals, and other refuse collected by municipal authorities, largely from homes, offices, institutions, and commercial establishments. MSW is a subset of the larger universe of waste and typically does not include waste collected outside of formal municipal programs. Nor does it include the sewage, industrial waste, or construction and demolition waste generated by cities. And of course MSW does not include rural wastes. MSW is measured before disposal, and data on it often include collected material that is later diverted for recycling.

MSW tends to be generated in much higher quantities in wealthier regions of the world. Members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 34 industrialized nations, lead the world in MSW generation, at nearly 1.6 million tons per day.

The list of top 10 MSW-generating countries however includes four developing nations (Brazil, China, India, and Mexico) in part because of the size of their urban populations and in part because their city dwellers are prospering and adopting high-consumption lifestyles. Although the United States leads the world in MSW output at some 621,000 tons per day, China is a relatively close second, at some 521,000 tons. Even among the top 10, however, there is a wide range of output: the United States generates nearly seven times more urban refuse than France, in tenth position, does.

The global market for scrap metal and paper is at least $30 billion per year, according to the World Bank. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates the market for waste management, from collection through recycling, to be some $400 billion worldwide. Yet UNEP also estimates that to “green” the waste sector would require, among other things, a 3.5-fold increase in MSW recycling at the global level, including nearly complete recovery of all organic material through composting or conversion to energy. Big job there!

Waste not waste

Schwarzenegger may be gone but California continues to trudge heavily on the green energy path. Now it is the turn of human waste to generate energy!

California produced 661,000 dry metric tons of biosolids in 2009, according to the energy commission. Referred to as 'biosolids', these can also include a sludge of heavy metals and other toxins left over from wastewater treatment. While in some cases biosolids can be used as fertilizer for crops, they most often have to be disposed of in landfills.

"Existing options for using biosolids are limited (mainly land application and alternative daily cover in landfills) and face increasing environmental challenges that could eliminate those options," the energy commission noted. "Current disposal practices often involve hauling biosolids long distances, which consumes transportation fuels, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and increases ratepayers' costs for wastewater treatment."

A company now plans to use "steam/carbon dioxide reforming" technology to vaporize liquid residues and gasify the organic solid portion of biosolids in an airlock chamber. The company will pump in steam and carbon dioxide to create a hydrogen-rich gas that could be used in fuel cells to generate electricity.

This is a new experiment, worth watching! Plenty of source material everywhere.

27 pc food produced in US wasted

Stretching the Occam's Razor (principle that simplest explanation is often the most correct one) and applying it to the problem of energy, one can say that the simplest solutions are often the simplest ones. You don't have enough energy? Simple - conserve. And how best to conserve? By reducing your waste!

A new study is reported in the ACS’ semi-monthly journal Environmental Science and Technology and states that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year simply by being careful about how much food they produce and consume.

The analysis of wasted food found that the US wasted about 2030 trillion BTU (British thermal unit) of energy in 2007, the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil or about 2 percent of the countries annual energy consumption. And if that astounds you, wait. The wasted energy calculated here is a conservative estimate both because the food waste data are incomplete and outdated and the energy consumption data for food service and sales are incomplete!

The study found that it takes the equivalent of about 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare, preserve and distribute a year’s worth of food in the United States. This totalled between 8 to 16 percent of the nation’s energy consumption in 2007.

But despite this massive allocation of energy, 27 percent of the food prepared and distributed is wasted each year

Hold on to sewage

What is scarce? - Energy, power. What is abundant? - Waste. And if you can convert the abundant into the scarce, what joy!

Engineers at Oregon State University have made a significant advance toward producing electricity from sewage, by the use of new coatings on the anodes of microbial electrochemical cells that increased the electricity production about 20 times.

The findings, just published online in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a professional journal, bring the researchers one step closer to technology that could clean biowaste at the same time it produces useful levels of electricity -- a promising new innovation in wastewater treatment and renewable energy.

Engineers found that by coating graphite anodes with a nanoparticle layer of gold, the production of electricity increased 20 times. Coatings with palladium produced an increase, but not nearly as much. And the researchers believe nanoparticle coatings of iron -- which would be a lot cheaper than gold -- could produce electricity increases similar to that of gold, for at least some types of bacteria.

In this technology, bacteria from biowaste such as sewage are placed in an anode chamber, where they form a biofilm, consume nutrients and grow, in the process releasing electrons. Sewage is the fuel for electricity production.

The treatment of wastewater could be changed from an energy-consuming technology into one that produces usable energy. The technology already works on a laboratory basis, researchers say, but advances are necessary to lower its cost, improve efficiency and electrical output, and identify the lowest cost materials that can be used.

Now this is what makes more sense than trying to discover new sources of energy, right?

Renewable gas

National Grid, which distributes gas and electricity in northeastern US and the UK, says that renewable gas could meet 16% of demand.

Published in a white paper, Renewable Gas - Vision for a Sustainable Gas Network, the company research shows how biomethane produced from waste could meet the needs of its US customers in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. With investment of around $7 billion across the four states it covers, National Grid says renewable gas could meet up to 25% of demand and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 16 million tons a year.

Unconventional sources such as dairy farms, waste water treatment plants, landfills, wood waste and food waste plants will get linked into the grid. In fact, any unit that generates biodegradable waste can be a potential source. An excellent way to get rid fo colossal waste we generate too.

In the UK, National Grid has joined forces with British Gas and a local brewer, Adnams, to use waste from the brewing process to produce biomethane and inject it directly into the UK’s gas network. The remaining waste is an effective manure material.

Self-reliant!

Animal poo has been used to generate electricity. But now in a pilot program this summer, 130 families in the UK will be getting biogas generated from human waste piped directly into their homes instead of natural gas. The UK creates 1.73 million tons of human waste--all of which could potentially be used to produce biogas.

The UK has committed to getting 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
There are already plants operating in the UK that harness human waste for electricity, but this is the first project that will allow households to get gas for heating and such needs from human waste. National Grid projects that the UK could meet half its gas needs by implementing the practice.

The whole process should take about 23 days from flush to finish and since the infrastructure is already in place. The excess solid waste product will be given to farmers to use as fertilizer.

A good step in recycling waste, right?

Where does that empty bottle end up?

A plastic soap bottle tossed in a Manhattan recycling bin took several twists and turns around the city before crossing the river to Kearny, N.J. So, who has been following the trash? No one, but a simple tracking device. A 5-year-old group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spent the last year attaching thousands of tracking devices to pieces of garbage in Seattle and New York City. The devices send out pulses to signal where they are. The signals go to MIT's SENSEable City Lab for analysis.

Most cities today face problems of congestion, pollution and inefficiency problems. New technologies, like iPhones, social networking and wireless communication, can inform city dwellers and make cities "smarter."

The aim of project "Trash Track" is to study where recyclables go. As the world consumes at a faster rate than ever before, it becomes important to track trash, and see how it degrades, if at all it does.

Trash companies follow their own haul, for example. But once they separate the aluminum and sell it to a collector, their records end. No single database tracks a soda can through its cycle. Trash Track may be a useful tool with e-waste too.

But of course this calls for coordination and acting together based on the inputs from the tracking.

Or else the power of networks in general and the Internet will simply be an exercise in showing the many things that “can be done” but don’t get done!

Flying on waste energy

British Airways has announced plans to source a part of its fuel supplies from waste municipal waste to fuel plant. The company plans to procure 16 million gallons of green jet fuel annually from the Solena plant that would come up in London.

The plant which is expected to come online in 2014 would convert 50,000 tonnes of municipal waste into jet-grade fuel. The volume of fuel supplied initially would be 2percent of the total fuel consumption of British Airways. This would cut down on the carbon emissions that is generated due to the conventional jet fuel, kerosene.

British Airways aims to obtain 10 percent of its jet fuel waste-to-energy processes by 2050. London produces 3 million tonnes in organic waste every year.

Waste to energy process provides a three-pronged advantage. One, it helps in the management of the ever increasing waste in the cities, two, it converts the methane an efficient fuel and a greenhouse gas) which is produce from the decomposition of municipal waste and, third, its use results in reduction in carbon emissions.

Yet another waste to energy plan was announced by Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) last year. DIAL in partnership with two other companied will build a Rs 1.4 billion ($28.6 million) plant that generates energy using municipal waste.

The plant, to be built on 5.7 acres, is expected to be commissioned in late 2010
With about 4,000 MW of generating capacity, Delhi still has a shortfall of about 400 MW. In addition, Delhi's landfill sites are running out of capacity. The proposed plant would need 1,300 metric tons of municipal waste a day, which is 100 metric tons more than what Delhi produces each day. That could be the pitfalls of such plants, as waste quantities and moisture content are crucial for the operation of the plant.

The world needs more such ventures, not only to optimize on energy waiting to be tapped but also to tackle the alarming waste problem. If you have heard of individuals or groups undertaking such projects, write in to us. Let us share the success stories and scale them up.

All that trash

Forget the 80 million barrels of oil the world consumes every day, what about all the waste we generate? Just lean back and think about all the trash in your city. How much lies in half-decomposed state in landfills? How much litters roadsides?

Want to see a miniature version of the world and its waste? See the picture above. This is a real place outside Cairo called Garbage city and populated by a community of workers called Zabbaleen, who personally collect, sort, reuse, resell or otherwise repurpose Cairo’s waste.

This ‘metropolis’ is actually a very efficient waste management system: food scraps are fed to livestock, what can be repaired is, and everything else is recycled, sold for scrap, or burned for fuel. The Zabbaleen live at poverty levels but live a long-held tradition of scavenging as skill.

As the site says, is this how the earth will look if a giant hand caught hold of it and gave it a good shake? Maybe we have more things on the planet than humans? Scary!

Check your fridge

Take a deep breath before you read this! According to the University of Western Sydney's Urban Research Centre, Sydney households throw out more than $600 million worth of fresh produce every year - and that does not include leftovers, which account for another $182 million in the bin. This can feed a small African nation while garbage bins can sustain a family or two.

The $603 million fresh food waste is close to the $660 million combined income of all the farms in the metropolitan basin.

This is for sure not restricted to Sydney but all rich consumer societies everywhere! Fresh food, vegetables and fruits and meat, is bought with good intentions but busy lives take over and people end up eating out more than at home. Three weeks later it is time to clean up the fridge of all ‘biological experiments’!

Sydney residents spent about $6.5 billion last year - or more than a third of total household food and beverage budgets - on takeaway, alcohol or dining out, which was 36 times what they spent on fresh vegetables grown within the basin.

Local produce and organic food lose significance. That is where community pooling up makes sense. The buying power of supermarket chains that do not rely on local produce works against the farmers.

Much as people are aware of the benefits of fresh food, the luxuries of life which include hours of watching television robs all good intentions. And you have all the food going down the drain. With that goes so much energy and water used to produce them.

How much food goes waste in your homes? What do we need to do? Buy less? Cook more often and in small measures?

In this connection, check out this interesting video that talks about how our food supplies shaped cities. From ancient times when certain markets were located based on how easy it was to get food to those areas to how cities expanded with the advent of trains, Steel shows us how urban planning revolves really around how we eat.

And more importantly, how we eat could be made more healthy and sustainable by a revisioning of cityscapes. Cities need to be revamped for sustainable, independent food supplies, for decreased reliance on fossil-fueled transportation and increased walk and bike-friendliness, and for energy efficiency.

What a shame!

While on the topic of waste, here’s a teaser. Food waste is a climate issue. That is one of the conclusions from the book ‘Waste: uncovering a global food scandal’. Written by Tristam Stuart who spent years eating from bins of supermarkets, the book traces the waste trail from farmers to supermarkets and restaurants to consumers.

The average UK household bins throw £8 of food each week while supermarket profligacy is yet another story. Much of the food is rejected right at the market level and not for nutrition/hygiene but for trivial reasons of colour and size!

Is food waste the big unspoken environmental crisis of our times? Stuart thinks so when he places it right up next to deforestation, water scarcity, even global warming. In Europe, about 20% of the greenhouse emissions come from processing and producing food.

The amount of processed food consumed today is increasing, even in developing nations. And for processing, energy and water is further consumed. Is it morally right to waste food?

For more listen in to http://www.downtoearth.org.in/tristram_stuart.asp

Island of waste spotted

Finally it has been confirmed: at least 1,700 miles of plastic trash is floating in what is now famously known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

A vague image of the trash the team expected to find in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex where four ocean currents meet (see pic), has been located and data collected. The team of researchers, sailors, journalists, and government officials on a nearly four-week journey through the gyre say that plastic shards and netting abound in a space bigger than the state of Texas.

Among the assortment of items retrieved were plastic bottles with a variety of biological inhabitants. On August 11th, the researchers encountered a large net entwined with plastic and various marine organisms; they also recovered several plastic bottles covered with ocean animals, including large barnacles. The team collected several species in the gyre.

Shocked at the sheer mass of floating trash, the SEAPLEX, the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition, has brought home the ultimate lesson of what happens to waste simply discarded! It resurfaces and spells trouble for someone, somewhere.

Efficient fertiliser

A simple innovation that converts waste to use, and does it in a sanitized way caught our attention. The Peepoo bag addresses lack of hygienic access to toilet faced by 40 percent of world population and offers a solution that is simple and effective.

The Peepoo bag can serve as a personal, portable and low-cost latrine for all those who don't have one. Designed for use sitting, squatting or standing, the single-use, biodegradable plastic bag measures 14 by 38 cm and is lined with a urea-coated gauze layer that disinfects all waste. Used bags are odour-free for at least 24 hours and are safe for burial underground.

Within two to four weeks after use, however, their contents get converted to high-quality fertilizer. No chemicals, no energy intake, no water intake! The energy use in fertilsers accounts for 30-40 percent of energy used in agriculture. And 25 percent of emissions.

Following field tests last year in Kenya and India, the Peepoo bag is scheduled to begin production this summer.

How do you rate the innovation?

Let us do our bit

Care to imagine the amount of waste we produce every month, and then every year? As consumption increases, so does waste. Imagine dumps and more dumps around the cities, growing every day.

According to the CES, IIsc round 3600 tonnes of solid waste is generated in Bangalore EVERY day. This is pretty much the same of most big cities.

Much of the biodegradable waste generated is high in organic content and with humidity content becomes difficult to incinerate. A better option would be biomethanation where bacteria degrade the waste to produce methane, or even simply composting the waste.

However, not much is done. Most of the waste is carried out of the cities to be dumped in the suburbs, or if they make it to the dumps, they are forgotten and end up polluting the soil and water. No real land-filling (covering the waste with soil) happens and the biodegradation takes a long time.

A far cry from recovering wealth from waste or reducing to zero waste! For example, 70 percent of San Francisco's waste stream is being diverted from landfills through a combination of strategies including waste avoidance, waste reduction, composting and recycling. The city's goal is to divert 75 percent by 2010, and to achieve zero waste by 2020.

The city's composting program (see picture) is the largest in the US, and began accepting food and yard waste in 1999. The majority of the compost created goes to area vineyards, and the rest to small farms and landscape suppliers.

What does it take to make our municipal authorities aware of the immense wealth in the waste?!

Recyclable materials are taken to the material recovery facility at Pier 96 where over 182,000 tons of material is processed each year. Of course, as we know and are t the receiving end, much of the recycled materials are shipped thousands of miles to the developing world where cheap labour sorts them out with bare hands!

While authorities wrangle over whose responsibility waste is, or which method or which contractor is best, there are simple things each one of us can do to help in the waste problem.

How about reducing the waste generated in our homes? All it requires is to make just adequate food. Next, segregate the waste and use the organic part in a small pit in the garden. This is something that can be done even inside. All you need is one small pot with a lid. Dump your wastes there and cover with a thin layer of soil. After few days the manure it yields could help the kitchen garden immensely.

Approximately we generate 2.5 kgs of waste per average household. Think of what a good idea it is to use this for a good purpose and save our countryside from swelling dumps.

Check out this interesting post at Treehugger.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/what-really-happens-at-a-landfill.php

Garbage powers NJ homes

Cities today are generating colossal amounts of garbage. What is to be done with this? As opinions differ, there are examples plenty of turning this stench into wealth.

In New Jersey for instance, there are 21 landfills that generate electricty to power thousands of homes. By 2020, the city authorities plan to generate 30 percent of its power from landfill methane. Methane gas is produced by microorganisms that feed on organic matter in trash.

Proposals are in the offing to combine this energy with wind and solar for firm power. "We see landfills as potential New Age energy plants, because you can combine all three and create a steady source of power - and not everybody wants a windmill in their back yard," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.

In the US, on the whole there are over 400 landfills generating electricity. For more, check out http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20081027_N_J__now_turning_its_garbage_into_energy.html

Any reason why we cannot do the same?

So, what say we send our legislators on a trip to NJ? So they can check out and learn something useful for a change!