The Market is huge and is growing as the world's population keeps growing and the world is becoming more developed.
Every city in the world desires a solution for their waste.
In 2006, USA residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 251 million tons of MSW, which is approximately 4.6 pounds of waste per person per day. In Europe this amounts 1.3 billion tons with the UK a 100 millions tons alone.
MSW—more commonly known as trash or garbage—consists of everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. To learn more about MSW, view our interactive presentation about.
Several MSW management practices, such as source reduction, recycling, and composting, prevent or divert materials from the waste-stream. Source reduction involves altering the design, manufacture, or use of products and materials to reduce the amount and toxicity of what gets thrown away. Recycling diverts items, such as paper, glass, plastic, and metals, from the waste stream. These materials are sorted, collected, and processed and then manufactured, sold, and bought as new products. Composting decomposes organic waste, such as food scraps and yard trimmings, with micro organisms (mainly bacteria and fungi), producing a humus-like substance.
Other practices address those materials that require disposal. Landfills are engineered areas where waste is placed into the land. Landfills usually have liner systems and other safeguards to prevent groundwater contamination. Combustion is another MSW practice that has helped reduce the amount of landfill space needed. Combustion facilities burn MSW at a high temperature, reducing waste volume and generating electricity.
Solid Waste Hierarchy
EPA has ranked the most environmentally sound strategies for MSW. Source reduction (including reuse) is the most preferred method, followed by recycling and composting, and, lastly, disposal in combustion
Source Reduction (Waste Prevention)
Source reduction can be a successful method of reducing waste generation. Practices such as grass cycling, backyard composting, two-sided copying of paper, and transport packaging reduction by industry have yielded substantial benefits through source reduction.
Source reduction has many environmental benefits. It prevents emissions of many greenhouse gases, reduces pollutants, saves energy, conserves resources, and reduces the need for new landfills and combustors.
Recycling
Recycling, including composting, diverted 82 million tons of material away from disposal in 2006, up from 15 million tons in 1980, when the recycle rate was just 10% and 90% of MSW was being combusted with energy recovery or disposed of by landfilling.
Typical materials that are recycled include batteries, recycled at a rate of 99%, paper and paperboard at 52%, and yard trimmings at 62%. These materials and others may be recycled through curbside programs, drop-off centers, buy-back programs, and deposit systems.
Recycling prevents the emission of many greenhouse gases and water pollutants, saves energy, supplies valuable raw materials to industry, creates jobs, stimulates the development of greener technologies, conserves resources for our children's future, and reduces the need for new landfills and combustors.
Recycling also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions that affect global climate. In 1996, recycling of solid waste in the United States prevented the release of 33 million tons of carbon into the air-roughly the amount emitted annually by 25 million cars.
Combustion/Incineration
Burning MSW can generate energy while reducing the amount of waste by up to 90 percent in volume and 75 percent in weight.
EPA's Office of Air and Radiation is primarily responsible for regulating combustors because air emissions from combustion pose the greatest environmental concern.
Recycling also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions that affect global climate. In 2006, the national recycling rate of 32.5 percent (82 million tons recycled) prevented the release of approximately 49.7 million metric tons of carbon into the air--roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, or 1,300 trillion BTUs, saving energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.
Landfills
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was enacted by Congress in 1976 and amended in 1984. The act's primary goal is to protect human health and the environment from the potential hazards of waste disposal. In addition, RCRA calls for conservation of energy and natural resources, reduction in waste generated, and environmentally sound waste management practices.
Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), landfills that accept MSW are primarily regulated by state, tribal, and local governments. EPA, however, has established national standards these landfills must meet in order to stay open. Municipal landfills can, however, accept household hazardous waste.
The number of landfills in the United States is steadily decreasing—from 8,000 in 1988 to 1,754 in 2006. The capacity, however, has remained relatively constant. New landfills are much larger than in the past.
Household Hazardous Waste
Households often discard many common items such as paint, cleaners, oils, batteries, and pesticides, that contain hazardous components. Leftover portions of these products are called household hazardous waste (HHW). These products, if mishandled, can be dangerous to your health and the environment.
Currently, in the United States, 32.5 percent is recovered and recycled or composted, 12.5 percent is burned at combustion facilities, and the remaining 55 percent is disposed of in landfills.
The issues identified above is an even bigger problem in Europe.
As European society has grown wealthier it has created more and more rubbish. Each year in the European Union alone we throw away 1.3 billion tones of waste - some 40 million tones of it hazardous. This amounts to about 3.5 tones of solid waste for every man, woman and child, according to European Environment Agency statistics. Add to this total a further 700 million tones of agricultural waste, and it is clear that treating and disposing of all this material - without harming the environment - becomes a major headache.
Between 1990 and 1995, the amount of waste generated in Europe increased by 10%, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of what we throw away is either burnt in incinerators, or dumped into landfill sites (67%). But both these methods create environmental damage. Land filling not only takes up more and more valuable land space, it also causes air, water and soil pollution, discharging carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) into the atmosphere and chemicals and pesticides into the earth and groundwater. This, in turn, is harmful to human health, as well as to plants and animals.
By 2020, the OECD estimates, we could be generating 45% more waste than we did in 1995. Obviously we must reverse this trend if we are to avoid being submerged in rubbish. But the picture is not all gloomy. The EU's Sixth Environment Action Programme identifies waste prevention and management as one of four top priorities. Its primary objective is to decouple waste generation from economic activity, so that EU growth will no longer lead to more and more rubbish, and there are signs that this is beginning to happen. In Germany and the Netherlands, for example, municipal waste generation fell during the 1990s.
The EU is aiming for a significant cut in the amount of rubbish generated, through new waste prevention initiatives, better use of resources, and encouraging a shift to more sustainable consumption patterns.
The European Union's approach to waste management is based on three principles:
1. Waste prevention: This is a key factor in any waste management strategy. If we can reduce the amount of waste generated in the first place and reduce its hazardousness by reducing the presence of dangerous substances in products, then disposing of it will automatically become simpler. Waste prevention is closely linked with improving manufacturing methods and influencing consumers to demand greener products and less packaging.
2. Recycling and reuse: If waste cannot be prevented, as many of the materials as possible should be recovered, preferably by recycling. The European Commission has defined several specific 'waste streams' for priority attention, the aim being to reduce their overall environmental impact. This includes packaging waste, end-of-life vehicles, and batteries, electrical and electronic waste. EU directives now require Member States to introduce legislation on waste collection, reuse, recycling and disposal of these waste streams. Several EU countries are already managing to recycle over 50% of packaging waste.
3. Improving final disposal and monitoring: Where possible, waste that cannot be recycled or reused should be safely incinerated, with landfill only used as a last resort. Both these methods need close monitoring because of their potential for causing severe environmental damage. The EU has recently approved a directive setting strict guidelines for landfill management. It bans certain types of waste, such as used tyres, and sets targets for reducing quantities of biodegradable rubbish. Another recent directive lays down tough limits on emission levels from incinerators. The Union also wants to reduce emissions of dioxins and acid gases such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxides (SO2), and hydrogen chlorides (HCL), which can be harmful to human health.
Despite the expansion of the global waste-to-energy (WTE) industry in the past decade, hundreds of millions of tonnes of municipal solid wastes still end up in landfills.
Worldwide, about 130 million tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) are combusted annually in over 600 waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities that produce electricity and steam for district heating and recovered metals for recycling. Since 1995, the global WTE industry increased by more than 16 million tonnes of MSW. Currently, there are WTE facilities in 35 nations.
According to a directive from the European Union, land filling of combustible materials must be phased out within the decade. However, it is not clear that the capital investments required will be made by all of the member countries.
As can see from the above, there are very few alternatives available. Ren Waste seeks to capitalize on this opportunity.
