A Goal-Oriented Characterization of Urban Waste

Abstract

More stringent requirements for the protection of the environment coupled with new incentives for materials recovery, lead modern waste management practice on the line of a more differentiated approach. Separation, or more precisely, non-mixing at the source, is one of the most promising strategies. However, before deciding which categories of urban waste should be collected separately, it is useful to have more detailed knowledge regarding the characteristics of waste. A 5-year investigation has produced enough information to answer such questions as "if one decides to convert food and garden waste to compost instead of burning them, how much less cadmium would be released into the atmosphere?" or, "if the quantities of mercury released into the environment should be drastically reduced, which categories of waste should be collected and treated separately?" This paper discusses sampling and analytical techniques and defines what is a representative sample. It presents the methods applied to determine the annual flow of various chemical elements from 52 waste categories from a European urban area. The results determined through this approach are compared to the total outputs in the gas, wastewater, cinders and fly ashes of the incinerator which currently burns these wastes.