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Lecture 1 - Introduction

1. Waste management and circular economy

Even though these two might sound interchangeable, they are not. Before the industrialization in Europe, there were comparable little waste amounts and the greatest problem was that the untreated waste emitted toxic fumes and liquids as well as attracted rodents and insects, which are carriers for diseases. Thus it was foremost a hygienic issue that motivated people to collect waste and to either landfill or incinerate it. But this lead to environmental pollution through emissions into the air, water and ground.


The situation got even more severe through the increase of waste amounts and complexity during the industrialization. Hence technical solutions were developed that hindered these emissions to form or get into the environment.
But this still left one final issue which became especially clear with the oil crises in 1973: Our resources are not infinite and we need to find ways to use them more efficiently and recycle them. The “circular economy” concept was born. Together with the circular economy concept the waste hierarchy was introduced; according to which we should prioritise following strategies when dealing with waste:

Waste hierarchy by German-MENA University Network & Prevent Waste Alliance (CC BY)

  1. Reduce: try not to produce waste by adapting to efficient and sufficient life-styles and manufacturing processes
  2. Reuse/Repair: don’t use single-use products but multiple-use products and when possible repair before buying new products. Producers have to make this possible by implementing a product-design that is easy to re-assemble
  3. Recycle: collect and sort waste according to their material and produce secondary resources also called recyclates
    These three are the best options and thus are also referred to as the 3Rs in an international context.
  4. Incineration with energy recovery: Incinerate waste but use the produced energy in form of warmth or electricity. However, incineration plants should be equipped with flue gas cleaning systems ensuring no toxic fumes such as carcinogenic dioxins and furans to enter the atmosphere.
  5. Disposal
    a. Incinerations without energy recovery: Burn the waste in facilities that have a flue gas cleaning system
    b. Landfill: dispose waste but the disposal sites should include multi-barrier concepts that hinder emissions to enter the environment

What not to do: Open dumping, open burning or discarding it into river or other water bodies as all these are harmful to the environment.