Lecture 1 - Introduction

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:

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.

We differentiate between the natural and anthropogenic environment. Most people probably think about the nature when hearing the term “environment”, but we also mean human settlements when talking about the environment. There are many substances in waste that can also harm the human health and thus we want to ensure that untreated waste isn’t close to human settlements for too long and also all humans handling the waste wear protective gear.
Of course simply bringing it outside of the settlement into the natural environment is also not feasible as we also want to protect the natural environment, which in itself is alredy protect-worthy in itself but also as the provider of important resources (such as water) and eco-system services (such as insect pollination).

You will hear more about this in a lecture on management & decision-making, so this is only a short teaser. Basically, it is a concept to finance all the cost involved with waste management (from collecting, treating, monitoring and managing it as well as maintaining and operating facilities). The financing can be taken care of by the government which are dependent on tax moneys or special waste fees from the public. However, waste management often only pays-off in the long-run, when resources are not destroyed by improper managment and resources are recovered. The cost of waste managemnt is thus not high for the return but in the present is can be a large investion which the public alone may not be able to finance.
Therefore, extended producer responsibility (EPR) was invented, which puts part of the cost to the producers of products and packaging. Hence, everyone who wants to sell a product or it’s very short-lived packaging has to pay a fee. This also works as an incentive system to avoid short-lived packaging and start using easy to recycle materials.

For EPR to work, it has to be controlled/monitored by someone and someone has to collect this money to give it to the waste collectors and treating facilities. For this environmental law is essential.
Note: In law “someone” or rather “legal person” must not be a single person but can all so be an entity of several people forming an institution or a company.

To sum it up: Waste mangement is not just the invention and application of technique but also (or rather much more) the managment of materials along it’s life cycle; including financing, governing, logistic planning, communication and laws. - Look at the slides below

Please find an overview of the topics covered here:

Before you jump into the topic, why don't you find out if you remember the waste hierachie.

This project “German MENA University Network for Waste Management and Circular Economy”, implemented by the University Rostock (UR), Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and University of Technology Dresden (TUD), Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), Constantine university 3 Algeria, Ain Shams University Egypt and Cadi Ayyad University Morocco is funded by the PREVENT Waste Alliance, an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The contents of the Wastepedia course are the sole responsibility of German-MENA University Network and do not necessarily reflect the positions of all PREVENT Waste Alliance members or official policy positions of the governments involved. More information: https://prevent-waste.net/en/.

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