Wasmin Mat Eva

480428S WASTE MINIMIZATION – RESOURCES USE OPTIMIZATION Exam material for the post-graduate course organized for the Finnish Graduate School in Environmental Science and Technology University of Oulu, 3.-7.4.2006

Eva Pongrácz University of Oulu Department of Process and Environmental Engineering Heat and Mass Transfer Process Laboratory

If you print out this paper, please remember to print double sided to save paper! Thanks: E.P.

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The history of waste management ...............................................................................................4 1.1 Sources of waste...................................................................................................................5 1.2 Hidden flows ........................................................................................................................6 1.3 Decoupling ...........................................................................................................................6 Material use intensity ...................................................................................................................7 2.1 Development of new materials ............................................................................................8 2.2 Constructing a Material Century..........................................................................................8 2.3 The birth of mass production ...............................................................................................9 2.4 The role of military in materials innovation ......................................................................10 The ecological footprint of a society..........................................................................................10 3.1 The Shadow Side of Consumption ....................................................................................12 Important milestones in raising environmental awareness ........................................................13 The EU policy on environment..................................................................................................15 5.1 Waste legislation in the European Union...........................................................................15 5.2 Waste legislation in Finland...............................................................................................17 5.3 Relevant definitions in legislation......................................................................................18 5.4 The problems with the definition of waste.........................................................................19 5.5 Re-defining waste ..............................................................................................................19 5.6 Defining non-waste ............................................................................................................21 5.7 Can every waste be turned into non-waste?.......................................................................21 5.8 Re-defining waste management .........................................................................................22 5.9 The role of waste minimisation..........................................................................................22 5.9.1 Prevent creating things with no Purpose....................................................................22 5.9.2 Prevent creating things with a single finite Purpose ..................................................23 5.9.3 Prevent creating things that cease performing ...........................................................23 5.9.4 Preventing owners from failing use things for their Purpose.....................................23 The waste management hierarchy..............................................................................................24 6.1 Waste prevention................................................................................................................25 6.1.1 Strict avoidance..........................................................................................................25 6.1.2 Reduction at source....................................................................................................26 6.1.3 Waste prevention measures........................................................................................26 6.2 Waste minimization ...........................................................................................................27 6.3 Re-use.................................................................................................................................27 6.4 Recycling ...........................................................................................................................28 6.4.1 The problem with recycling .......................................................................................28 6.5 Recovery ............................................................................................................................28 6.6 Disposal..............................................................................................................................29 Industrial metabolism and its importance to waste minimization..............................................29 7.1 Entropy...............................................................................................................................30 7.2 Measures of Industrial Metabolism....................................................................................31 7.3 Policy Implications of the Industrial Metabolism Perspective ..........................................32 Strategic waste prevention .........................................................................................................33 8.1 Links to other concepts ......................................................................................................34 8.1.1 Eco-efficiency (E2). ...................................................................................................34 8.1.2 Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC). ................................................34 8.1.3 Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). .................................................................34 8.1.4 Integrated Product Policy (IPP). ................................................................................34 8.1.5 Integrated Resources Management ............................................................................35

8.1.6 Resources use optimization........................................................................................35 Tools of resources use optimization...........................................................................................36 9.1 Industrial Ecology ..............................................................................................................36 9.2 Dematerialization ...............................................................................................................37 9.2.1 Carbon nanotubes, the ultimate champions of dematerialization (Wikipedia)..........37 9.2.2 Constraints to dematerialization.................................................................................38 9.2.3 Dematerialization through service .............................................................................40 9.3 Decarbonization .................................................................................................................40 9.3.1 Geothermal Energy (Source: Geothermal Education Office) ....................................41 9.3.2 Solar energy (Source: EERE) ....................................................................................41 9.3.3 Energy efficiency .......................................................................................................42 9.4 Design for the Environment (DFE)....................................................................................43 9.5 Cradle-to-cradle design (Source: McDonough and Braungart 2002) ................................44 10 Sustainable products and production (Source: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production)..45 10.1 Principles of Sustainable Production .................................................................................45 11 Cleaner production.................................................................................................................46 11.1 Pollution prevention...........................................................................................................47 Summary ............................................................................................................................................47 References..........................................................................................................................................48 9

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The history of waste management

Waste management as a government activity has existed in most OECD countries since the early part of the 20th century (Figure 2). Governmental action, which began at the local level, was largely a response to the laissez-faire (a French phrase meaning “let do”) disposal of all types of wastes into the urban environment. Hygiene and public health were the main drivers for government intervention. (Vancini 2000.)

Figure 1 Evolution of the Waste Issue: Conceptual Overview (Jackson 1991).

The practice of turning by-products into the valuable inputs of another industry is as ancient as economic development. For thousands of such illustrations , one can look at the lengthy turn of the 20th century books that cover the most significant industrial activities of their days (Desrochers 2002): − Waste products and Undeveloped Substances: Hints, for Enterprise in Neglected Fields (Simmonds 1862) − Waste products and Undeveloped Substances: Synopsis of Progress during the last Quarter of Century (Simmonds 1867) One can also look at a list of numerous book-length treatments of specific cases. Here is a short sampling (Desrochers 2002): − A great problem solved: How to utilize waste heat from Chimneys (Silver 1987) − Utilization of waste oranges (Cruess 1914) − Utilization of waste tomato skins an seeds (Rabak 1917) − Recovery and re-manufacture of waste paper (Strachan 1918) − Utilization of waste sulphate liquor (Johnsen 1919) − Recovering of precious metals from waste liquid residues (Gee 1920) Numerous other illustrations can also be found in the various publications put out from 1905 onward by the Atlas Publishing Company, the most prominent of which was the Waste Trade Journal.

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1.1 Sources of waste Waste represents an enormous loss of resources both in the form of materials and energy. Indeed, quantities of waste can be seen as an indicator of the material efficiency of society. It is difficult to state accurately how much waste is being generated on the whole in Europe. There are many reasons for this. For example, the definitions of “waste” and estimation techniques are not the same across different countries, or even across time within the same countries. Also, overlaps between different classes of wastes (e.g., industrial and hazardous) introduce further sources of uncertainty in any estimates. Nevertheless, in approximate terms it can be stated that around 2 billion tonnes of waste is generated in EU-15 every year. The data available by sector are subject to uncertainties but Eurostat has estimated that almost a third of the total waste comes from agriculture and forestry and broadly the same amount from construction and demolition. A similar amount is added by the mining and quarrying and the manufacturing sectors. Figure 2 illustrates the waste generation by sector in the EU.

Figure 2 Estimated total annual waste generation in the EU-15 by sector

In Finland, it is estimated that the annual waste generation amounts to some 65 million tonnes. Waste statistics cover all waste materials starting with primary production, except logging residues left in the forest. Figure 3 illustrates waste generation for each sector. (The data originate from the pages of the Ministry of Environment http.www.ymparisto.fi) The figure is not conclusive and contains approximate data. Solid waste is also increasingly produced as an attempt to solve other environmental problems such as water and air pollution. Some of these wastes give rise to new problems – examples include sewage sludge and residues from waste management facilities; for instance cleaning of flue gases from waste incineration. While total waste quantities are a measure of resource loss, the environmental impact of waste cannot be analysed by looking at quantity alone. Dangerous substances in waste, even in small quantities, can have a very negative impact on the environment. The relative environmental impact of waste is related to both the quantity and the degree of hazard associated with it. There are, therefore, two aspects to waste generation: quantitative, i.e. how much is generated, and qualitative, i.e. the degree of hazard.

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Agriculture 20 000 000

Manufacturing 12 000 000 Energy 1 500 000 MSW 2 400 000 Construction 1 400 000 Municipal sludge 150 000 Mining 25 000 000

Figure 3 Wastes in 2003. Source: Ministry of Environment (http://www.ymparisto.fi)

1.2 Hidden flows Bringing products to the market place relies on a sophisticated chain of activities that extends from extraction and production to distribution and consumption. Each and every activity that precedes the market introduction of products is associated with waste generation. Hidden flows are those portions of overall material requirements supporting an economy that never actually enter the market economy; in particular hidden flows refer to the natural resource use that occurs when providing commodities for the market-place, such as deriving from mining, forestry, earth moving, and other sources. (Vancini 2000) It has been estimated that “hidden flows” account for as much as 75% of the total materials required by OECD countries (WRI et al. 1997).

Figure 4 Life-cycle of waste generation (Vancini 2000)

Figure 4 portrays how waste generation is linked to the life-cycle of products and materials. The “cradle-to-grave” linkages shown in the figure are merely illustrative of where wastes arise during economic processes. Other waste streams may exist that are not shown. 1.3 Decoupling "Decoupling" is one of the key goals of policies related to management and use of resources. As a technical term, decoupling means that the growth rate of environmental impacts is less than that of a

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given economic driving force (e.g. GDP) over a certain period. Relative decoupling occurs when environmental impact increases, but at a slower rate than the underlying economic driver. Absolute decoupling occurs when environmental impact decreases while the economy grows. The recently published Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources aims at reducing the negative environmental impacts of resource use by decoupling economic growth and environment impacts. Given current levels of economic growth, the Strategy recognises that it is likely that two distinct decoupling mechanisms will be required in combination to achieve absolute decoupling of environmental impact from GDP. These two mechanisms are, firstly, the decoupling of resource use from economic growth, and secondly, the decoupling of environmental impact from unit resource use. With respect to the first decoupling mechanism, Europe has achieved at least partial decoupling of resource use from economic growth. In many EU countries, the economy in recent years has been growing at a faster rate than resource use. The EU economy grew by almost 50 % since the 1980s, while the use of energy and renewable and non-renewable resources remained fairly constant. In other words resource productivity has grown by 50% over the same period. The last decades have, therefore, seen at least a relative decoupling of resource and energy consumption from economic growth. However, this factor on its own has not led to an absolute decoupling of environmental impact from economic growth. The second decoupling mechanism, decoupling environmental impact from unit resource use, is much more difficult to measure and monitor. Increased use of endof-pipe technologies can reduce environmental pressures resulting from unit resource use. However, it is rare that there is a concrete and linear relationship between environmental pressures and resulting environmental impacts. It is, therefore, difficult to estimate aggregated environmental impacts accruing over Europe as a whole from a given total quantity of emissions. The level of resource use in Europe, and hence the likely magnitude of its environmental impact, is high compared to global averages. 2

Material use intensity

Imagine a truck delivering to your house each morning all the materials you use in a day, except food and fuel. Piled at the front door are: the wood in your newspaper the chemicals in your shampoo and the plastic in your grocery bags, metals in your appliances and your car –just that day’s share of those items' total lives – are also included, as is your daily fraction of shared materials, such as the stone and gravel in your office walls and in the streets you stroll. At the base of the pile are materials you never see: the nitrogen and potash used to grow your food, and the earth and rock under which your metals and minerals were once buried. For a citizen of a developed country, this daily delivery would be about 100 kg. But tomorrow, another 100 kg arrive, and the next day, another. By month's end, you have used three tons of material, and over the year, 36 tons. And millions of people are doing the same thing, every day. Consumption of metal, glass, wood, cement, and chemicals in industrial countries since 1900 is unprecedented, having grown 18-fold. These huge flows are also more complex and toxic than ever. Today's stock of materials draws from all 92 naturally occurring elements in the periodic table, compared with the 20 or so in use at the turn of the century. This larger range of choices enabled scientists to move beyond classic building blocks – wood, ceramics, and metals – as they developed new materials. Simple materials like silicon – essentially sand, the most common element in the Earth’s crust – are the central ingredient in complex products like computer chips. Impressive as they are, improving many aspects of human life, the new materials are also often toxic and frequently resisted re-absorption into the natural environment at the end of their useful lives. Because industrial economies were not built for recycling, massive materials use in the 20th century

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also generated huge flows of waste. In modern economies, the bulk of waste is invisible to most of us: mining slurry, factory effluent, smokestack emissions, and product trimmings are several times greater in quantity than the garbage collected from our homes and offices. (Gardner & Sampat 1998) 2.1 Development of new materials Modern chemistry introduced new synthetic chemicals, often with unknown consequences, into the remotest corners of the world. In 1995, scientists studying the global reach of organochlorine pesticides reported that almost all of the ones they studied were present on a global scale. Researchers looking for a control population of humans free of chemical contamination turned to the native peoples of the Canadian Arctic, only to find that they carried chemical contaminants at higher levels than inhabitants of St. Lawrence, Canada, the original focus of the research. Chemicals had reached the indigenous people through wind, water, and their food supply. Similarly, toxic industrial chemicals were reported found in 1998 in the tissue of whales that feed at great depths in the Atlantic Ocean in feeding grounds that were presumed to be clean. Part of the reason for this worrying development is that many chemicals cannot be recaptured once emitted to the environment. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), for instance, which were long used as refrigerants and solvents are implicated in the decay of stratospheric ozone. A large share of pesticides used in agriculture – roughly 85-90 % – never reach their targets, dispersing instead through air, soil, and water and sometimes settling in the fatty tissues of animals and people. Many synthetic chemicals are not just widespread, but long-lived. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including those used in electrical wiring or pesticides, remain active in the environment long after their original purpose is served. Because they are slow to degrade, POPs accumulate in fatty tissues as they are passed up the food chain. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.) 2.2 Constructing a Material Century The intensive use of materials in this century has deep historical roots. Since the Industrial Revolution, advances in technology and changes in society and in business practices have interacted to build economies that could extract, process, consume, and dispose of tremendous quantities of materials. Although the roots of these trends extend back centuries, most have matured only in the last 100 years. The case of iron, the emblematic material of the Industrial Revolution, illustrates how technological advances fed materials use. In 1879, a British clerk and his chemist cousin invented a process for making high-quality steel – a harder and more durable alloy of iron-from any grade of iron ore, eliminating the need for phosphorus-free ore. This innovation cut steelmaking costs by some 80-90 percent, which in turn drove demand skyward: between 1870 and 1913, iron ore production in Britain, Germany, and France multiplied 83-fold. Further innovations and robust demand led to a six- fold increase in world production between 1913 and 1995. Today, iron and steel account for 85 percent of world metals, and a tenth, by weight, of world materials production. As richer ores were depleted, new extractive technologies made it possible to mine metal from relatively poor lodes, a practice known as “low-grading”. In 1900, it was not feasible to extract copper, for example, from ore that contained less than 3 percent of the metal. But technological advances have since lowered the extraction threshold to less than 0.5 percent, increasing the number of sites where mining is viable, and greatly expanding the quantity of ore needed to extract the same amount of copper. As world copper production grew 22-fold over the century, in step with rising demand for automotive and electrical uses, waste production grew 73-fold. Likewise, modern

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logging and mining equipment have made it possible to reduce tracts of forest into sawn lumber in a matter of hours, or to shear off entire mountaintops on order to reach mineral deposits. Meanwhile, transportation and energy developments also greased the wheels of the materials boom. With the expansion of roads, canals, railways, and aviation networks, it became easier to haul evergreater quantities of raw materials to factories and markets. Completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1905, for instance, laid open the country's rich western provinces to mineral exploitation, while locomotives later helped empty Liberian mines of iron ore for European markets. Over the century, the availability of cheap oil – a better-performing fuel than coal or wood – made materials production more economical than ever. The powerful combination of declining costs for energy and raw materials fuelled expansion in industrial scale and kept the cycle of exploration and production in constant motion. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.) 2.3 The birth of mass production Inspired by the use of standard, inter-changeable parts to facilitate large-scale musket production in the early nineteenth century, Henry Ford adopted the concept of mass production in his automobile factories. Ford's moving assembly line and standardised components slashed production time per chassis from 12.5 hours in 1913 to 1.5 hours in 1914. Costs also fell: a Ford Model T cost $600 in 1912 but just $265 in 1923, bringing car ownership within reach of many more consumers. And Ford’s total out- put jumped from 4 million cars in 1920 to 12 million in 1925, accounting for about half of all automobiles made in the world at the time. Soon manufacturers of refrigerators, radios, and other consumer goods adopted these mass production principles with similar results. As the scale of production ballooned, demographic shifts and new business strategies created a market to match it. The U.S. and European labour forces became increasingly urbanised, middleclass, and salaried in the first third of the century, characteristics that facilitated the creation of a consumer class. Material affluence steadily became more accessible to the average individual. Business initiatives encouraged and capitalised on these trends, with Henry Ford once again a leader. In 1914, Ford introduced a daily wage of five dollars – more than twice the going rate – thereby augmenting his workers’ spending power. He also reduced working hours, believing, in the words of one analyst that “an increase in leisure time would support an increase in consumer spending, not least on automobiles and automobile travel”. Other employers loudly opposed shorter workdays but conceded increases in pay for the same reason Ford did: to prime the pump of consumer spending. Prospering workers and their families quickly became the targets of sophisticated marketing efforts. Department stores and mail order catalogues funnelled a wealth of goods to the consumer, and consumer credit made those goods affordable: by the end of the 1920s, about 60 percent of cars, radios, and furniture were being purchased on credit. Other clever strategies were used to boost sales too: in the 1920s, General Motors introduced annual model changes for its cars, playing on consumers' desires for social status and novelty. The strategy succeeded: by 1927, when the industry was still in its infancy, replacement purchases of cars outnumbered first-time purchases. Meanwhile, advertisers used insights from the new field of psychology to ensure that consumers were "never satisfied" and linked the consumer's identity to products. Recognising the power of advertising to influence purchasing decisions, companies expanded their budgets for promotion. Global advertising expenditure surged over the century, reaching $435 billion in 1996. As people in developing countries have prospered in recent years, advertising spending there has grown rapidly: by more than 1,000 percent in China between 1986 and 1996, some 600 percent in Indonesia, and over 300 percent in Malaysia and Thailand. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.)

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2.4 The role of military in materials innovation More than 100,000 new chemical compounds have been developed since the 1930s, many of them for use during World War II, boosting synthetic chemicals production 1,000-fold in the last 60 years in the United States alone. Today, these substances form the primary ingredients in chemical pesticides, refrigerants, insulation, and industrial solvents. The military played a role in materials innovation: the B-2 Stealth bomber alone spurred the development of more than 900 new materials. Aluminium smelting, a very energy- intensive practice, was subsidised to produce large quantities of the metal for use in tanks, bombers, and fighter planes during World War II. Its use spread quickly to consumer products after the war, even to low-value household items like soda cans, boosting aluminium production 3,000-fold in this century. Agricultural chemicals, like wartime hardware, were in part the products of military research and experience. The pesticide DDT was originally used to combat head lice among U.S. troops and to kill malaria-bearing mosquitoes during World War II. Ammonia, the base material for fertiliser, was first produced to supply Germany with explosives during World War I. As a consequence of agricultural researchers' promoting the “Green Revolution” during the 1950s and 1960s, world fertiliser use grew from 14 million tons in 1950 to 129 million in 1996. New materials often replaced traditional ones – plastic frequently supplanted metal, for example – leading to lighter products. But material savings from "lightweighting" were nearly always offset by increased consumption, especially as military suppliers turned their energies to consumer goods after World War II. For instance, global ownership of cars grew 10- fold between 1950 and 1997. Cars are an especially materials-intensive product, consuming a full third of U.S. iron and steel, a fifth of its aluminium, and two thirds of its lead and rubber. Automobile use was facilitated by – and spurred – the expansion of roads, houses, and other infrastructure after mid-century. This construction boom prompted an eight-fold increase in global cement production between 1957 and 1995, and a tripling of asphalt output world-wide since 1950. One third of this asphalt was poured into the giant U.S. network of interstate highways. Where this infrastructure supported low- rather than high-density development, as in U.S. suburbs, materials demand shot up, as far more sewers, bridges, building foundations, houses, and telephone cables were needed to service a given number of people. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.) 3

The ecological footprint of a society

There is the waste we see and then there is the waste we don't see. Everything is made from something – oil, wood, minerals, or natural gas – and this creates a hidden history of waste. Germans call this a product's ‘environmental rucksack.’ For instance, the amount of waste generated to make a semiconductor chip is over 100,000 times its weight; that of a laptop computer, close to 4,000 times its weight. One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources. In the early 1990s, researchers at the University of British Columbia began to calculate the amount of land needed to sustainably supply national populations with resources (including imported ones), and the amount needed to absorb their wastes. They dubbed this combined area the “ecological footprint” of a population. In countries as different as the United States and Mexico, the footprint is larger than the nation’s entire land mass, because of a net dependence on imports, or because the area needed to absorb wastes sustainably is larger than the area actually used. Sustaining the whole world at an American or Canadian level of resource use would require the land area of three Earths. Materials use strongly influences the size of a population's footprint: in the U.S. case, materials are conservatively estimated to account for more than a fifth of the total footprint. (Fossil fuel use and food production are other major components.) 10

Mineral and metals extraction also leaves a lasting and damaging environmental footprint. Mining requires removing from the earth both metal-bearing rock, called ore, and “overburden”, the dirt and rock that covers the ore. Very little of this material is used-for example, on average, some 110 tons of overburden earth and an equal amount of ore are excavated to produce just a ton of copper (See Table 1). Table 1 World ore and waste production for selected metals, 1995 (Garnder and Sampat 1998) Metal

Iron Copper Gold1 Zinc Lead Aluminium Manganese Nickel Tin Tungsten

ore mined (million tons) 25503 11026 7235 1267 1077 856 745 387 195 125

% that becomes waste 60 99 99.99 99.95 97.5 70 70 97.5 99 99.75

Not surprisingly, the total quantities of waste generated are enormous: Canada's mining wastes are 58 times greater than its urban refuse. Few newlyweds would guess that their two gold wedding rings were responsible for six tons of waste at a mining site in Nevada or Kyrgyzstan. These mindboggling movements of material now exceed those caused by natural systems: mining alone strips more of the Earth's surface each year than natural erosion by rivers does. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.) Additional observations on the global dimensions of the waste burden can also be made (Table 2). Table 2 Global Dimensions of the Waste Burden (Vancini 2000) Factor Population

Consumption Affluence Technology

Impact?

Observation By 2050 the global population is projected to be 50% larger than today (i.e., 9 billion people), and 95% of that growth is expected to occur in developing countries (Sewell and Morrison 1999). Consumers in certain rapidly expanding non-OECD economies are emulating the ecologically challenging consumption patterns of consumers in OECD countries. Some of the highest GDP growth rates in the world are taking place in countries outside the OECD, such as China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. (OECD1997b). The World Bank reports that “massive levels” of industrial investment will occur in developing countries (Hanrahan 1995). In principle, “leap-frogging” the dirty technologies of the past may be possible because many developing countries have fewer sunken costs in older “eco-unfriendly” technologies (Andrews and Socolow 1999). A five-fold increase in global waste generation is possible by 2025 (CSD 1997).

Sustainable development is based on principles such as responsible use of natural resources and protection of the environment. De-linking of waste generation from economic activity has a key role in helping to meet the objectives of reduced waste generation. Waste production is influenced both by how efficiently we use resources in production, and the quantity of goods we produce and consume.

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1997 data

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3.1 The Shadow Side of Consumption Mines use toxic chemicals, including cyanide, mercury, and sulphuric acid, to separate metal from ore. Tailings, the chemical-laced ore that remains once the metal is separated, are often dumped directly into lakes or rivers, with devastating consequences. In February 2000, Hungary experienced Europe’s worst ecological disaster since Chernbobyl, when the reservoir wall at Romania’s Baia Mare gold mine collapsed, and 100 000 m3 of cyanide used to extract gold was released into Hungary’s Tisza river, killing virtually all life in. Not even bacteria survived. Industrial activity the last century has released millions of tons of metals into the environment. Global industrial emissions of lead, for example, now exceed natural rates by a factor of 27. The impacts of metals emissions are grave: hundreds of thousands of hectares of Russian forest have been poisoned by emissions from industrial plants; pollution from the Norilsk nickel plant alone has killed 300.000 hectares. Exposure to mercury, which is widely used by miners in the Amazon Basin and West Africa increases cancer risk and can damage vital organs and nervous systems. And lead, a neurotoxin, stunts children’s cognitive development. Modern chemistry introduced new synthetic chemicals, often with unknown consequences, into the remotest corners of the world. In 1995, scientists studying the global reach of organochlorine pesticides reported that almost all of the ones they studied were “ubiquitous on a global scale”. Other evidence supports this conclusion: researchers looking for a control population of humans free of chemical contamination turned to the native peoples of the Canadian Arctic, only to find that they carried chemical contaminants at higher levels than inhabitants of St. Lawrence, Canada, the original focus of the research. Chemicals had reached the indigenous people through wind, water, and their food supply. Similarly, toxic industrial chemicals were reported found in 1998 in the tissue of whales that feed at great depths in the Atlantic Ocean in feeding grounds that were presumed to be clean. Part of the reason for this worrying development is that many chemicals cannot be recaptured once emitted to the environment. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), for instance, which were long used as refrigerants and solvents are implicated in the decay of stratospheric ozone. A large share of pesticides used in agriculture – roughly 85-90 percent – never reach their targets, dispersing instead through air, soil, and water and sometimes settling in the fatty tissues of animals and people. Many synthetic chemicals are not just ubiquitous but long-lived. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including those used in electrical wiring or pesticides, remain active in the environment long after their original purpose is served. Because they are slow to degrade, POPs accumulate in fatty tissues as they are passed up the food chain. Some have been shown to disrupt endocrine and reproductive systems – implicated in miniature genitals in Florida alligators, and abnormally thin bird eggshells, for example-often a generation or more after exposure. The delay in the appearance of health effects caused by POPs raises questions about the wisdom of depending on tens of thousands of newly synthesised chemicals whose effects are poorly understood. The long list of unknowns concerning POPs is just a small indication of our chemical ignorance. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports that insufficient information exists for even a partial health assessment of 95 percent of chemicals in the environment. If information is lacking on thousands of individual chemicals, it is almost non-existent regarding how chemicals interact with each other, or how they work over the long term, or on different segments of the population. And even if this scientific information were available, the actual use of chemicals by industry might remain hidden. (Gardner & Sampat 1998.)

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Important milestones in raising environmental awareness

Rachel Carson: Silent Spring (1962) A book on the chemical poisoning of the environment by unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides - especially DDT - in "agriculture control" farming. Widespread use of these chemicals destroyed wildlife habitats and threatened human communities. When Silent Spring was published, Carson was viciously attacked. Huge sums of money were spent to discredit her. She was called "an ignorant and hysterical woman who wanted to turn the earth over to the insects." While the scientific methods she used were not impeccable, her message about the environment as an interrelated organic system struck a popular nerve. The smear campaign backfired. Silent Spring sparked a revolution in government environmental policy and became instrumental in creating a new ecological consciousness. Meadows et al.: The Limits to Growth (1972) The authors had been commissioned by The Club of Rome, an international group of distinguished businessmen, statesmen, and scientists to undertake a two-year study to investigate the long-term causes and consequences of growth in population, industrial capital, food production, resource consumption, and pollution. To keep track of these interacting entities and to project their possible paths into the future they created a computer model called World3. The results of the study were described for the general public in The Limits to Growth. The book created a furore. Parliaments and scientific societies debated it. A major oil company sponsored a series of advertisements criticising it; another set up an annual prize for the best studies expanding upon it. It was interpreted by many as a prediction of doom, but it was not a prediction at all. It was not about a preordained future, but about a choice. It contained a warning, but also a message of promise. The three summary conclusions written in 1972 were: 1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. 2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his or her individual human potential. 3. If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success. (20 years later they published a sequel to the book titled Beyond the Limits.) The 1972 Stockholm Conference

Acting on a proposal from Sweden, the UN General Assembly in 1968 called for an international conference to examine "problems of the human environment...and also to identify those aspects of it that can only, or best be solved through international co-operation and agreement." The UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in early June 1972. The Stockholm meeting was the first global conference on the environment, indeed the first world conference to focus on a single issue. The Brundtland Report (1987) Dr Brundtland chaired, starting in 1983, the World Commission on Environment and Development, which coined the concept of "sustainable development" and made recommendations leading to the

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Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Brundtland report 1987 defined the concept of sustainable development as: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. (Presently Dr Brundtland is the Director-General of the World Health Organization) The Rio Summit (1992) The objective of the Rio Earth Summit, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the 4 - 14 June 1992, was to examine the state of the environment and development since the 1972 UN (United Nations) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. This summit became known by a number of different names: · UNCED - The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development · The Earth Summit · Rio The Earth Summit was the largest and probably the most complex conference ever organised by the UN. It was the largest gathering of heads of state in history, as it was attended by 178 governments and there were some 120 heads of state at the Summit. The Earth Summit was unprecedented in bringing together people from all walks of life, cultures, political systems, and environmental - development experiences. The purpose of UNCED, was to "elaborate strategies and measures to halt and reverse the effects of environmental degradation in the context of increased national and international efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development in all countries." It addressed: "problems that are planetary in scope that cannot be resolved by traditional diplomacy that pits one region against the others." The key issues addressed are expressed in the form of 5 documents: · The Convention on Climate Change · The Convention on Biological Diversity · The Statement of Forest Principles · The Rio Declaration · Agenda 21 Agenda 21 is a blueprint for sustainable development into the 21st Century. At Rio an undertaking was given that local councils would produce their own plan - a Local Agenda 21. This would involve consulting with the community, because it is the people in the area who have the local knowledge needed to make sensible decisions for their future. Agenda 21 is a guide for individuals, businesses and governments in making choices for development that help society and the environment. If we do not tackle the issues it concerns, we all face higher and higher levels of human suffering and damage to the world we live in. Note how it goes further than just looking at the environment - social factors are seen as very important as well. The Kyoto Treaty On December 11, 1997 an international agreement to combat climate change was negotiated by 171 countries in Kyoto, Japan. As the first legally-binding protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is an important first step towards reversing the growing threat of global climate change. The Treaty adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which is a commitment to cutting greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4, and NOx) emissions from 1990 levels by 2012. The European Union committed itself to 8% cutting, USA 7%, and Japan 6%.

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5

The EU policy on environment

Protection of the environment is one of the major challenges facing Europe. Community action developed over the years until the Treaty on European Union conferred on it the status of a policy. The range of environmental instruments available has expanded as environmental policy has developed. The Community adopted framework legislation providing for a high level of environmental protection while guaranteeing the operation of the internal market. It has introduced a financial instrument: the Life Programme, and technical instruments: eco-labelling, the Community system of environmental management and auditing system for assessment of the effects of public and private projects on the environment. The Sixth Environment Action Programme defines the priorities and objectives of Community environmental policy up to 2010 and beyond, and describes the measures to be taken to help implement the European Union's sustainable development strategy (Commission of the European Communities 2001). The programme has been guided by the Fifth Environment Action Programme (European Council 1998). The Sixth Environment Action Programme focuses on four priority areas for action: climate change; biodiversity; environment and health; and sustainable management of resources and wastes. The objective is to ensure that the consumption of renewable and nonrenewable resources does not exceed the carrying capacity of the environment, and to achieve a decoupling of resource use from economic growth, through significantly improved resource efficiency and the reduction of waste. With regard to waste, the specific target is to reduce the quantity going to final disposal by 20% by 2010, and 50% by 2050. The actions to be undertaken are as follows (Commission of the European Communities 2001): − The development of a strategy for the sustainable management of resources by laying down priorities and reducing consumption; − The taxation of resource use; − The removal of subsidies that encourage the overuse of resources; − The integration of resource efficiency considerations into integrated product policy, eco-labelling schemes, environmental assessment schemes, etc.; − Establishing a strategy for the recycling of waste; − The improvement of existing waste management schemes and investment in quantitative and qualitative prevention; − The integration of waste prevention into the integrated product policy and the Community strategy on chemicals. 5.1 Waste legislation in the European Union To date, European action in the waste field has mainly taken the form of legislation. Other measures supported by the EC to improve the European waste situation include technical research, recycling industries, training, awareness-raising actions and exchange of good practices. While these actions have prevented the situation from becoming even worse than it is today, waste generation is still too high and is rising annually. For years, there has been too little action on the European waste problem and inadequate planning for an optimal solution. As far back as 1975, Community legislation required Member States to develop comprehensive waste management plans, and 25 years on, little has progressed. The situation within the EU regarding waste management continues to be unsatisfactory. (European Communities 1999.) Protection of the environment and natural resources has steadily grown since the 1980s. As a result, a range of measures ranging from legislation, financial instruments, etc. has been undertaken,

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especially at the European level. There is no blueprint which can be applied in every situation, but the EU has firm principles upon which its approach to waste management is based. These include (European Communities 1999): − Prevention principle – waste production must be minimised and avoided where possible. − Producer responsibility and polluter pays principle – those who produce the waste or contaminate the environment should pay the full costs of their actions. − Precaution principle – we should anticipate potential problems. − Proximity principle – waste should be disposed of as closely as possible to where it is produced (the goal of which is to prohibit waste transport to, and disposal in countries with lower environmental standards). European institutions have taken a number of steps. The most important regulations are summarised in Table 3. Table 3 The most important waste-related regulations in the EU. Council Directive on Waste The ‘Framework Directive’ on waste, provides definitions of the most ‘Waste Directive’ important concepts, and sets out categories of waste in its Annex I. (European Council 1991a) The Regulation on the The regulation sets out controls for the shipment of waste. The penalties supervision and control of for illegal trafficking are left to member states' responsibility. transfrontier waste shipments (European Council 1993) The Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste ‘Packaging Directive’ (European Council 1994) The EC Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control ‘IPPC Directive’ (European Council 1996)

The Directive sets targets for recovery and recycling and proposes that a marking scheme for packaging be set up. It requires that 50-65w% of the packaging waste shall be recovered. Within this, 25-45w% of packaging materials shall be recycled, with a minimum of 15w% for each material. The purpose is to achieve integrated prevention and control of pollution arising from activities listed in Annex 1 of the Directive, through permits to be issued by the Member States. The Polluting Emissions Register (PER) inventory is required to be to reported in 2002. The results of the European PER would be fed into the Integrated Emissions Inventory (IEI).

The Directive on the Landfilling of Waste ‘Landfill Directive’ (European Council 1999)

Adopted on April 27, 1999, divides landfills into three classes (landfill for hazardous, non-hazardous, and inert waste) and provides for the first time common requirements for all 15 Member States. One significant element is the requirement of drastic reduction of biodegradable waste going to landfill: to 75w% by 5 years, 50w% by 8, and 35w% by 15 years.

Directive on End-of-Life Vehicles This Directive of September 18, 2000, prescribes that Member States (European Council 2000c) should ensure that the last holder and/or owner can deliver the end-of life vehicle to an authorised treatment facility without any cost as a result of the vehicle having no or a negative, market value. Proposal for EC Directives on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (European Council 2001d)

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Main areas of the proposal adopted on June 13, 2000, were: separate collection goals to be met by January 1st, 2006; responsibility for the treatment and recovery of WEEE is placed on the producer; specific recovery rates are to be met by January 1st, 2006; Hazardous Substances proposal requires the substitution of Pb, Hg, Cd, Cr VI, and certain flame retardants (PBB, PBDE) by January 1st, 2008.

There is a range of new regulations that have been proposed recently, some examples listed below: − Proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive of 11 March 2004 on the typeapproval of motor vehicles with regard to their re-usability, recyclability and recoverability and amending Council Directive 70/156/EEC. − Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and Council on Shipments of Waste COM(2003)379 − Proposal for a Directive European Parliament and Council on the management of waste from the extractive industries COM(2003) 319 − Proposal for a Directive European Parliament and Council on establishing a framework for the setting of Eco-design requirements for Energy- Using Products and amending Council Directive 92/42/EEC COM(2003)453 In addition, noteworthy are the various green and white paper at the EU. Green papers are discussion papers published by the Commission on a specific policy area. An examples is: − Green Paper on Energy Efficiency or Doing More With Less COM(2005) 265, June 2005 White papers are documents containing proposals for Community action in a specific area, such as: − White Paper on the Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy COM(2001) 88, February 2001: The Commission proposes that existing and new substances should in the future, following the phasing in of existing substances until 2012, be subject to the same procedure under a single system. The proposed system is called REACH, for the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of CHemicals. − White paper on Food Safety COM(1999) 719, January 2000 Thematic strategies The European Commission published on 21 December 2005 a Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on Waste (COM(2005) 667 final) This strategy is one of the seven thematic strategies programmed by the 6th Environmental Action Plan. This long-term strategy aims to help Europe become a recycling society that seeks to avoid waste and uses waste as a resource. The Commission also published 2 thematic strategies on the same day: − Thematic strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste COM(2005)666 o As a first step, the Commission proposes revising the 1975 Waste Framework Directive to set recycling standards and to include a waste prevention strategy. This revision will also merge, streamline and clarify legislation, contributing to better regulation − Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources COM(2005)670 o The objective of the Thematic Strategy on the sustainable use of natural resources is to reduce the environmental impacts associated with resource use and to do so in a growing economy. 5.2 Waste legislation in Finland The Waste Management Act (Valtioneuvosto 1978), which came into force in 1979, was the first act in Finland dealing specifically with waste management. After Finland joined the European Economic Area in 1994, and the European Union in 1995 the waste legislation had to be reformed to bring it in line with corresponding European Community legislation. The new Waste Act (Valtioneuvosto 1993a) and Waste Decree (Valtioneuvosto 1993b), which came into force on January 1st, 1994, implementing the provisions of Council Directive on Waste (European Council 1991a) on hazardous waste, and Council Regulation on the supervision and control of trans-frontier shipments of waste (European Council 1993).

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Compared with the earlier Waste Act, the new Act emphasises more preventive measures for minimising the waste generated and diminishing the harmful properties of waste. The Act also requires the recovery of waste if this is technically and economically feasible, primarily in the form of materials and, secondarily, as energy. As the proposal for the new framework directive waste as well as the thematic strategy on waste prevention and recycling prescribe obligation for EU Member States to develop national waste prevention programmes, presently the work is in progress on preparing Finland’s new waste act (VALTSU), which shall include measures on waste prevention. 5.3 Relevant definitions in legislation It is agreed, is that common terminology and a definition of waste are needed in order to improve the efficiency of waste management in the Community. The definitions of Council Directive 91/156/EEC of March 18 1991 amending Directive 75/442/EEC on Waste, Article 1, are collected in Table 4. The Waste Directive states in its Article 3 (European Council 1991a) that Member States shall take appropriate measures to encourage: Firstly: the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness by: a) the development of clean technologies more sparing in their use of natural resources; b) the technical development and marketing of products designed so as to make no contribution or to make the smallest possible contribution, by the nature of their manufacture, use or final disposal, to increasing the amount or harmfulness of waste and pollution hazards; c) the development of appropriate techniques for the final disposal of dangerous substances contained in waste destined for recovery. Secondly: d) the recovery of waste by means of recycling, re-use or reclamation or any other process with a view to extracting secondary raw materials, e) or the use of waste as a source of energy. Table 4 Definitions provided by Council Directive 91/156/EEC on Waste (European Council 1991a). Waste shall mean any substance or object in the categories set out in Annex I which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard. Producer shall mean anyone whose activities produce waste ("original producer") and/or anyone who carries out pre-processing, mixing or other operations resulting in a change in the nature or composition of this waste. Holder shall mean the producer of the waste or the natural or legal person who is in possession of it. Management shall mean the collection, transport, recovery and disposal of waste, including the supervision of such operations and after-care of disposal sites. Disposal shall mean any of the operations provided for in Annex IIA. Recovery shall mean any of the operations provided for in Annex IIB. Collection shall mean the gathering, sorting and/or mixing of waste for the purpose of transport.

The proposal for the new framework directive (COM(2005)667 final) includes some new definitions and amendments to old definitions: − ‘Waste’ shall mean any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard. − ‘Re-use’ means any recovery operation by which products or components that have become waste are used again for the same purpose for which they were conceived

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− ‘Recycling’ means the recovery of waste into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes. It does not include energy recovery. − ‘Recovery’: Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that all waste undergoes operations that result in it serving a useful purpose in replacing, whether in the plant or in the wider economy, other resources which would have been used to fulfil that function, or in it being prepared for such a use, hereinafter “recovery operations”. They shall regard as recovery operations at least the operations listed in Annex II − ‘Disposal’: MS shall regard as disposal operations at least the operations listed in Annex I, even where the operation has as a secondary consequence the reclamation of substances or energy There is a lot of turmoil regarding the proposed definitions, especially with that of re-use, as it seems to indicate that before you re-use something, by definition it used to be waste first. 5.4 The problems with the definition of waste The waste regulations within the EU are generally considered to have had, so far, a positive effect on the environment. Present definitions of waste have created legal disputes in Europe as well as overseas. It is because a substance, when defined as waste, is often restricted in its transport, sale and re-use. Industry has voiced serious concerns that definitions may become a barrier to efficient and sustainable European waste management. Defining a material as waste, or secondary raw material, bears many consequences on what is permissive or not, what administrative procedures apply to its transport, export or processing, and what costs will be incurred. When a thing is labelled as waste, it is going to be handled as waste, thus despite its explicit wish of waste prevention, implicitly legislation amasses waste. A large part of the problem comes from the fact that the current definition of waste includes materials that were long considered by some actors as not being wastes. Different interpretations of the definition of waste interfere with long-established practices recycling. The consequences are felt at environmental, economic and even world trade levels. Waste regulation should be in line with the objectives of European policy, i.e. sustainable development, conservation of natural resources, environment and public health protection, employment and economic growth. 5.5 Re-defining waste One could say that waste is just something that we have not yet figured out utilization for. This would indicate that being waste is a temporary failing that needs to be remedied. Whether an outcome from an industrial process is considered product or waste depends on if it has been made for a Purpose. This suggests that waste could be transformed into non-waste by assigning it a Purpose, that is, find a use for it. Indeed historical evidence shows that the development of waste utilization is as old as technology itself (Desrochers 2002). Purposeful products can also become wastes at the end their useful lives. This can happen either because they have fulfilled their purpose (an empty beer can), or because they are not able to fulfil their purpose anymore due to damage in structure (a broken tyre), or because their temporal state (an expired battery). Further yet, consumers are likely to dispose functional things just for the lack of care or attention. Analysing these reasons of wastes, it has been established that there are four waste classes (Table 5).

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Table 5 Classes of waste (Pongrácz & Pohjola 1997)

2

Class 1

Non-wanted things, created not intended, or not avoided, with no Purpose.

Class 2

Things that were given a finite Purpose, thus destined to become useless after fulfilling it.

Class 3

Things with well-defined Purpose, but their Performance ceased being acceptable.

Class 4

Things with well-defined Purpose, and acceptable Performance, but their users failed to use them for their intended Purpose.

Class 1 are those accidental, unavoidable or concomitant compounds that have not been created purposefully, but they are concomitant with a purposeful industrial activity. Gaseous emissions belong to this class. Class 2 contains artefacts that have been created for a specific, however, temporary Purpose. Upon fulfilling that Purpose, they become waste. Single use products such as non-refillable packaging non-rechargeable batteries are the major members of this class. Class 3 are generally artefacts that have been created to be durable, however either their Structure got damaged in use, or in time their state has been altered, thus they are not able to Perform with respect to their original Purpose. A broken vase, a clogged filter, or a fused wiring would be examples of such structural damage. State change can also inhibit further performance; an evaporated solvent an evaporated solvent would not be as useful as a liquid one. Finally, Class 4 includes discarded things that have been rendered waste only because their owner has failed to use them. In some cases, the action is considerate, such as throwing away an old-fashioned piece of clothing or changing a mobile phone for a trendier one. In other cases, the failure is unwilling; consider the mustard left in the tube that cannot be squeezed out. Conversely, if too much mustard is squeezed out and the leftover is flushed down the drain, the failure is use in excess. This class points out the importance of responsible human action. Based on this taxonomy of waste, the definition for waste was offered as (Pongrácz and Pohjola 1997): Def.1

Waste is a man-made thing that has no Purpose; or is not able to perform with respect to its Purpose.

To some respect, according to this definition waste is in the eye of the beholder, as humans assign Purpose and humans evaluate Performance. However, this description also allows for the possibility of the waste being turned into a non-waste, and emphasizes that being ‘waste’ is a temporary failing that needs to be remedied. The above waste description explains the reasons why things became waste. The description of waste as “a thing which the owner failed to use for its intended Purpose,” highlights the fact that it was because of the wrongful action of the owner why the thing became waste. When we describe waste emission as “a thing to which its producer has not assigned a Purpose,” we point out the error of the producer. While a waste of the type: “thing which is not performing in respect to its original Purpose due to an irreversible structural change” explains the reasons why the thing became waste. It appears that things become waste either due to a wrongful action of a human, or because of a fault in the Structure of the thing that deprives it of its functionality. Waste can thus be defined with reference to humans as (Pongrácz 2002): Def.2

2

Waste is a thing that is in the given time and place, in its actual Structure and State, not useful to its owner, or an output that has no owner and no Purpose.

This taxonomy uses the PSSP™ language, according to which every real thing can be described as on object with the following necessary and sufficient attributes: Purpose, Structure, State and Performance.

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This definition points out the dynamic nature of waste: the same thing can be waste or non-waste for different persons, in different places and different times. Responsible ownership is a central issue in waste management. Ownership can make and unmake wastes. Legislation recognizes waste when owners cede their ownership over them. This is of central importance for the reason of controlling the conditions of abandonment. Recycling is said to be the means of transforming waste to non-waste (Eurostat 2005), however, representatives of Finnish industry (e.g. Hasenson 2004, Pekkarinen 2004) would argue that waste regulation sometimes sets barriers when they wish to do so. It is because defining a material as waste, or secondary raw material, bears many consequences on what is permissive or not, what administrative procedures apply to its transport, export or processing, and what costs will be incurred. Clear definitions about the conditions when wastes cede to be wastes are lacking, therefore, we need to ask next, what is a non-waste? 5.6 Defining non-waste It is argued that the taxonomy of Table 5, as well as definitions 1 and 2 describe waste without doubt. It can then be argued that everything outside of these definitions is a non-waste. Whenever there is an owner who intends to use a thing for a Purpose, or the owner intends to manipulate the thing to be able to perform with respect to its Purpose, it cannot be considered waste any longer, since it does then not belong to any of the waste classes. In the process when a waste material is used to manufacture a new product, it can be said that waste ceases being waste as soon as the properties of the new product are formed and this product becomes functional with respect to its Purpose. Non-waste was defined as (Pongrácz 2002): Def.3

Non-waste is an object which has been assigned a Purpose by its (or a potential) owner, and this owner will either use it for that Purpose, or by adjustment of State or Structure, ensure that the object will be able to perform in respect to the assigned Purpose.

It was suggested that things covered by this definition shall not be considered waste, and be exempt from regulative restrictions regarding waste. 5.7 Can every waste be turned into non-waste? Conceptually, wastes of Definition 1 can be turned into non-waste of Definition 3. Naturally, we are far from the technical capacity and efficacy to actually do this in practice. There may be limitations, such as the structural damage of a thing of waste Class 3 being non-repairable, or the thing of waste Class 4 being non-retrievable. However, if there is a possibility, we shall strive towards it. The conceptual solutions to turn wastes no non-wastes are summarized in Table 6. Table 6 Turning waste to non-waste (Pongrácz 2002) Waste class

Solution to be assigned

Class 1

Waste to be assigned a Purpose.

Class 2

Waste to be assigned a second Purpose.

Class 3

Waste requires repair of Structure or adjustment of State.

Class 4

Waste requires a new owner who will use it for the intended Purpose, or will assign a new Purpose.

Even if none of the conceptual schemes presented in Table 2 are applicable, there are no ultimate wastes. The life cycle of the artefact ends with it becoming a natural thing. When a waste is left to

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decompose or dissipate in nature, and its properties can no longer be recognised as being an artefact, it can be argued that it is a natural thing. 5.8 Re-defining waste management It has been determined that the Purpose of waste management is protection of the environment and conservation of resources (Pongrácz 2002). This goal is the basis of describing waste management as follows: Def. 4

Waste management control of waste-related activities, with the purpose of resources conservation and environmental protection

Waste-related activities include waste creating processes, waste handling, as well as waste utilisation. Control of these activities occurs by adjustment of the Purpose of waste, or manipulating the Structure or State of waste. Waste legislation has been created to enforce the achievement of this Purpose, by setting goals for waste management, e.g. by fixing recycling rates to be achieved, setting targets to reduce emissions, prescribing the goal of stabilising waste production at a given level, or banning the export of certain categories of waste, etc. We can accept that waste management (collection, transport, recovery and disposal of waste, including the supervision of such operations and after-care of disposal sites) as defined by the Waste Directive (91/156/EEC), is the summary of actual activity upon waste. However, sustainable waste management also involves strategic planning and decision making to determine best action; prescribing options and assessing their effects and consequences; and choosing the best treatment option, with taking into consideration legislation. At all times, one shall keep in mind that conservation of resources and prevention of the contamination of environment can be achieved by waste management through applying the proper hierarchy: waste prevention first, followed by recovery and, ultimately, safe disposal. 5.9 The role of waste minimisation Moving toward waste minimisation requires that the firm commits itself to increasing the proportion of non-waste leaving the process. the following preventive options can be assigned to the four classes of waste. 5.9.1 Prevent creating things with no Purpose When assignation of a new Purpose is not possible, the aim is then to reduce the amount of waste that is produced with no Purpose. Enhancement of the environmental performance of the production process shall aim at reducing emissions and/or substituting potentially dangerous compounds to reduce the toxicity of waste. Design for the Environment (DFE), in particular Design for Safety is required. Aiming at a process that involves minimal waste production, three options have to be considered. Firstly, reducing the use of natural resources since mining is a major solid waste producer. Closed- as well as open-loop recycling can contribute to this end. Secondly, reduction of energy use, given that generating energy involves waste-creating that can be allocated to the product. Thirdly, reduce water consumption as wastewater treatment involves sludge production. A paper on the effectiveness of waste minimisation clubs in reducing the demand for water revealed that companies were able to reduce water consumption by approximately 30% (Holt et al. 2000). Enhancing the logistics of the production process can also greatly contribute to a more efficient production, which in turn contributes to waste reduction.

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5.9.2 Prevent creating things with a single finite Purpose Reduction of waste in this class requires product design enhancement and extending designer responsibility. The future Purpose of the product when it becomes waste can be planned using DFE methods, for example, Design for Materials Recyclability, Design for Incineration, or Design for Disposal. In the case of packaging, especially that of plastics, feedstock recycling is an ideal utilisation of difficult-to-recycle plastics, since energy recovery also contributes to waste minimisation by avoiding usage of fossil fuels, as their acquisition also involves waste creation. In the case of refillable packaging, some economic instruments can also help reduce waste. Monetary deposits, for example, will motivate consumers to return the waste package. 5.9.3 Prevent creating things that cease performing Increased functionality of products can postpone its transformation to waste. If the loss of Performance is only due to a faulty part, changing that part is an option. To that end, Design for Refurbishment is recommended. When refurbishment is not viable, recovery of the useful constituent parts is preferred. Design for Disassembly can help achieve this. There is also a need for legal instruments, i.e., product take-back responsibilities so that the consumer has a possibility to return a non-functional product (electronic appliances, cars, etc.) to the manufacturer. Another option is leasing the product instead of selling to the consumer, a practice widespread in the use of copier machines, and introduced to cars as well. Use of economic instruments, such as deposits is, again, also recommended. 5.9.4 Preventing owners from failing use things for their Purpose Enhancing the environmental performance and/or functionality may make the product more desirable to the owner, or may make it easier to find a new owner. Hence the owner would be less prone to give up ownership of the product. Use of legal instruments, such as increasing owner responsibility can prevent uncontrolled abandonment of ownership. In summary, waste minimisation requires innovative process design and product design as well as the use of economic and legal instruments. They are listed in Table 7. Table 7 Instruments for waste minimisation Process design enhancements

Increase process efficiency, Substitution of dangerous compounds, Design for Process Safety, Minimisation of the use of ‘virgin’ materials, Minimisation of energy use, Minimisation of water use.

Product design changes

Increase functionality of the product, Increase the environmental performance of the product, DFE: Design for Refurbishment/ Disassembly/ Material Recycling/ Incineration/ Disposal, etc.

Economic and legal instrument

Deposit/refund systems, Product take-back responsibility, Increased owner responsibility.

Remember that the Council Directive on Waste, defines waste management as: Waste management shall mean collection, transport, recovery and disposal of waste, including the supervision of such operations and after-care of disposal sites. This definition of waste management has an “organisational approach”. It is concerned about the existing amount of waste, trying to minimise the human-waste or environment-waste interface, to 23

minimise potential impact. It must be noted that this approach is very useful and important. It does not go into the depth of the concept, does not try to explain or clarify the concept, but that is not its role either. Self-confessedly, the role is to protect human health and the environment. In this context, ‘the environment’ is to mean the whole of the natural world inhabited by living organisms, considered vulnerable to pollution. Cheyne and Purdue (1995) argue that waste management is concerned not only with final disposal of waste but with the whole cycle of waste creation, transport, storage, treatment and recovery, and does so in order prevent pollution and harm from pollution taking place. Waste management strategies, therefore, should include a wide range of policies, such as assignment of liability, duty of care, controls over collection, transport and disposal and, not the last, reduction and/or elimination of waste. Semantically, the expression is an interesting use of words. ‘To manage’ is, according to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary Online: “to handle or direct with a degree of skill; to work upon or try to alter for a purpose; to succeed in accomplishing or to direct or carry on business or affairs.” While ‘management’ is defined as: “judicious use of means to achieve an end.” It appears from these definitions that management is control of activities, while the expression of ‘waste management’ semantically suggests that it is control of materials. Another question raised is, if the aim of management is to achieve an end, what would be that end, and what then is the aim of waste management? The purpose of waste management is protection of the environment, human health and natural resources. Waste management shall be understood as a system, providing medium for making changes in the way people behave with respect to waste. (Pongrácz & Pohjola 1999a.) It has been concluded that waste management can be understood as: Definition 5

Waste management is control of waste-related activities with the aim of protecting the environment and resources conservation. Waste-related activities include waste-creating processes, waste handling as well as waste utilisation. Control of these activities occurs based on the considerations prescribed earlier: Purpose readjustment; Structure and State manipulation. It is important that the main objective of waste management is, besides waste avoidance, turning wastes into non-wastes and preventing waste from final disposal, especially of such disposal which does not utilise waste by any means. 6

The waste management hierarchy

The European Council in its Waste Directive of 1991 sets the hierarchy of waste management options as follows: 1. waste prevention 2. recovery 3. safe disposal The OECD concluded that, even when conventional environmental and waste policy approaches have succeeded in attaining their own specific objectives, they have not been sufficient toward overall waste reduction. OECD-wide recycling has been increasing, but without waste prevention efforts, a near doubling of municipal waste within the OECD area is expected within the next 20 years. At a workshop in Berlin organised by the OECD in 1996, when looking for a definition of waste minimization, they defined the elements of waste management hierarchy as seen in Figure 6. This figure has since been widely accepted as the definition of the waste management hierarchy.

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Figure 5 Waste prevention vs. minimization defined by the OECD in 1996

6.1 Waste prevention The consensus understanding of waste prevention achieved by OECD countries (OECD 1998) can be broken down into three types of actions: 1. Strict Avoidance 2. Reduction at Source 3. Product Re-use The first-ever OECD workshop devoted specifically to waste prevention was held in 1999; and a Reference Manual on strategic waste prevention was published to assist governments with actions that support increased resource efficiency and sustainable development. (OECD 2000.) 6.1.1 Strict avoidance Strict Avoidance involves the complete prevention of waste generation by virtual elimination of hazardous substances or by reducing material or energy intensity in production, consumption, and distribution. Examples of strict avoidance include those that address: • Hazard, such as: Avoiding and/or substituting materials that are hazardous to humans or to the environment (e.g., through bans on PCBs and ozone-depleting substances, or virtual elimination of toxic organochlorines released in bleached pulp mill effluents). • Quantity, such as: Avoiding use of materials or stages of production/consumption (e.g., through eliminating interim packaging for cosmetics and toothpaste, or substitution of continuous casting for ingot casting at steelworks).

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6.1.2 Reduction at source Reduction at source involves minimising use of toxic or harmful substances and/or minimising material or energy consumption. Examples of reduction at source include those that address: • Hazard, such as: o Reducing the use of harmful substances in products, in production and sales systems, and in consumption and disposal systems, and o Reducing the use of substances that hinder re-use or recycling (e.g. "Post-its” on paper, use of chlorinated solvents as cleansing agents). • Quantity, such as: o Using smaller amounts of resources to provide the same product or service (e.g. reducing foil thickness, introducing re-use or refill systems, miniaturisation, resource-orientated purchasing and consumption); and o Using less resource-dependent construction principles and materials. 6.1.3 Waste prevention measures The thematic strategy on waste prevention and recycling (COM(2005)666) defines a range of prevention measures to be applied at different strategic levels. These are: − Measures that can affect the framework conditions related to the generation of waste 1. The use of planning measures, or other economic instruments affecting the availability and price of primary resources. 2. The promotion of research and development into the area of achieving cleaner and less wasteful products and technologies and the dissemination and use of the results of such research and development. 3. The development of effective and meaningful indicators of the environmental pressures associated with the generation of waste at all levels, from product comparisons through action by local authorities to national measures. − Measures that can affect the design and production phase: 1. The promotion of eco-design 2. The provision of information on waste prevention techniques, facilitating BAT 3. Organise training of competent authorities on waste prevention 4. The inclusion of measures to prevent waste production at installations, inc. waste prevention assessments or plans. 5. Use of awareness campaigns or the provision of financial, decision making or other support to businesses. 6. Such measures are likely to be particularly effective aimed at SMEs and work through established business networks. 7. Use of voluntary agreements, consumer/producer panels or industrial sectors set their own waste prevention plans 8. The promotion of creditable EMS, inc. ISO 14001. − Measures that can affect the consumption and use phase 1. Economic instruments such as incentives for clean purchases 2. The use of awareness campaigns directed at the general public 3. The promotion of creditable eco-labels

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4. Use of product panels on the availability of waste prevention information and products with a lower environmental impact 5. Integration of environmental and waste prevention criteria into calls for tenders and contracts public and corporate procurement 6. The promotion of the re-use and/or repair of appropriate discarded products, notably through the establishment or support of repair/re-use networks It needs to be remembered that the effects of waste prevention actions are not visible immediately; sometimes the effects are felt years later. They are also difficult to measure, and the thematic strategy is not planning to prescribe EU waste prevention targets as this would not be the most effective way to foster waste prevention. Such targets fail to address the complexity of environmental impact. The weight of waste could be reduced yet the environmental impact could increase, whereas small weight reductions can bring large reductions in environmental impact. The strategy prescribes that Member States should develop waste prevention programmes in the context of sustainable production and consumption. 6.2 Waste minimization According to terminological work undertaken at OECD, waste minimisation is a broader term than waste prevention (see Figure 6) in that it includes recycling. Waste minimisation, according to which it encompasses these three elements in the following order or priority (Riemer & Kristoffersen 1999): − preventing and/or reducing the generation of waste at source; − improving the quality of the waste generated, such as reducing the hazard; and − encouraging re-use, recycling and recovery. The OECD Definition of waste minimisation is: Waste minimisation is preventing and/or reducing the generation of waste at the source; improving the quality of waste generated, such as reducing the hazard, and encouraging re-use, recycling, and recovery. Waste minimization thus includes both waste prevention and recycling. It needs to be highlighted though, that waste minimization should not be equalled with diversion from landfill only, which is a sort of “end of pipe action” that assigns some recovery option to existing waste. Both waste prevention and waste minimization should be primarily viewed as actions that occur before products or materials are identified or recognised as waste. 6.3 Re-use Re-use needs a special consideration under present circumstances, as for the last 10 year the OECD’s hierarchy was accepted according to which product re-use is a preventive option, however, the new waste framework directive considers it a recovery option. As there is no consensus to date, both of the definitions will be provided: OECD definition (OECD 2000): Product re-use involves the multiple use of a product in its original form, for its original purpose or for an alternative, with or without reconditioning. Examples of product re-use include those that address:

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Re-use after reconditioning, such as refilling glass or plastic bottles after washing, and using empty adhesive barrels as oil barrels after reconditioning. • Re-use without reconditioning, such as using shopping bags more than once. The definition of re-use in the new waste framework directive is: Re-use means any recovery operation by which products or components that have become waste are used again for the same purpose for which they were conceived Note that it is yet a proposal, this will be official definition of re-use only when the proposal will be accepted. 6.4 Recycling Recycling is defined as (European Council 1994): Recycling shall mean the reprocessing in a production process of the waste materials for the original purpose, or for other purposes, including organic recycling but excluding energy recovery.”

It is useful to distinguish three different forms of recycling: closed-loop recycling, open-loop recycling, and down-cycling, which can be explained as follows (Lox 1994) “Closed-loop recycling is a recycling process in which a waste material is used for the same purpose as the original purpose or for another purpose requiring at least as severe properties as the previous application so that, after one or several uses, this material can be used back again for the original purpose.” “Open-loop recycling is a recycling process in which a waste material is used for another purpose than the original purpose and will never be used back again for the original purpose.” “Down-cycling is a recycling process in which a (fraction of a) material from a used product is used to make a product that does not require as severe properties as the previous one.” Be reminded of the differences between re-use and recycle: during re-use, the product will not change its shape; it is continuously used as such (such as beer or soft drink bottles which are refilled). During recycling the product will go through some process, during which its structure is going to be changed (such as beer or soft drink in aluminium cans, which are re-melted before they are used again as drink containers). 6.4.1 The problem with recycling The concept of recycling to conserve resources is based on the assumption that recycling requires fewer raw materials and less energy, and generates fewer emissions into the environment, than manufacturing new material. Recycling is not environmentally sound when additional transportation steps using non-renewable fossil fuels must be used to collect the material prior to recycling. For recycling to be environmentally beneficial, the effects of the collection, transportation and reprocessing operations must be less harmful than those resulting from the extraction and processing of the virgin raw material that the recycled product replaces. (Consider that in Oulu, yearly about 1500 tonnes of recyclables (packaging, newspaper) are collected from the households and transported over distances of hundreds of kilometres to recycle while, in the same time, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of industrial waste are landfilled.) Recycling actually only occurs once the secondary material has been converted into a new product, or is utilised in another way. Thus, the availability of markets for the secondary materials generated is fundamental to the success of recycling. 6.5 Recovery Recovery is a collection concept, the latest European consensus is that the purpose of recovery is to be linked with the expectation to replace virgin materials. In the proposed new framework directive 28

recovery is regarded to be “at least the operations listed in Annex II”. the content of Annex II is in Table 8. Table 8 Operations which may lead to recovery (Annex II) R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 R10

Use principally as a fuel or other means to generate energy. Solvent reclamation/regeneration. Recycling/reclamation of organic substances which are not used as solvents. Recycling/reclamation of metals and metal compounds. Recycling/reclamation of other inorganic materials. Regeneration of acids or bases. Recovery of components used for pollution abatement. Recovery of components from catalysts. Oil re-refining or other re-uses of oil. Spreading on land resulting in benefit to agriculture or ecological improvement, including composting and other biological transformation processes. R11 Use of wastes obtained from any of the operations numbered R1 - R10. R12 Exchange of wastes for submission to any of the operations numbered R1 - R11. R13 Storage of materials intended for submission to any operation in this Annex, excluding temporary storage, pending collection, on the site where it is produced.

6.6 Disposal As proposed by the proposal for the new framework directive, Member States shall regard as disposal operations at least the operations listed in Annex I (Table 9), even where the operation has as a secondary consequence the reclamation of substances or energy Table 9 Disposal operations (Annex I) D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 D8 D9 D10 D11 D12 D13 D14 D15

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Tipping above or underground (e.g. landfill, etc.). Land treatment (e.g. biodegradation of liquid or sludge discards in soils, etc.). Deep injection (e.g. injection of pumpable discards into wells, salt domes or naturally occurring repositories, etc.). Surface impoundment (e.g. placement of liquid or sludge discards into pits, ponds or lagoons, etc.). Specially engineered landfill (e.g. placement into lined discrete cells, which are capped and isolated from one another and the environment, etc.). Release of solid waste into a water body except seas/oceans. Release into seas/oceans including seabed insertion. Biological treatment not specified elsewhere in this Annex which results in final compounds, which are disposed of by means of any of the operations in this Annex. Physico-chemical treatment not specified elsewhere in this Annex which results in final compounds that are disposed of by means of any of the operations in this Annex (e.g. drying). Incineration on land. Incineration at sea. Permanent storage (e.g. emplacement of containers in a mine, etc.). Blending or mixture prior to submission to any of the operations in this Annex. Repackaging prior to submission to any of the operations in this Annex. Storage pending any of the operations in this Annex, excluding temporary storage, pending collection, on the site where it is produced.

Industrial metabolism and its importance to waste minimization

The major way in which the industrial metabolic system differs from the natural metabolism of the Earth is that the natural cycles (of water, carbon/oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, etc.) are closed, whereas the industrial cycles are open. In other words, the industrial system does not generally recycle its nutrients. Rather, the industrial system starts with high quality materials (fossil fuels, ores) extracted from the Earth, and returns them to nature in degraded form. (Ayres 1988)

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It should also be pointed out that the bio-geosphere was not always a stable system of closed cycles. Far from it. The earliest living cells on Earth obtained their nutrients, by fermentation, from nonliving organic molecules whose origin is still not completely understood. At that time the atmosphere contained no free oxygen or nitrogen; it probably consisted mostly of water vapour plus some hydrogen and hydrogen-rich gases such as methane, hydrogen sulphide, and ammonia. The fermentation process yields ethanol and carbon dioxide. The system could have continued only until the fermentation organisms used up the original stock of “food” molecules or choked on the carbon dioxide build-up. The system stabilised temporarily with the appearance of a new organism (bluegreen algae, or cyano-bacteria) capable of recycling carbon dioxide into sugars and cellulose, thus again closing the carbon cycle. This new process was anaerobic photosynthesis. However, the photosynthesis process also had a waste product: namely, oxygen. For a long time (over a billion years) the oxygen generated by anaerobic photosynthesis was captured by dissolved ferrous iron molecules, and sequestered as insoluble ferric oxide or magnetite, with the help of another primitive organism, the stromatolites. The resulting insoluble iron oxide was precipitated on the ocean bottoms. (The result is the large deposits of high-grade iron ore we exploit today.) The system was still unstable at this point. It was only the evolutionary invention of two more biological processes, aerobic respiration and aerobic photosynthesis that closed the oxygen cycle as well. Still other biological processes - nitrification and de-nitrification, for instance - had to appear to close the nitrogen cycle and others. Evidently biological evolution responded to inherently unstable situations (open cycles) by “inventing” new processes (organisms) to stabilise the system by closing the cycles. However, the instabilities in question were slow to develop, and the evolutionary responses were also slow to evolve. It took several billion years before the biosphere reached its present degree of stability. (Ayres 1988) 7.1 Entropy The second law holds that energy is degraded through its use; it becomes less and less useful to do work. Entropy is a measure of the state of usefulness of energy. The lower the entropy of a system, the more work that energy can do. An easy way to understand entropy is to think of a home that is heated by a gas furnace. The gas in the pipe leading to the furnace has low entropy (high energy content). Once burned, the entropy of the gas increases as the energy from the gas is dispersed into the home in the form of heat. Eventually the heat dissipates into the surrounding environment as it escapes through the doors and windows. The more the heat dissipates the greater the increase in entropy. Once the energy has escaped the house and entered into the surroundings, it is no longer in a useful state. In other words, the energy has dissipated and is no longer useful for the purpose it was intended. (Eflin 1997.) Entropy plays a key role in explaining the environmental problems of today. By applying the second law of thermodynamics to energy and materials consumption in modern society, technology speeds up the use of both energy and materials. In his view, the modern industrial system is a transformer of materials and energy, increasing entropy and reducing the usefulness of materials and energy. (Rifkin 1980.) The concern is the sustainability of natural resource use. A characteristic of the modern era is the use of technology and natural resources in a wasteful way, one that continues to transform the Earth, speed up the use of non-renewable energy, and accelerate material entropy in the process. Material waste and waste heat are inevitable outcomes of this process. Waste heat is produced in the process of fuel combustion and is a measure of the inefficiency of energy transformation. Solid waste, produced as by-products of material fabrication or mineral extractions, is a measure of the inefficiency of a material manufacturing system. Effluent discharged from a factory or processing plant is a measure of the inefficiency of chemical transformations. Each case illustrates an industrial 30

system that is operating within the greater complex of the global environmental system and that is generating a dissipative loss (i.e., irreversible loss through the simple dispersion of energy and materials). Such losses represent real evidence of the inefficiency of production systems, as the wastes are no longer recycled or reused in the production processes. Once lost from the system through dissipative loss, these wastes must be disposed of – stored in a landfill or a containment pond or discharged into the air, soil, or water (where they become diffused). (Eflin 1997.) From this cursory look at the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, and dissipation we can see one major requirement for an alternatively designed industry – to limit every opportunity within the production and consumption processes for energy and materials to get lost. This requirement produces several possible strategies (Eflin 1997): ƒ To increase energy and material efficiency – something that can actually be achieved through technological innovation; ƒ To make the process of resource extraction, production, consumption, and waste disposal/emission/pollution into a closed loop cycle; in other words reuse and recycle materials wherever possible; and ƒ To reduce the need for new/fresh natural resources and the release of wasteful and potentially harmful by-products (both of which can be facilitated by the first two strategies). This is particularly necessary for non-renewable resources (those that are not replaced after use through natural re-growth) and waste repositories that are finite (either literally or in a practical economic sense). This also implies that we should increase our reliance on renewable forms of resources. Coupled with reduced depletion of non-renewables, this would be a way to reduce the consumption of energy and resources. It may not be possible to shift entirely from the use of non-renewable resources, but it makes sense to devise and implement strategies for minimising the use of nonrenewable materials and energy sources. 7.2 Measures of Industrial Metabolism There are only two possible long-run fates for waste materials: recycling and reuse or dissipative loss. (This is a straightforward implication of the law of conservation of mass.) The more materials are recycled, the less will be dissipated into the environment, and vice versa. Dissipative losses must be made up by replacement from virgin sources. A strong implication of the analysis sketched above is that a long-term (sustainable) steady-state industrial economy would necessarily be characterised by near-total recycling of intrinsically toxic or hazardous materials, as well as a significant degree of recycling of plastics, paper, and other materials whose disposal constitutes an environmental problem. Heavy metals are among the materials that would have to be almost totally recycled. (Ayres 1994) A good measure of unsustainability is dissipative use. This raises the distinction between inherently dissipative uses and uses for which the material could be recycled or reused, in principle, but is not. The latter could be termed potentially recyclable. The three classes of materials use are summarised in Table 10. Table 10 Classes of materials use (Ayres 1994)

Class 1

uses that are economically and technologically compatible with recycling under present prices and regulations;

Class 2

uses that are not economically compatible with recycling but where recycling is technically feasible, for example, if the collection problem were solved

Class 3

uses for which recycling is inherently not feasible

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Admittedly there is some fuzziness in these classifications, but it should be possible for a group of international experts to arrive at some reconciliation. Generally speaking, it is arguable that most structural metals and industrial catalysts are in the first category; other structural and packaging materials, as well as most refrigerants and solvents fall into the second category. This leaves coatings, pigments, pesticides, herbicides, germicides, preservatives, flocculants, antifreezes, explosives, propellants, fire retardants, reagents, detergents, fertilisers, fuels, lubricants, and the like in the third category. In fact, it is easy to verify that most chemical products belong in the third category, except those physically embodied in plastics, synthetic rubber, or synthetic fibres. (Ayres 1994) Table 11 shows world output of a number of materials - mostly chemicals – whose uses are, for the most part, inherently dissipative (class 3). Table 11 Examples of dissipative use (Ayres 1994)

Substance

Dissipative uses

Heavy metals Copper sulphate (CuSO4•5H2O) Sodium bichromate Lead oxides Lithopone (ZuS) Zinc Oxide (TiO2) Tetraethyl lead Arsenic Mercury

Fungicide, algicide, wood preservative, catalyst chromic acid (for plating), tanning, algicide Pigment (glass) Pigment Pigment (tires) Pigment Gasoline additive Wood preservative, herbicide Fungicide, catalyst

Other chemicals Chlorine Sulphur Ammonia Phosphoric acid NaOH Na2CO3

Acid bleach, water treatment, PVC solvents, pesticides, refrigerants Acid (H2SO4), bleach, chemicals, fertilisers, rubber Fertiliser, detergents, chemicals Fertilisers, nitric acid, chemicals (nylon, acrylics) Bleach, soap, chemicals Chemicals (glass)

With regard to materials that are potentially recyclable (classes 1 and 2), the fraction actually recycled is a useful measure of the approach toward (or away from) sustainability (Ayres 1994). 7.3 Policy Implications of the Industrial Metabolism Perspective There are two implications that come to mind. First, the industrial metabolism perspective is essentially holistic in that the whole range of interactions between energy, materials, and the environment is considered together – at least, in principle. The second major implication, which virtually follows from the first, is that from this holistic perspective it is much easier to see that narrowly conceived or short-run “quick fix” policies may be far from globally optimum. In fact, from the larger perspective, such policies can be harmful.

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The best way to explain the virtues of a holistic view is by contrasting it with narrower perspectives. Consider the problem of waste disposal. It is a consequence of the law of conservation of mass that the total quantity of materials extracted from the environment will ultimately return thence as some sort of waste residuals. Yet environmental protection policy has systematically ignored this fundamental reality by imposing regulations on emissions by medium. Typically, one legislative act mandates a bureaucracy that formulates and enforces a set of regulations dealing with emissions only to the air. Another act creates a bureaucracy that deals only with waterborne emissions, and so forth. Narrowly conceived environmental policies have largely shifted waste emissions from one form (and medium) to another, without significantly reducing the totals. In some cases, policy has encouraged changes that merely dilute the waste stream without touching its volume at all (e.g. VOC regulation). Policy generally functions in the short term, and focuses on the interest of a specific geographic area limited by political structure (terms of office, geographic boundary) Most humans do not think beyond a time horizon of few years and a geographic region that encompasses their country. However, sustainability issues need to be reaching beyond decades, even centuries, over continental to global geographic scales. How policy systems can be developed to integrate wide temporal and spacial scales? The implication of all these points for policymakers, of course, is that the traditional governmental division of responsibility into a large number of independent bureaucratic fields is dangerously faulty. Yet the way out of this organisational condition is far from clear. 8

Strategic waste prevention

Waste prevention refers to three types of practical actions, i.e., strict avoidance, reduction at source, and product re-use. Strategic waste prevention is a policy concept that concretely situates waste prevention within a longer-term resource management and sustainable development perspective. Strategic waste prevention works toward the reduction of absolute waste amounts, hazards, and risks, as appropriate, and is characterised by at least four aspects subject to continual refinement over time (Vancini 2000): a) A life-cycle perspective for identifying the policy intervention points linked with the highest waste preventing effects and system-wide environmental benefits. This would include attention to the fact that downstream waste prevention interventions can have upstream benefits, and vice-versa. Life-cycle waste prevention and overall environmental protection is likely to be further supported by the growing trend toward product-oriented policies (and, as a consequence, the analogous trend away from a singular focus on facility-oriented policies); b) A material-differentiated approach that links different types of waste prevention targets, instruments, and performance evaluation approaches to different types and classes of material flows; c) The substantive integration of social and economic aspects into environmental policy discussions on waste prevention. Methods toward this end are wide-ranging and can include increased integration of waste prevention policies with sectoral policies (e.g. mining, energy, and agriculture), and increased stakeholder consultation during programme design to assure “policy ownership”; and d) Institutional mechanisms that facilitate co-operation across traditional institutional structures (Cleland-Hamnett and Retzer 1993) such that greater waste prevention and overall policy synergy are induced.

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8.1 Links to other concepts Governmental authorities with responsibility for waste prevention programmes need to be conversant with range of concepts that relate to waste prevention. These include, but are not limited to, eco-efficiency, cleaner production, industrial ecology, integrated pollution prevention and control, extended producer responsibility, and integrated product policy. There are several evolving policy concepts that complement and (potentially) help drive strategic waste prevention. Here is a sampling (Vancini 2000): 8.1.1 Eco-efficiency (E2). Seven criteria for eco-efficiency are (World Business Council for Sustainable Development 1995): (a) minimise the material intensity of goods and services, (b) minimise the energy intensity of goods and services, (c) minimise toxic dispersion, (d) enhance material recyclability, (e) maximise the use of renewable resources, (f) extend product durability, and (g) increase the service intensity of goods and services” These ideas are not new, but eco-efficiency attempts to combine them in a way that promotes factor level improvements in value creation with minimal resource use and pollution and waste, and as an aid to communication between governments, business, and others. Eco-efficiency is sometimes used interchangeably with Cleaner Production. Industrial Ecology (IE). To be discussed in more detail later. 8.1.2 Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC). “IPPC is a method to take into account all environmental media simultaneously when attempting to reduce natural resource and energy use, exposure to hazardous substances and releases of pollutants by economic activities. Therefore, IPPC promotes the concept of economic progress with reduced consumption and pollution. To date, implementation of IPPC has usually been associated with the firm-level adoption of so-called integrated permits.” (OECD 1996b) 8.1.3 Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). An approach where the producers’ physical and/or financial responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer (waste) stage of a product’s life-cycle. Producers accept their responsibility when they design their products to minimise life-cycle impacts and when they accept legal, physical and/or economic responsibility for the environmental impacts that cannot be eliminated by design (OECD). 8.1.4 Integrated Product Policy (IPP). Five IPP ‘building blocks’ include (European Commission 1998): (a) measures aimed at reducing and managing wastes generated by the consumption of products, (b) measures targeted at the innovation of more environmentally friendly products, (c) measures to create markets for environmentally sound products, (d) measures for transmitting information up and down the product chain,

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(e) measures which allocate responsibility for managing the environmental burdens of product systems”. The core or principal commonality between strategic waste prevention and the above 5 concepts is the emphasis on taking measures to reduce the life-cycle environmental impacts from economic activities, and hence to reduce the need for expensive clean-up technologies, disposal facilities, and environmental remediation. Moreover, while all the concepts rely to a certain extent on “known” ways of doing things (or at least on “known” ways of how things “should” be done), most seek to promote a fundamentally improved scale of change compared to more traditional environmental policy concepts. In environmental terms, the most important difference between strategic waste prevention and other concepts is the ultimate focus. Strategic waste prevention squarely concentrates on reducing waste generation amounts and/or hazards while concurrently avoiding the transfer of problems to other environmental media, other material stages, or other points in time. Another distinction is that many of the concepts noted above have been applied most tangibly at the firm or organisational level (IPPC, E2, IE), whereas waste prevention strategies (as well as IPP and EPR) inherently engage multiple actors, including consumers. The fact that waste prevention occurs before materials and products are tracked and identified as wastes means that waste prevention may overlap with concepts that deal more directly with natural resource management. The fact that waste prevention is diverse in focus, and potentially addresses also energy content of materials, suggests a link to approaches that more concretely encompass energy efficiency (Geller 1981) and greenhouse gas mitigation. 8.1.5 Integrated Resources Management Waste management is often extended to Integrated Resources Management. It can be defined as follows: Integrated Resources Management is the recovery of economic value from any resource produced naturally or by society while considering ecological, economic, technological and social implications of recovery, recycling and re-integration technologies. 8.1.6 Resources use optimization While the EU, within its proposal for a Directive on Waste focuses greatly on waste prevention, in industry, it is important to take an extended view on resources in order to avoid that efficiency in the use of one resource is achieved with wasting another. Originally resource efficiency is not a waste management concept, as it refers to the use of natural resources in general, pointing out their limited nature on a global scale, which necessitates their sparing use. It can be defined as follows (Dillon and Anderson 1990): “The objective of resource-use optimization is to maximize the level of net benefit generated by applying a resource to produce an output.” Other description of resources use optimization, when applied to natural resource use (Lewis and Brabec 2005), implies that using fewer resources for a given function indicate more resource efficiency. The concept of resources use optimization or resource efficiency in industry is often used to indicate that apart of waste reduction, it also aims at reducing water and energy consumption as well and that that these combined savings have created economic benefits. When resource optimisation is applied instead of waste minimisation, another failing in the thinking associated with waste minimisation strategies would be addressed: that of the definition of waste itself. 35

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Tools of resources use optimization

In the following, a number of tools will be introduced that can contribute to resources use optimization. They are the following: 1. Industrial Ecology 2. Dematerialization 3. Decarbonization 4. Design for the Environment 5. Cradle-to-cradle design In addition, during the course you have heard presentations from other lecturers on related issues that also contribute to an efficient use of resources. These are: 6. Waste mapping 7. Lean production 8. Green Chemistry 9. Green engineering 9.1 Industrial Ecology At its widest interpretation, resources use optimization should reach beyond the scale of a process or a factory and concentrate on optimal use of resources on a global scale. This consideration is best included in Industrial Ecology. The basic definition of the term Industrial Ecology (IE) indicates an industrial system that operates much like a natural ecosystem. A natural ecological system seems to be developed so that nothing that contains energy or useful material will be lost. In natural ecosystems, materials and energy circulate continuously in a complex web of interactions: Micro-organisms turn animal wastes into food for plants: the plants, in turn, are either eaten by animals or enter the cycle through death and decay. While ecosystems produce some actual wastes (by-products that are not recycled, such as fossil fuels), on the whole, they are self-contained and self-sustaining. In a similar fashion, Industrial Ecology involves focusing less on the impacts of each industrial activity and more on the overall impact of all such activities. (Frosch 1995.) IE is a multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities and their links to natural systems. It is a paradigm of a technology-society relationship, based on the concept of mimicking the natural ecosystem and its efficiency in the use of materials: the waste of one organism is food for another. IE involves designing of interlocking infrastructures as if they were a series of interlocking manmade ecosystems interfacing with the natural global ecosystem. (Tibbs 1992.) The essence of IE can be defined as (Allenby, 1999): Industrial Ecology is the means by which humanity can deliberately and rationally approach and maintain a desirable carrying capacity, given continued economic, cultural and technological evolution. The concept requires that an industrial system be viewed not in isolation from its surrounding systems but in concert with them. It is a systems view in which one seeks to optimise the total materials cycle from virgin material, to finished material, to component, to product, to obsolete product, and to ultimate disposal. Factors to be optimised include resources, energy and capital. IE recognises the need for continued technological evolution and sees the development of environmentally appropriate technology as a critical component of the translation to a sustainable 36

world. It offers a unique approach within which environmental issues can be comprehensively addressed. The most far-reaching implication of integrating of environmental concerns in the economic decisions of companies and society is the need to take life-cycle approach to environmental analyses. This approach requires that environmental impacts – with “environment” taken broadly to include relevant safety, health, and social factors – be understood and summed up across the lifetime of the product, process, material, technology, or service being evaluated. (Eflin 1997.) The role of Industrial Ecology (IE) is to learn how to lighten the impact on the environment of humans and economic activity. IE accepts as givens population and income. Our job is to minimise waste and harmful exposures, various forms of environmental disturbance, and inefficiency. IE examines such factors as choices of raw material, the intensity and efficiency of use of materials, and fates of materials. It focuses on technical aspects of a particular set of links in the chain of economic activity, while recognising the value of other social and behavioural approaches to improving the human environment as well. The fundamental means, how to lessen impacts include industrial systems conceived to approach zero emissions, the substitution of materials with superior environmental performance, dematerialisation or reduced intensity of use of materials, and reconceptualisation of the economy to emphasise functions, i.e., services over goods. 9.2 Dematerialization Dematerialization can be explained as follows: Dematerialization is the process by which lesser amount of materials are used to make product that perform the same functions as their predecessors. There are plenty of examples of dematerialization in modern society. A typical one is that today’s palmtop computers have more capability that the “supercomputers” of 10 years ago. Another is the ability of modern stereo systems to produce sounds superior to that of large, bulky systems available for sale only several years in the past. The ultimate example is one of integrated circuit transistor packing density. The most recent efforts in this direction have been to use light beams or tiny microscope tips to move single atoms from place on a surface. Such work may eventually lead to circuits in which each electrical constituent is only few atoms in size with great increases in speed an much diminished power requirements. Electronic circuits are not the only components getting smaller. Various techniques of micro-fabrication are being used to produce flow sensors, gear trains, and micro-motors measuring less than 100 μm in diameter. As development continues and component such as micro-valves and micro-pumps are produced, those involved in nanoengineering see entire micro-systems incorporating electrical mechanical, thermal, optical, magnetic and chemical functions operating on a single, small silicon chip. There are many potential applications, such as the use of micro-motors for security and medical application and micro-robots for assembly tasks at sub-millimetre size scales. IBM researchers have built the world's first array of transistors out of carbon nanotubes: measuring about 10 atoms across, it is 500 times smaller than today’s silicon-based transistors. 9.2.1 Carbon nanotubes, the ultimate champions of dematerialization (Wikipedia) Carbon nanotubes are tubular carbon molecules with properties that make them potentially useful in extremely small scale electronic and mechanical applications. They exhibit unusual strength and unique electrical properties, and are extremely efficient conductors of heat. They are on the order of only a few nanometres wide (on the order of 1/10 000 the width of a human hair), and their length can be millions of times greater than their width. Nanotubes can be opened and filled with materials such as biological molecules, raising the possibility of applications in biotechnology. They can be

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used to dissipate heat from tiny computer chips. Nanotubes can be opened and filled with materials such as biological molecules, raising the possibility of applications in biotechnology. They can be used to dissipate heat from tiny computer chips. Carbon nanotubes additionally can also be used to produce nanowires of other chemicals, such as gold or zinc oxide. One use for nanotubes that has already been developed is as extremely fine electron guns, which could be used as miniature cathode ray tubes in thin high-brightness low-energy low-weight displays. Researchers have spun the tubes into composite fibres that are tougher than steel, Kevlar, or spider silk. The new fibres appear to be tougher than any other synthetic or natural material. It is 20 times as tough as steel wire, 17 times as tough as the Kevlar used in bullet-proof vests, and 4 times as tough as spider silk. The finished threads are the width of a human hair and 100 to 200 meters long. This fibre will provide for a new generation of high-strength fabrics and energy-absorbing materials, such as vehicle armour. The fibres were fashioned into electricity-storage devices called supercapacitors, which they incorporated into ordinary cloth. This demonstrates the fibres' potential for electronic textiles, such as military uniforms with built-in antennas, sensors, or tiny batteries for powering communications equipment. The biggest constraint to a wide use of carbon nanotubes are its price: as of 2003, nanotubes cost upwards from 20-1000 €/g, depending on purity, composition (single-wall, double-wall, multi-wall) and other characteristics. In comparison, the price of gold is about10€/g. 9.2.2 Constraints to dematerialization Perhaps the dominant constraint on dematerialization is that many industrial products are rather directly related to human beings and human size, and cannot be reduced arbitrarily. Personal computers for example have decreased substantially in size and eight over the past decade. Improvements in data storage technology have made it possible to minimise the use of floppy disk drives and, in turn, to require less use of disk drive power. Integrated circuits are lighter and smaller. Nonetheless, keyboards or notepads cannot be reduced very much in size without becoming out of scale with the human hand and thus inefficient or worthless. Thus, as long as manual interaction is required to enter information the dematerialization possibilities of the personal computer are limited. A similar constraint applies to getting information from a personal computer in a usable form. Visual resolution limitation dictates the size and mode of operation of displays. Unless consumers are satisfied with some mode of oral communication, dematerialization possibilities are again only modest. How many other things are controlled by human sizes? It turns out that they are surprisingly many. Houses, for example and most of the things in them, cannot change size very much without becoming unsuitable for activities like sleeping, storing food, washing clothes, and placing photographs on tables. The restriction extend to automobiles and trains, and thus to roadways and rail lines, directional signs, and bridge reinforcements. Given the preceding perspectives, what might one see as the limits to dematerialization? First, we can point out that materials research can produce items of similar size to their predecessors, but with less use of materials. Modern automobiles, for example, are 20-30% lighter than those of a decade ago because of increased use of aluminium, plastics, and higher strength steels and alloys. Dematerialization is thus achieved by changing physical properties rather than size. Another technique is to increase the lifetime of a product, or at least of its major components. The increase in product cycling time requires less overall material extraction and achieves dematerialization through reduction in the frequency of demand. Finally, of course, are the items with which humans are not directly associated and for which size is not constrained. For example the cables connecting

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telephone-switching offices are now largely made of optical fibres rather than copper wire. They can carry data requiring far less than 1% of the materials of the technology they replaced. The dematerialization discussion can be generalised to a trend that will become much more significant in the future: intellectual capital and sophisticated information management will increasingly substitute for raw material and energy inputs. In one sense, that is a simple substitution of lower-priced goods for those with higher prices, because information and intellectual resources such as computer power and information transmitting capacity are rapidly becoming cheaper whereas prices for energy and materials, particularly virgin materials, are rising. (vonWeizsäcker et al. 1997) Savings through dematerialization can often undo real resource savings, as technological complications have prevented efficiency gains from translating into materials reductions. (See Table 12) Table 12 Factors that undercut dematerialization gains

Product

Efficiency gains through dematerialization

Factors that undercut gains

Plastics in cars

Use of plastics in cars increased by 26 % between 1980 and 1994, replacing steel in many uses, and reducing car weight by 6% Aluminium cans weight 430 % less today than they did 20 years ago A typical automobile battery used 30 pounds of lead in 1974, but only 20 pounds in 1994 – with improved performance Radial tires are 25% lighter and last twice as long as bias-ply tires

Cars contain 25 chemically incompatible plastics that, unlike steel, cannot be easily recycled, Thus most plastics in cars winds up in landfills Cans replaced an environmentally superior product – refillable bottles. Increased battery shipments increased by offset the efficiency gains.

Bottles and cans Lead batteries

Radial tires

Mobile phones

Weight of mobile phones was reduced 10-fold between 1991 and 1996

Radial tires are more difficult to retread. Sales of retreaded passenger car tires fell by 52 % in the US between 1977 and 1997. Subscriber to cellular telephone service jumped more than 8-fold in the same period, nearly offsetting the gains from dematerialization. Moreover, the mobile phones did not typically replace older phones, but were additions to a household’ phone inventory.

Materials complexity often deters recycling because of the difficulty of separating materials into their pure, recyclable components. Products made from a mix of materials – from electronic devices containing plastic and metal, to envelopes with plastic windows – are expensive to recycle because of the work required disassembling them. But because absolute reduction in materials use was not a policy priority in the past three decades, creative options like these were not pursued. Recycling is also difficult when materials are dissipated during use because these materials are not easy to recover. Markets for secondary materials are often overwhelmed by the limited capacity of most economies to absorb them. Economies designed to use virgin materials will naturally find the demand for secondary materials limited. In short, recycling as currently structured, focuses on materials that are easily collected, and easily stripped of foreign matter, and for which a market exists. As long as little effort is made to loosen these parameters, recycling will remain a marginal activity.

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In sum, major reductions in materials use were not achieved over the past several decades, mainly because there was no intent to do so and, in any case, the gains achieved were undone by evergrowing levels of consumption. 9.2.3 Dematerialization through service Services are increasingly referred to in the discussion on sustainable production and consumption patterns. It is argued that a shift from producing and consuming products to producing and consuming services is central to a sustainable economy. The shift to a service economy has been presented as one means to reach dematerialization, i.e., a reduction in the materials intensity of economic activities. (Heiskanen and Jalas 2000) The following applications are examples of exchanging material use to service: - Sharing large appliances - if families wouldn’t buy washing machines, but all use the common one in the laundry room. - Car-pooling (sharing a car). - Business-to-business - selling the service of transportation rather than cars. - Leasing instead of selling (copy machines, carpets, towels, bed-linen, work clothing). - Selling intelligence, not material - for example if pesticide manufacturers sell pest control, meaning knowledge on the movement of pests and advise to spread pesticides only when necessary. - Renting - furnishing and art instead of buying. - Video-conferencing - can save 99% energy and material resources when compared if everybody travels to one conference location. - Telecommuting - is the ability to do your work at a location other than an office at your employer. With portable computers, high speed telecommunications links of today, people can work almost anywhere at least some of the time. 9.3 Decarbonization The word itself means an action or process of removing carbon from something. From the point of view of resources optimization and sustainable development, the purpose decarbonisation can be explained as follows: The purpose of decarbonization is to lower greenhouse gas emissions through reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Three approaches can be mentioned to achieve decarbonization: 1. Use of non-carbon based or renewable energy sources 2. Energy-efficiency to reduce energy need Decarbonization is a relevant issue as at present, the generation of energy occurs predominantly through the combustion of fossil fuels. This practice imposes a heavy burden on the environment as a consequence of the emission of carbon dioxide, sulphur gases, particulate matter, heavy metals, and a variety of other species. The environmental impacts of fossil fuels ideally are better avoided than mitigated. One solution is using alternative energy sources: wind, solar, geothermal. The most intelligent approach to dealing with energy requirements is to minimise them at the design stage, e.g. designing processes and products for energy efficiency. (Gradel & Allenby 1995)

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In addition to the above two, CO2 recovery from flue-gas is also considered as decarbonization, this issue has been presented in another lecture during the course. Let’s start now with a short review of non-carbon based energy sources. 9.3.1 Geothermal Energy (Source: Geothermal Education Office3) Geothermal Energy is heat derived from the earth. It is the thermal energy contained in the rock and fluid that fills the fractures and pores within the rock in the earth's crust. Calculations show that the earth, originating from a completely molten state, would have cooled and become completely solid many thousands of years ago without an energy input in addition to that of the sun. It is believed that the ultimate source of geothermal energy is radioactive decay occurring deep within the earth. In most areas, this heat reaches the surface in a very diffuse state. However, due to a variety of geological processes, some areas are underlain by relatively shallow geothermal resources. Geothermal energy comes from the heat that exists below the earth's surface. Down to a depth of 10 meters, air temperature influences the ground temperature. Beyond this depth the temperature of the earth's interior is the only determining factor, unaffected by the seasons. At a depth of 100 meters, the temperature is between 2.5 and 4 degrees Celsius. These resources can be classified as low temperature (less than 90°C), moderate temperature (90°C - 150°C), and high temperature (greater than 150°C). The uses to which these resources are applied are also influenced by temperature. The highest temperature resources are generally used only for electric power generation. Uses for low and moderate temperature resources can be divided into two categories: direct use and ground-source heat pumps. -

Direct use, as the name implies, involves using the heat in the water directly (without a heat pump or power plant) for such things as heating of buildings, industrial processes, greenhouses, aquaculture (growing of fish) and resorts. Direct use projects generally use resource temperatures between 38°C to 149°.

-

Ground-source heat pumps use the earth or groundwater as a heat source in winter and a heat sink in summer. Using resource temperatures of 4°C to 38°C, the heat pump, a device which moves heat from one place to another, transfers heat from the soil to the house in winter and from the house to the soil in summer. Accurate data is not available on the current number of these systems; however, the rate of installation is thought to be between 10,000 and 40,000 per year.

The current production of geothermal energy from all uses places third among renewables, following hydroelectricity and biomass, and ahead of solar and wind. Despite these impressive statistics, the current level of geothermal use pales in comparison to its potential. The key to wider geothermal use is greater public awareness and technical support. 9.3.2 Solar energy (Source: EERE4) Solar technologies use the sun's energy and light to provide heat, light, hot water, electricity, and even cooling, for homes, businesses, and industry. Wood and dry crop wastes are referred to as biomass derived fuels. Plants use photosynthesis, deriving the energy from the sun. About a century ago, firewood was the most common form of fuel. Biomass is a significant form of energy source in Finland. The cheapest source of solar electricity is the wind power. Variation of pressure between 3

URL: http://geothermal.marin.org/ US Department of Energy web site for information on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. URL: http.//www.eere.energy.gov/ 4

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areas caused by solar energy, causes wind effects. This form of energy is used to run turbines that in turn generate electricity. Buildings designed for passive solar energy and daylight use incorporate design features such as large south-facing windows and building materials that absorb and slowly release the sun's heat. No mechanical means are employed in passive solar heating. Incorporating passive solar designs can reduce heating bills as much as 50 %. Passive solar designs can also include natural ventilation for cooling. Photovoltaic (PV) cells are devices that convert sunlight to electricity, bypassing thermodynamic cycles and mechanical generators. The phenomenon that sunlight photons free electrons from common silicon, was first discovered in the 18th century. The PV cells were developed at Bell Labs in 1950 primarily initially for space applications. The Hubbell telescope utilizes solar panels for its energy requirements. Solar panels can power a 17" b/w TV, a radio or a fan. Some electric lighting systems provide sufficient current for up to 10 hours of lightning each evening. A drawback of PV cells is the use of silicon crystals, which makes PV cells expensive. Silicon crystals are currently assembled manually, silicon purification is difficult and a lot of silicon is wasted. The operation of silicon cells requires a cooling system, because performance degrades at high temperatures. However, it has convinced analysts that solar cells will become a significant source of energy by the end of the century. Research is underway for new fabrication techniques, like those used for microchips. Alternative materials such as cadmium sulphide and gallium arsenide are at an experimental stage. Reduction of cost will depend the economies of scale. Oil companies are aware of the renewed interest in solar power. They are diversifying their holdings in other forms of energy. Exxon is the second largest producer of solar cells. Another problem is, what do you do, when the sun goes down? The simple answer is to build an auxiliary system that will store energy when the sun is out. The problem is that such storage systems are unavailable today. Some simple systems exist, such as water pipes surrounded by vacuum. The ocean is a natural reservoir of solar power and could be used as a source for thermal energy, for example to draw warm water from the surface and cold water from the depths. The most probable solution is the incorporation of hybrid systems: using a combination of solar and traditional sources. Research on photovoltaic cells will continue, majority of the resources will probably flow into research for developing better and more efficient solar cells, and more research will also be undertaken to develop long lasting rechargeable batteries. 9.3.3 Energy efficiency The agreement reached at the Ninth Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable development (CSD-9), recognizes for the first time that energy is central to achieving the goals of sustainable development. Industry uses substantial amounts of energy and, as a consequence, contributes significantly to energy related environmental problems. In the USA, for example, manufacturing activities account for some 30% of all energy consumed and much of that energy is very inefficiency employed. Figure 6 shows that the use of electricity (mostly generated from fossil fuels) is concentrated in a few industry types, such that six industry groups consume more than 85% of total industrial energy or energy equivalents. (Graedel and Allenby 1995) Energy intensity is highest during materials extraction processes. These industries are the suppliers of processed materials to the intermediate processing industries, so on cannot plan to decrease industrial energy use by eliminating these extraction industries. Rather, one needs to investigate

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opportunities within the extraction industries for reductions in energy intensity, which is energy consumption per GDP. (Graedel and Allenby 1995)

Figure 6 Consumption of energy in manufacturing industries (Graedel and Allenby 1995) The intermediate processing industries are too diverse to be discussed individually, but several general techniques for improving their energy efficiency can be described (Graedel and Allenby 1995): 1. Computerised systems for the management of energy use. The overall concept is that energy should be used only when needed, and not because inattention or lack of on-site personal makes it impractical to exercise control. Thus, equipment should be started and stopped as dictated by time of day or by sensors of product stream characteristics. Among these types of energy-using equipment that can be controlled in this way are motors, boilers, fans, and lights. 2. Utilisation of residual heat from process stream, product streams exhaust streams, and alike. Often these actions will take the form of increased attention to process redesign so that the exchange of heat among material flow streams can be optimised. 3. Increased use can be made of modern design motors, especially those with variable speed drives. The gains that can be expected are quite dependent on the application, but 20-50% decreases in energy use have been realised in several test cases. 4. Improve lightning efficiency by the exploitation of natural daylight and use of energy-efficient lamps. 5. Good housekeeping practices: Switching off non-used lights and machines, adjusting the ambient temperature to best comfort of workers, avoiding heat losses through open doors, windows, etc. 9.4 Design for the Environment (DFE) The electronics industry in USA began to develop a set of practices based on IE principles. These were captured under the title of Design for Environment. In 1992 the Office of Technology Assessment of U.S. Congress issued the publication: Green Products by Design. In 1993 the America Electronics Industry published a collected set of White Papers under the title “The Hows and Whys of Design for the Environment”. Later the product oriented focus has been generally ignored in the U.S., but become a central tenant of European technology and environment policies – esp. in Northern Europe & Germany. The idea behind DFE is to ensure that all-relevant and ascertainable environmental considerations and constraints are integrated into a firm’s product realisation (design) process. The goal is to

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achieve environmentally preferable manufacturing processes and products while maintaining desirable product price/performance characteristics. (Graedel & Allenby 1995) DFE incorporates the concepts of pollution prevention, waste minimisation and toxics use reduction as elements in a complex multidimensional analysis. Design of a product begins with product definition, which is a statement of the features that a specific product should have when development is completed. These features normally include what the product will be used for, how it will function, what’s its properties will be, the range of probable cost, and (if appreciate) its aesthetic attributes. The product definition list gives the designer many things to consider simultaneously. This is called “Design for X” (DFX), where X may by any of features the product needs to have. The following can be mentioned (Graedel & Allenby 1995): † Assembly – The consideration of assemblability, including ease of assembly, error-free assembly, common part assembly, etc. † Compliance – Consideration of the regulatory compliance required for manufacturing and field use, including topics as electromagnetic compatibility † Environment − Design for recycling − Design for energy efficiency − Design for Remanufacturing − Design for Disassembly − Design for incineration, etc. † Manufacturability – the consideration of how well a design can be integrated into factory processes such as fabrication and assembly. † Material Logistics and Component Applicability - the topic focuses on factory and field material movement and management considerations, and the corresponding applicability of components and materials † Orderability - the consideration of how the design impacts the ordering process from the customer perspective, and corresponding manufacturing and distribution considerations † Reliability – the considerations of such topics as electrostatic discharge, corrosion resistance, and operations under variable ambient conditions † Safety and Liability prevention – Adherence to safety standards, and design to forestall misuse, or products in the field of costly legal action. † Serviceability – design is to facilitate initial installations, as well as repair and modification of products in the field or at service centres. † Testability – design to facilitate factory and field testing at all levels of system complexity, devices, circuit boards and so forth. 9.5 Cradle-to-cradle design (Source: McDonough and Braungart 2002) An environmental design concepts introduced in more detail during the course was that of William McDonough & Michael Braungart based on their book Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. Theirs is a new philosophy of design calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. They advocate that instead of designing cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their 'life,' we shall transform industry by creating products for cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually circulated in closed loops. Cradle to Cradle Design models human industry on nature's processes, in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. Industry must protect and enrich ecosystems – nature's biological metabolism – while also maintaining safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of mineral, synthetic, and other materials. (Recognize that this philosophy in principle aims at avoiding dissipative losses.) A major way how

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this can be avoided is to design products combined of pure technical nutrients and biological nutrients, which can then be disassembled after use. − Technical nutrient is a material that remains in a closed-loop system of manufacture, reuse, and recovery (the technical metabolism), maintaining its value through many product life cycles. − Biological nutrient is a biodegradable material posing no immediate or eventual hazard to living systems that can be used for human purposes and can safely return to the environment to feed environmental processes. From historical examples from the roots of the industrial revolution; through the descriptions of key design principles to some cases of innovative products and business strategies already reshaping the marketplace, McDonough and Braungart argue that the conflict between industry and the environment is not an indictment of commerce but an outgrowth of purely opportunistic design. The design of products and manufacturing systems growing out of the Industrial Revolution reflected the spirit of the day-and yielded a host of unintended yet tragic consequences. Using our growing knowledge of the living earth, designers should employ the intelligence of natural systems – the effectiveness of nutrient cycling, the abundance of the sun's energy – to create products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist. The authors propose that people and industries set out to create: − Buildings that, like trees, produce more energy than they consume, accumulate and store solar energy, and purify their own waste water and release it slowly in a purer form. − Factory effluent water that is cleaner than the influent. − Products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste, but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals, rebuilding soil; or, alternately, return to industrial cycles to supply high quality raw materials for new products. The book is printed on a ‘synthetic paper’, made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, designed to look and feel like top quality paper while also being waterproof and durable. This book is a technical nutrient; it can be easily recycled in localities with systems to collect polypropylene, like that in yogurt containers. This treeless book points the way toward the day when synthetic books, like many other products, can be used, recycled, and used again without losing any material quality – in cradle-to-cradle cycles. 10 Sustainable products and production (Source: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production5) Ultimately, the concepts introduced in this course can help you in designing sustainable products and production systems. Sustainable Production is the creation of goods and services using processes and systems that are: − non-polluting; − conserving of energy and natural resources; − economically efficient; − safe and healthful for workers, communities, and consumers; and, − socially and creatively rewarding for all working people. 10.1 Principles of Sustainable Production The following principles have been adapted from the Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production. 5

URL: http://www.uml.edu/centers/LCSP/ Also includes materials from URL: http://www.sustainableproduction.org/

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Products and services are: • safe and ecologically sound throughout their life cycle; • as appropriate, designed to be durable, repairable, readily recycled, compostable, or easily biodegradable; • produced and packaged using the minimal amount of material and energy possible. Processes are designed and operated such that: • wastes and ecologically incompatible by-products are reduced, eliminated or recycled onsite; • chemical substances or physical agents and conditions that present hazards to human health or the environment are eliminated; • energy and materials are conserved, and the forms of energy and materials used are most appropriate for the desired ends; • work spaces are designed to minimize or eliminate chemical, ergonomic and physical hazard. Workers are valued and: • their work is organized to conserve and enhance their efficiency and creativity; • their security and well-being is a priority; • they are encouraged and helped to continuously develop of their talents and capacities; • their input to and participation in the decision making process is openly accepted. 11 Cleaner production The above principle of sustainable products and production closely relates to that of cleaner production. This concept has been introduced by the United Nations Environmental Programme Division of Technology Industry and Economics. Cleaner Production describes a preventative approach to environmental management. It is a broad term that encompasses what some countries institutions call eco-efficiency, waste minimisation, pollution prevention, or green productivity, but it also includes something extra: Cleaner Production refers to a mentality of how goods and services are produced with the minimum environmental impact under present technological and economic limits. UNEP defined cleaner production as follows: ”Cleaner Production is the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to processes, products, and services to increase overall efficiency, and reduce risks to humans and the environment. Cleaner Production can be applied to the processes used in any industry, to products themselves and to various services provided in society.” For production processes, Cleaner Production results from one or a combination of: − conserving raw materials, water and energy − eliminating toxic and dangerous raw materials − reducing the quantity and toxicity of all emissions and wastes at source during the production process For products, Cleaner Production aims to reduce the environmental, health and safety impacts of products over their entire life cycles, from raw materials extraction, through manufacturing and use, to the 'ultimate' disposal of the product.

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For services, Cleaner Production implies incorporating environmental concerns into designing and delivering services. 11.1 Pollution prevention Cleaner production is best known in North America as pollution prevention. The 3M Company is often credited with first using the concept of pollution prevention in its ‘‘Pollution Prevention Pays (3P) Program’’ (Brosky, 1992), which inspired widespread investigation of pollution prevention opportunities (Van Berkel, 2001). The 3M Program recognizes product reformulation, system modification, equipment redesign, and resource recovery changes that can be made to manufacturing, distribution or administration processes, as key pollution prevention practices. In the United States, the ‘‘shift from a conventional pollution control to a preventative approach commenced in the late-1970s in response to 3M’s widely publicized research, which proved that sufficient savings could be achieved through technological and operational improvements (Hilson 2003). The subsequent efforts made at the university level to illustrate more in detail the potential business benefits of pollution prevention both helped to further perpetuate makeshift changes in industry and facilitate the undertaking of a number of progressive activities at the government level (Overcash, 1997 as quoted in Hilson 2003). The implementation of the US Pollution Prevention Act in 1990 was the most significant of these changes (Hilson 2003). The essential feature of the P2 approach is the concept of ‘reduction at source’, based on the idea that the generation of pollutants can be reduced or eliminated by increasing efficiency in the use of raw materials, energy, water and other resources. The most widely referenced interpretation of pollution prevention is that of the US EPA, which defines pollution prevention to mean source reduction, as defined under the Pollution Prevention Act, and other practices that reduce or eliminate the creation of pollutants through increased efficiency in the use of raw materials, energy, water, or other resources, or protection of natural resources by conservation. (US EPA, 1990). Lou and Huang (2000, p. 59) provide an equally thorough interpretation, noting that, “industrial pollution prevention” emphasizes primarily “technologies (that) have been developed for technology change, material substitution, in-plant recovery/reuse and treatment.” Because it mainly describes environmental improvements resulting from technological change, pollution prevention should, in fact, be treated as a subset of Cleaner Production (Hilson 2003). Summary In summation, the main concepts presented in this material can be related to each other as depicted in Figure 7. Sustainable development is concerned about the amount of resources used on a global scale, trying to minimize total resources input into society. Resources use efficiency is about avoiding the wastage of resources, by maximizing their utilization in material production and energy generation (minimizing fraction Waste 1). Waste prevention is about avoiding or reducing the amounts of wastes during any production process. Cleaner production is a wider concept as depicted in the figure, within this chart, only the cleaner production aims of conserving raw materials, water and energy and reducing the quantity and toxicity of all emissions and wastes at source during the production process (minimizing fraction Waste 2). Eco-efficiency is a concept to be implemented in an industrial process and aims at reducing environmental impacts while improving profits, by reducing wastage within the industrial facility. Pollution prevention is in principle the same concept as cleaner production, however, in this figure it is depicted mainly as a factor in minimizing fraction Waste 3, which are the pollutant released from a factory during the production process. In essence, both cleaner production and pollution prevention are aiming at this as well. Re-use is a strategy which can be used to avoid that the product would become waste.

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Figure 7 Main points of influence of various tools on resource use and waste amounts Recycling or recovery can be applied to recover the material or energy content imbedded in the product itself. In essence, it is about maximizing the amount of recovered resources by minimizing fraction Waste 4, which is the part of the product which cannot be recovered. Figure 7 also intends to illustrate the range of steps in a products life-cycle where wastes are produced. It is evident that in a closed industrial ecosystem the amount of recovered resources ought to be close to the amount of total resources input and losses are to be avoided. This necessitates the minimization of the sum of wastes in fractions 1 to 4. The thickness of the arrows representing Wastes 1-4 are also indicative. The amounts of wastes are the greatest early in the product’s life-cycle. This means that tools to be applied are the most effective the earlier they can be applied in the life-cycle. Ultimately, this defines the theme of this course; waste minimization and resources use optimization through an environmentally conscious product and process design by using the proper conceptual tools.

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