Sustainable Industrial Design and Waste Management

Cradle-to-Cradle for Sustainable Development

Salah El Haggar

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780080550145
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Management
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Sustainable Industrial Design and Waste Management was inspired by the need to have a text that enveloped awareness and solutions to the ongoing issues and concerns of waste generated from industry. The development of science and technology has increased human capacity to extract resources from nature and it is only recently that industries are being held accountable for the detrimental effects the waste they produce has on the environment. Increased governmental research, regulation and corporate accountability are digging up issues pertaining to pollution control and waste treatment and environmental protection.

The traditional approach for clinical waste, agricultural waste, industrial waste, and municipal waste are depleting our natural resources. The main objective of this book is to conserve the natural resources by approaching 100 % full utilization of all types of wastes by cradle – to - cradle concepts, using Industrial Ecology methodology documented with case studies. Sustainable development and environmental protection cannot be achieved without establishing the concept of industrial ecology. The main tools necessary for establishing Industrial Ecology and sustainable development will be covered in the book. The concept of "industrial ecology" will help the industrial system to be managed and operated more or less like a natural ecosystem hence causing as less damage as possible to the surrounding environment.

• Numerous case studies allow the reader to adapt concepts according to personal interest/field
• Reveals innovative technologies for the conservation of natural resources
• The only book which provides an integrated approach for sustainable development including tools, methodology, and indicators for sustainable development

Chapter 1

Current Practice and Future Sustainability

Publisher Summary

This chapter covers the common waste management procedures currently practiced worldwide and discusses their impacts on future sustainability and conservation of natural resources. The life cycle of waste in these procedures is analyzed to demonstrate that it follows a “cradle-to-grave” approach. Subsequently, the “cradle-to-cradle” concepts are discussed in detail with a listing of their pros and cons. The role of the government and civil society in effecting these “cradle-to-cradle” concepts is explained for the conservation of natural resources by using the principle of extended producer responsibilities. Sustainable development promotes economic growth given that this growth does not compromise the management of the environmental resources. The traditional approach for clinical waste, agricultural waste, industrial and municipal solid waste, industrial and municipal liquid waste, etc. can be considered disastrous worldwide because it is depleting the natural resources and may pollute the environment if it is not treated/disposed of properly. Any solution should suit not only the developed countries but also the developing countries, including the economical benefits, technological availability, environmental and social perspectives; otherwise they will never be sustainable. This chapter introduces a new term in environmental engineering—that is, “sustainable treatment,” as well as a new hierarchy for waste management, which applies “cradle-to-cradle” concepts.

1.1 Introduction

One of the major problems facing the world today is the environmental protection cost and return. The current practice of pollution control, treatment and environmental protection can be considered very expensive activities where people consider it a burden for development. There is a worldwide misconception that “environmental protection comes at the expense of economic development or vice versa”. This is not true if sustainable development is achieved. Sustainable development promotes economic growth given that this growth does not compromise the management of the environmental resources. The traditional approach for clinical waste, agricultural waste, industrial and municipal solid waste, industrial and municipal liquid waste, etc. can be considered disastrous worldwide because it is depleting the natural resources and may pollute the environment if it is not treated/disposed of properly. Any solution should suit not only the developed countries but also the developing countries should include the economical benefits, technological availability, environmental and social perspectives otherwise they will never be sustainable. The objective of this book is to conserve the natural resources by approaching 100% full utilization of all types of wastes by a cradle-to-cradle concept through sustainable treatment.

1.2 Waste Management

Waste generations vary from one country to another, but many previous studies indicated that as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increases, per capita municipal solid waste (MSW) generation and other types of wastes also increases. So, waste management is a must for conservation of natural resources as well as for protecting the environment in order to approach sustainable development.

The selection of a combination of techniques, technologies and management programs to achieve waste management objectives is called integrated waste management (IWM). The hierarchy of actions to implement IWM is reduction, reuse, recycle, treatment and final disposal (Tchobanoglous et al., 1993). Different sources use different terms and categories to describe the waste management hierarchy. The USEPA 1989 publication “The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action” states that their hierarchy for waste management is source reduction, recycling, waste combustion and landfilling. Others would list source prevention, source reductions and reuse as two categories, while most of the literature combines them under source reduction. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection includes recycling, on-site composting and reusing at the source under source reduction. However, reviewing diverse literatures reveals that the traditional waste management hierarchy is dominantly reducing, reusing, recycling, recovery, treatment, and disposing. Incineration might be included within treatment because it is thermal treatment, or within recovery as waste-to-energy recovery, or can be discussed as an independent item as will be discussed in this chapter.

Reducing: Reduced material volume at the source can be enforced through extended producers and consumers polices (e.g. less unnecessary packaging for products). Indeed, changing the consumer’s practices is part of the source reduction concept. Reducing the raw material at the source will conserve the natural resources for other uses. Fortunately, statistics show that these trends are declining in developed countries. For example, the total source reduction in the USA, which includes prevention and reuse, increased from less than one million tons in 1992 to more than 50 million tons in 1999 (USEPA, 1999).

Reusing: Reuse means to continue using the product in its original or in a modified form. Reuse of materials involves extended use of a product (retrading auto tires) or use of a product for other purposes (tin cans for holding nails, glass bottles for holding water in refrigerators). Reusing the product does not return the material to the industry for remanufacturing or recycling. Reuse can be considered another aspect of source reduction which could be carried out not only by consumers but also by producers. Chemicals used in the tanning industry could be reused by installing an on-site chromium recovery unit. Source reduction and reusing can be encouraged through numerous regulations and programs such as the Pay-As-You-Throw program developed by USEPA as well as other programs.

It is clear that source reduction does not only include reduction in the use of material, but includes as well the activities that increase product durability and reusability. Source reduction, which includes source prevention and reuse, is the best option in waste management because it preserves natural resources and reduces pollution, and waste landfilling or incineration. The less preferred option in waste management is recycling.

Recycling: What cannot be reduced at the source is pumped in the waste stream. The above discussion shows that reuse has much to do with cultural habits and this is also the case with recycling but recycling involves additional technical know-how and could involve some capital investment. Recycling is the process of converting these wastes to raw material that can be reused to manufacture new products.

Through regulations governments have a great role to play in promoting recycling. Such regulations are even emerging in developing countries. For example, the Republic of Korea explicitly prescribes the Extended Producer Recycling system under the Resources Conservation and Recycling Promotion Law, amended in 2003 (IGES, 2005). In India and the Philippines, laws on the management of MSW have been enacted recently and the importance of material cycles is clearly mentioned in the laws (IGES, 2005).

Recovery: Recovery of materials or energy can take numerous forms. It is clear that material recovery is a limited activity worldwide and is mainly concerned with the recovery of energy from burning wastes. For example, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in the USA states that “construction and demolition wastes makes up the majority of the wastes being processed at MSW Recovery Facilities, followed by ‘dry’ commercial and industrial loads; virtually no recovery from residential garbage route trucks occurs” (ODEQ, 1997).

Recovery differs from recycling in that waste is collected as mixed refuse, and then various processing steps remove the materials. Separating oil from waste water effluent by a gravity oil separator (GOS) in the oil and soap industry is material recovery from waste. This material is then sold to another type of soap industry or returned to the industrial process within the same factory. The difference between recycling and recovery, the two primary methods of returning waste materials to industry for manufacturing and subsequent use, is that the latter requires a process to remove the material from the waste while the former does not require any processes for separation, sorting can be done manually.

1.3 Treatment

Treatment or end-of-pipe treatment or pollution control is one of the very important technologies for the traditional waste management hierarchy and environmental compliance for any industry. There is a variety of traditional treatment technologies for wastes to choose from depending on several factors such as physical form of the waste (solid, liquid, or gaseous), quantity of waste, characteristics, combined or segregated wastes, degree of treatment required, etc. The treatment technologies can be categorized into physical, chemical, thermal, or biological treatment. Combinations of treatment technologies are often used to develop the most cost-effective, environmentally acceptable solutions for waste management.

Physical treatment: Physical processes for waste treatment include screening, sedimentation and clarification, centrifugation, flotation, filtration, sorption, evaporation and distillation, air or steam stripping, membrane-based filtration processes, etc. These processes are mostly applied to liquid hazardous wastes, and involve the separation of suspended or colloidal solids from the liquid phase. The selection of the technology depends mainly on the concentration and characteristics of the suspended solids relative to the liquid phase. Physical processes segregate the waste from one form to another, reduce the volume, and concentrate the solids to facilitate further treatment or further actions. Whenever a waste containing liquids and solids is to be treated, physical separation of the solids from the liquid should be considered first because it is generally cost-effective to treat a low volume, high concentration waste. Usually physical treatment is used in combination with other treatment technologies for optimum waste treatment and disposal.

Chemical treatment: Chemical treatment involves the use of chemical reactions to transform harmful waste into less harmful, or non-harmful waste, or make it less mobile in the environment. Many different types of chemical treatment processes are used in waste management such as neutralization, precipitation, coagulation, flocculation, oxidation, reduction, etc. Chemical treatment can have some advantages such as volume reduction and promoting resource recovery from wastes. Because it can be employed for resource recovery, and to produce useful byproducts and environmentally acceptable residues, chemical treatment should be considered before sending an untreated hazardous waste to an off-site landfill for disposal. Also, since liquid wastes should not be disposed of in a landfill without prior treatment, chemical treatment is often used to make it either non-hazardous, or at least chemically convert it to a solid or semi-solid, which makes the contaminants chemically stable and not very mobile in the landfill environment.

Biological treatment: Biological treatment can be used for organic liquid wastes or organic solid wastes such as municipal wastewater, landfill leachate, contaminated soil, etc. Biological treatment may be categorized, according to the oxygen utilization, into aerobic and anaerobic processes. In the aerobic process, oxygen is required to decompose organic matter as the aerobic bacteria needs to grow and multiply. The anaerobic process uses anaerobic bacteria, in an oxygen deficient atmosphere, to decompose organic matter. Aerobic organisms are most commonly used to treat industrial and municipal wastewater. Anaerobic systems are usually used for the treatment of concentrated organic waste or organic sludges. Technologies have been developed in which anaerobic bacteria can be used to treat complex toxic organics such as solvent contaminated groundwater. Aerobic bacteria is used commonly for the treatment of petroleum contaminated soils and sludge.

Sustainable treatment: Su...