A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF WASTE COLLECTION & MANAGEMENT DATA IN AN AREA ARISING FROM WASTE EMERGENCY Maria Laura Mastellone, Ester Romeo Second University of Naples – Department of Environmental, Biological and Pharmaceutical Science & Technology Province of Caserta Environmental, Biological, Pharmaceutical Science & Technology department

Introduction: how to plan WM  The correct planning of a sustainable waste management can be difficult since it is a complex process involving many disciplines, processes and technologies.  The variety of unit processes that compose a waste management system (WMS) allows to design several different scenarios whose sustainability can be evaluated only by carrying out the WMS itself within existing legal, social, and environmental guidelines that protect the public health and the environment and are, at same time, aesthetically and economically acceptable.

Sustainability: objective or subjective concept?  The sustainability of a waste management system depends on several factors. It is often a biased concept because of its correlation to subjective perceptions. The correct evaluation of what is the real meaning of the term sustainability is then extremely difficult also because it can be strongly affected by the criteria chosen to carry out the performances analysis and by data used in the evaluation.

 Several methodological tools can be used alone or in conjunction in order to design and evaluate the sustainability of waste management scenarios but the crucial point is always the reliability, the representativeness and the up-to- date of input data and parameters utilized to perform the analyses. The data sources are then crucial to perform a reliable analysis of a waste management scenario and its planning or improving. Data reliability needs

Scope  Scope of this work is to illustrate the results of the waste collection and recycling data elaboration carried out with reference to the Caserta province. Data are obtained by means a platform specifically designed and managed to have reliable and updated information about the WMS.  The availability of reliable data has then allowed to test a set of indicators that can give information about the efficiency of the WMS and that can be considered as possible alternative to the most used indicator of the WMS in Italy: the diversion rate.

Data Sources This research work processed and evaluated the following data, available on different aggregation level:  Daily data at municipal level related to all the collection streams, available at the Provincial Observatory for Waste of Caserta (POWCE), in which some lacking data on residual waste (i.e. the rest-waste that cannot be addressed to recycling processes) has been integrated with daily data at municipal level, available at the Mechanical-Biological Treatment Plant and at the Landfill.  Annual data at provincial level related to the waste streams actually accepted by the recycling plants network referring to the National Consortium for Packaging (CONAI) to be reintroduced in the market as secondary materials, available by the CONAI itself.  Sorting analysis of residual waste, available at the Mechanical- Biological Treatment Plant

Data accuracy A high level of accuracy characterizes data gathered by the POWCE. A careful cross comparison among data provided by municipalities and the ones provided by the treatment plants that receive and treat the waste is made. Plants are: MBT, that receives the restwaste collected by municipalities and accurately weight and record its amount and type prior to the acceptation, and landfill, that receives rest-waste and bio- stabilised organic fraction of the restwaste treatment carried out in the MBT. Data are available day by day and allow observing seasonal fluctuations, trends of the separate collection for each waste component, interruption of the collection service or any other trend that cannot be explained as a normal fluctuation.

Recycling data The waste collected as mono or multimaterial separate collection is selected, cleaned and bailed by industrial platforms and addressed to recycling processes. These fluxes can be traced by means of data provided by the national consortium for packaging (CONAI) that allows, by means of a network of industrial platforms (i.e. paper mills using waste paper, plants that reprocess plastic waste, etc.) the recycling of waste separately collected by municipalities. Specifically, CONAI promotes the recycling and recovery of glass, plastics, paper, aluminium, ferrous metals, wood. Actually, because of liberalization of the recycled waste market, the CONAI data can be slightly underestimated.

Restwaste data The residual waste produced in Caserta province is partly still landfilled and partly addressed to the MBT in order to be grinded, sieved and separated in two fractions: one bailed to be sent to the incineration and another, mainly composed by humid fraction and heavy materials (glass, porcelain, …), aerobically stabilised prior to be landfilled. The analysis carried out at the MBT inlet covers an adequate sample to know which is the composition of the restwaste i.e. waste residual to separate collection.

Waste compositions The estimation of the MSW composition as produced at household level has been carried by using data related to the streams individually collected by the municipality, i.e. restwaste, glass, multi-material, humid and paper&cardboard. These data about amounts together with data about commodity analysis on the restwaste conveyed to the Mechanical Biological Treatment Plant, allowed obtaining the MSW composition reported in Table 1 together with that of the restwaste. Table 1

Waste management indicators and indexes The indicator currently used in Italy to assess the goodness of separate collection is the diversion rate, DR: Figure 1 shows the previously defined DR progress over up four years ( ) in Caserta Province.

Waste management indicators and indexes _2 In spite of its wide application in specific regulations, the DR index presents the following critical shortcomings: a.There is not a common method to calculate the diversion rate. In Italy 13 different indexes exist, depending on region or province, besides the national one. The main discrepancy is due to the fact that the various administrations apply different “conventional” (ie. not really detected) fractions of foreign materials in given collected streams, such as multimaterial (i.e. the aggregation of various fractions), WEEE and bulky waste. b.Many of these computing procedures, included the one applied in Campania Region in the surveyed years, do not take into account for waste prevention, thus penalizing municipalities that put into practise waste reduction. This limit has been partly overcome in Campania Region where a new DR index, accounting for household composting of humid fraction, has been recently introduced. c.This index just takes into account for the collected waste streams, without considering how much material is actually addressed to recover.

What really the DR index is able to indicate? Is it able to aim to the sustainability as target?

Waste management indicators and indexes _3 With a view to promote a modern waste management that is really sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social impacts, new indicators (quantifiable for each separately collected waste stream) are proposed and populated, in order to overcome the just highlighted limits. These indicators aggregated in indexes should be able to express the actual efficiency of waste management. The following Table lists the proposed indicator and indexes. Each indicator has been populated for three waste streams (i.e. Paper&Cardboard, Glass and Multimaterial). The considered Multimaterial stream is the aggregation of plastic and metals.

Waste management indicators and indexes table

Evaluation and results_nie Trend of the nie indicators versus DR traced for the following waste fractions: humid, multimaterial, paper&cardboard, glass. multimaterial, paper&cardboard, glass

 Evaluation and results_rcr Trend of the rcr indicators versus DR traced for the following waste fractions: multimaterial, paper&cardboard, glass

Evaluation and results_aie Trend of the aie indicators versus DR traced for the following waste fractions: multimaterial, paper&cardboard, glass

Evaluation and results: indexes vs DR trend Trends of the indexes NIE, RCR, AIE versus DR

Conclusions  The study refers to the set up and quantification of indicators that allow to measure the efficiency of the separate collection but, overall, the actual amount of waste that can be addressed to recycle or recovery.  This latter is the only amount to be increased, instead of the simply collected one that just increases costs. Therefore, the substitution of DR with the RCR index can help in the correct management of waste by reducing the non- useful increasing of collection and by increasing the amount of waste actually turned into resources.