The Rotation System in Landfill Sites.

Landfill is the easiest way of disposing waste. But the major question is: Is it safe? If not managed properly, landfill can create various problems to human health and its surrounding environment. One of the crucial problems is accumulation of leachate which can create an increased risk of seepage from the site, causing a negative effect on the environment. The alternatives of discharging the leacheate are:
• Direct discharge to sewer,
• Treatment followed by discharge to sewer,
• Treatment followed by discharge to watercourse,
• Shipment by tanker to a third party,
• Pre-treatment of leachate in a “facultative” lagoon system, followed by drip irrigation onto short rotation coppice (SRC), maximising SRC growth to produce a biomass products (environmentally-accepted option).

The process of the fifth option uses two pre-treatment steps, undertaken in primary and secondary lagoons. Liquid levels in the primary lagoon are maintained consistently throughout the year, the excess being transferred to the secondary lagoon where it receives further treatment. Liquid levels in the secondary lagoon fluctuate during the year, being reduced during the spring and summer as a consequence of irrigation, and recovering over winter. The secondary lagoon is designed to provide winter storage of treated leachate for use as an irrigation resource for the following growing season.

The facultative leachate treatment process seeks to encourage a self-regulating environment that supports a complex community of aerobic, anaerobic and facultative bacteria (bacteria that can behave as either aerobic or anaerobic) resulting in an increased opportunity to degrade contaminants. The process utilizes three zones:
• An anaerobic (without oxygen) digestion zone at the lagoon base.
• A facultative intermediate zone which prevents the exposure of anaerobic bacteria to the aerobic environment.
• An upper aerobic with oxygen zone.


Compared to the aggresively mixed aerobic treatment processes, this process only requires gentle mixing, which also allows sludge self-digestion by encouraging all solids to settle within the anaerobic zone. With a lesser requirement to mix/provide supplementary dissolved oxygen this process benefits from generating negligible quantities of waste and, at the same time, requires significantly less power and process chemical requirements.

Utilizing the treated leachate as a water and nutrient resource, directly placed via ground water drip irrigation makes use of the plants’ high nutrient and water demands and aims to optimise the crop’s growth potential. However, approval of such schemes is required, as the process is considered to be biological treatment of waste.

Source: Molland, D. (2009) The Rotation System. CIWM. November issue

FACTS:

China’s population of 1.3bn is about four times that of the US, however, each Chinese citizen uses only 25% of the energy consumed by each individual in the US.

Boosting investment in conservation, restoration and management of natural ecosystems will provide the most effective way to slow down climate change and accelerate sustainable development, according to a report released by UNEP in 2009 where the major target was “ Safeguarding and restoring carbon in three systems – forests, peatlands and agriculture – in the coming decades that would reduce well over 50 gigatonnes of carbon emissions that would otherwise enter the atmosphere”.

Aiming for Zero Waste

There is the need to achieve landfill diversion and recycling targets in order to meet the challenge of “Zero Waste”. Apart from that, there is the requirement of funding organizations and technology to derive energy from waste. The important things to consider include public perception and awareness raising, food waste, eco-design, recycling rates, combined heat and power and landfill bans.

Waste prevention, reduction and re-use should involve the larger proportion of the national waster stream. However, significant challenges could be addressed through Public-Private-Partnership, multi-sector partnership, the leadership and committment of the Government and public support.

Keep your area tidy!

It is difficult to keep the whole nation tidy at the same time by just depending on our government and its policy. Everyone should do a little to keep their own area, Chowk and Ward tidy. We all hate the site of rubbish/garbage accumulating next to our home or in the roads we walk. But do we care about how they got accumulated there? Don’t we just sit and complain that the municipality and the government are not doing any thing to control it? But what about us who are actually dumping the garbage outside?


Do we even have the courage to tackle someone who is dropping the rubbish on the road rather than in the bins? No, too many of us rather not get involved at all and tend to get away with it. It’s such a shame because if we do not stand up to those dropping it, we kind of give in and agree that one can throw garbage anywhere they like to. Ultimately it’s laziness, a total disrespect for the environment. But sometimes it’s just habit, a dirty one at that.

People get away by creating the environment dirty again and again, because no one has ever pulled them up over it. Don’t create nuisance and don’t live with it. Try that no one around you does too. At least you can take the first step and try to make the environment cleaner and make it easier for the responsible organizations to manage the waste efficiently.

Transformation

To change our society and to make development possible, transformation is essential –both individual and social. Here transformation refers the change in terms of following sectors:

a) Physical vulnerability to physical security.
b) Degradation of resources to conservation of resources.
c) Economic vulnerability to economic security.
d) Powerlessness, alienation and conflict to empowerment, dignity and peace.
e) Social vulnerability to social security.
f) Insecure and unsustainable livelihoods to secure and sustainable livelihoods.

However, tranformation doesnot occur in a short span. It takes time, patience and generations of hard work.

Waste Minimization

To reduce waste or track any pollution level, they should be measurable at the first place; unveil the standards and plan for waste reduction and pollution control.
We need to rethink how we view and treat waste. If the waste can be used as resources then why send it to landfill? Let’s reuse where applicable, then recycle and recover into energy through composting or anaerobic digestion.

Resources should be used very wisely. Sending anything to waste is something we need to pay for later.

To create more sense on how waste management should work and how they can be really implemented depends on every individual, every customer, every business and every organization.

Use of new technologies can help us to reuse things, for e.g. reuse of papers through printing media, Anaerobic digestion that creates energy from food and farm waste. Even businesses can apply appropriate technologies to reuse what they waste into innovative products and can use products that use less resources or contain recycled materials.

Let’s plan for a decade to reduce at least 50% of household waste to either be recycled or used for energy, and over time this figure will increase even further. Aiming for zero waste is the way we have to think to get us to where we need to be.
One approach could be to encourage people to rethink the waste they create by reducing and re-using where possible; and make them recycle the waste at the source if possible.

Innovative ideas should be developed to cut waste at home, work place and community. If organizations work together, it is possible to make great achievements in sustainable waste management and supporting further development.

Setting Targets

With the suite of environmental measures established, based on firm-data collection methods and aligned to the priorities of the business and its stakeholders, target setting is possible.


The process by which targets and objectives are set should reflect the improvement that the organisation and its stakeholders require over the plan and target period, and the relative significance of issues such as:
1. current regulatory and legislative requirements, and the extent to which the business is performing against these;
2. the scope for setting the measures that allow the business to comply with anticipated or announced future legislation, or to get it on the correct path to do so;
3. the role that the environmental performance measure can play in delivering the organization's strategic objectives;
4. the effect that measures can have on improving costs and efficiency, especially relative to the cost of implementation; and
5. the stakeholders' view of which environmental measures are most critical and/or require most in terms of improved performance, potentially as an enabler for the organization to achieve a brand-enhancing, stand-out leadership position in a particular environmental dimension.



Once the choice of target is made, the measurement of progress against them, and the review of the targets and measures themselves, should be an ongoing process, conducted at least annually for target review, and often more frequently for measurement.

Setting Measures

From the data collected, a general picture of what key measures and targets to choose can be formed in order to help manage performance over time. Considerations in determining the measures and targets to use include:
1. Legislative considerations and compliance indicators;
2. Supporting business efficiency - for example, reduced vehicle-fleet emissions going hand-in-hand with reduced ineffective visits and improved customer satisfaction and lower cost of fuel;
3. Engaging employees effectively in furthering environmental improvements, or measuring the performance of employee engagement; and
4. Stakeholder considerations-ranging from the interests of investors and analysts to NGOs, regulators and others, dependent on the nature of the industry concerned.

Measures should relate to the areas of the greatest impact in your business - for example, raw material or energy use-and may be absolute, relative or weighted measures and targets. Which of these to use (or rather which combination), will depend on the need to measure simple absolute consumption-for e.g. KwH electricity per annum; to measure consumption relative to units of production in order to show effeiciency of resource use; or to combine measures on a weighted basis where the end product or service whose environmental impacts being measured is a combination of different elements. It is also important to consider whether broader indicators may be included within the portfolio selected to measure environmental performance. These might, for e.g., include measures that reflect employee engagement with environmental impacts, for e.g. staff surveys to measure engagement with energy reduction in the business.

While these measurements are not directly linkable to improved environmental performance, they provide a powerful indicator of the level of employee engagement in making changes and reductions. Whatever metrics are chosen, the resulting data will need to be presented clearly in order to ensure appropriate impact with key stakeholders, whether they are internal or external. Use of graphical presentation, trending of data and summary analyses are among the techniques that will have maximum impact.

A key decision is also what to publish externally, and what to retain for internal purposes only. Many organizations are also faced with a decision as to what to publish online, and what to put in the traditional hard copy annual report/sustainability report. Again, these decisions will be driven primarily by the needs of the audience.

Environmental Effect and Data

Establishing the effect of your organization on the environment and gathering the associated data involves taking a holistic view of your business with the aim of capturing those aspects that should be measured and targeted. This needs to be conducted alongside the business strategy process, such that it enables a view to be formed not just of the effects as they are now, but as they will evolve as the strategy is deployed over time.


The business strategy and business context will determine where to start this review and the areas to focus on, and it should align to the key risks faced by the business. Typically, the following would be topic areas to include within the review:
1. Energy Use;
2. Water Use and Discharge;
3. Raw Material Production, Consumption and End-of-Life Management - that is, Reuse, Recycling and Waste; and
4. Emission to Air.

Data may be gathered via a full life-cycle assessment, which itself can be compiled from a number of existing activities or business metrics to ensure consistency with other business processes and to minimise the risk of the data being invalid. These metrics and activities can include invoices (for e.g., for energy consumed), purchase orders (for raw materials for production), and stock and raw material records.

Source: Hill, I. (2011) Great Expectation. The Environmentalist. IEMA. March issue.

Strategy and Stakeholders

All well-run businesses have a strategy, and without exception all businesses have stakeholders - including customers, investors, suppliers, employees, NGOs, government and regulators, and the communities within which they operate. If environment performance management is to move from merely a compliance and measurement activity to one that genuinely adds value to the business and helps guide its strategic direction, then understanding and relating to its strategy and stakeholder is key.


By considering environmental impacts (and hence measures and targets) in the context of strategy, two things are achieved.

First, the process becomes forward looking and contextualises the performance measures and targets, meaning there is greater potential to influence the strategy. Second, it engages a different level in the organization.

By incorporating stakeholder considerations, both internal and external, the process can become something that is of relevance to the expectations of both audiences. It therefore has the potential to not only meet, but also to influence, those stakeholder considerations. Each stakeholder may have its own perspective on environmental priorities, and understanding and mapping these is important to ensure the relevance of the measurement set chosen and the targets established as a consequence.

Steps on setting targets.

Ian Hill, non-executive director of IEMA and Chief Sustainable Officer at Openreach, outlines his four steps to setting great targets. According to Ian, effective management and communication of encironmental performance relies on its effective measurement. The process falls into following four steps:

1. undestand your business strategy, your key stakeholders and the intersection of environmental impacts with them;

2. establish the effect of your organisation on the environment and gather the data;

3. select the measures; and

4. set targets against the measures and determine objectives associated with them.