Recycling and Energy Recovery from Waste

In July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly declared that everyone on the planet has a right to a healthy environment. The resolution was adopted with 161 votes in favor and eight abstentions. However, the decision is not legally binding on the 193 UN Member States. But it would come as the planet grapples with a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, the UN Environment Programme wrote on its homepage. According to Carlos Silva Filho, president of the International Solid Waste Association, this human right can only be achieved with sound waste management.

Experience has shown that responsible waste management can sustainably reduce the burden on the environment. That is why – apart from recycling – also the energy recovery from municipal solid waste is included. Waste-to-energy can decrease the volume of solid waste destined for landfills and recover energy from the waste burning process. “This generates a renewable energy source and reduces carbon emissions by offsetting the need for energy from fossil sources and reduces methane generation from landfills,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency underlined. However, energy recovery from waste should be considered as one of the last options at the end of life, after reuse, refurbishing and recycling.

But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has introduced new challenges for the energy sector along the entire value chain in Europe and around the globe. Against this dramatic backdrop, it is nevertheless paramount not to let go of decarbonization ambitions,” the international professional services network Deloitte emphasized in a press release regarding the study “Transform to React: Climate Policy in the New World Order”. Accelerating the clean energy transition was an obvious path towards more geopolitical resilience as it would decrease fossil fuel energy dependencies, while also contributing to mitigating climate change. The report’s policy recommendations include suggestions for governments and companies. The latter should inter alia “pursue comprehensive restructuring and diversification processes beyond energy sources (i.e., strategic raw materials and goods)”. And they should also diversify investment portfolios, “not only in terms of fossil fuels, but also in terms of low-carbon energy technologies”.

In this issue, you can find articles that show how recycling and waste-to-energy can contribute to the climate protection goals. The EU is investing in clean tech projects (page 3). Regarding renewable energy sources, there are promising projects developing, for example, fuels or hydrogen from sludge, tires, plastic, and organic material (pages 6 to 13), to name but a few. Furthermore, the preparation of RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) and SRF (Solid Recovered Fuel) is also an issue (page 47).

We hope you get a lot of new and useful information from reading this current magazine.

Yours, Brigitte Weber