WASTE PREVENTION CAMPAIGN REGARDING THE WASTE FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE

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1 WASTE PREVENTION CAMPAIGN REGARDING THE WASTE FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE Antonis A. Zorpas 1, *, Katia Lasaridi 2, Costas Abeliotis 2, Irene Voukkali 3, Pantelitsa Loizia 3, Anastasios Georgiou 4, Christina Chroni 2, Korina Phanou 4, and Nantia Bikaki 3 1 Cyprus Open University, Faculty of Pure and Applied Science, Environmental Conservation and Management, P.O.Box 12794, 2252, Latsia, Nicosia, Cyprus 2 Harokopio University, Department of Geography, Kallithea, Athens Greece 3 EnviTech Ltd, (Institute of Environmental Technology and Sustainable Development, Department of Research - Development) Paralimni, Cyprus 4 Municipality of Paralimni, Cyprus. Presented at the 4 th International Conference on Environmental Management, Engineering, Planning and Economics (CEMEPE), June 24 to 28, 2013, Mykonos, Greece ABSTRACT Waste prevention will be defined as the prevention of waste at source through avoidance, reduction and reuse, but excluding off site recycling. However, the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) and especially in Article 3, clause states that prevention means measures taken before a substance, material or product has become waste. Through a Large LIFE+ Project (Project LIFE10 ENV/GR/ , that is co funded from EU) which focuses on Development and Demonstration of a Waste Prevention Support Tool for Local Authorities WASP Tool, Municipality of Paralimni has developed a waste prevention awareness campaign and several waste minimization practices. Those activities have to do with the (a) home composting (b) Promoting waste prevention practices like seminars, activities with students from primary school. Also, through the project, the Municipality has prepared and submitted the first study in order to receive an official Licence for the Management of Waste from the Environmental Authorities. These targets, promote the waste management strategic plan that several insular communities have the ability to implement. KEYWORDS: waste prevention, waste campaign, home composting, materials exchange 1. INTRODUCTION There is no doubt that waste prevention has major potential benefits to an effective management of waste by addressing the problem of landfill shortage and resource savings. While this is true, the practice has a considerable * Corresponding author distance to travel in achieving its full potential. Traditionally, stakeholders have trusted and relied on technological means to alleviate waste production. Although technological advancement has been useful in the efforts to conserve natural resources and to reduce environmental impacts, waste generation is still increasing and one of the reasons is the weak and inadequate individuals engagement in waste management policies [1]. The amounts of municipal solid waste have been increasing for years in many countries. In the European Union (EU27), a 15% increase between 1995 and 2008 was observed with an annual increase of 1% in recent years [2, 3]. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, an increase of 18% has been reported between 1995 and 2007 [4]. Many governmental agencies and international organisations have established waste related policies to reduce the environmental impacts of waste management, including reducing the amounts of waste. Studies of the relationship between quantity of waste generated and economic growth indicators have suggested that a decoupling is needed in order to reduce the increasing burden from waste management [5, 6]. Waste prevention has the highest priority in waste policy in several regions, including the European Union, as stated in Directive 2008/98/EC [7], but so far, absolute decoupling between waste growth and economical growth has not been demonstrated in Europe, in absolute terms, as indicated by Mazzanti and Zoboli [8,9]. In Europe, waste prevention has been a key part of waste management policy. In 2008, it was integrated in the legislation waste framework directive 2008/98/EC [7] and stated that prevention is the first priority of waste management, being at the top of the waste hierarchy, with a requirement from European member states to produce waste prevention plans. In the UK, the Government has funded a large research program in waste prevention. It includes a review of evidence analysing the behavioural 2876

2 opportunities and barriers in household waste prevention, associated with the effectiveness of various policy measures [10]. The impact of waste prevention campaigns [11], and methods to monitor and evaluate waste prevention through mass reduction and behavioural studies [12] were also developed. Current decoupling indicators of waste prevention were reviewed [13]. This unprecedented government led research initiative has demonstrated the key issues of waste prevention from a behavioural perspective. It is, however, quite critical also to assess the environmental significance of waste prevention as this can reinforce evidence for policy development. In the United States, the US EPA has undertaken a program to support local authorities and waste management organisations to quantitatively assess the consequences of waste prevention on global warming potential (GWP) reduction with the Waste Reduction Model (WARM) but does not include other environmental impact categories [14]. Some countries, such as Taiwan [15], South Australia [16] and New Zealand [17] have adopted the target of zero waste as a form of strategic waste prevention. Regrettably, zero waste is usually interpreted as zero waste to uncontrolled disposal or landfill, mostly includes recycling and generally excludes environmental assessment. Waste is a key environmental, social and economic issue as well as a growing problem. Approximately, 3 billion tonnes of waste million tonnes of it hazardous - are thrown away in the European Union annually. This amounts to about 6 tonnes of solid waste for every European. The link between economic growth and waste generation is beginning to weaken in the EU. The generation of municipal waste per capita has slightly decreased in the EU-27 since 2000 (-4%), while the GDP increased by 33% between 2000 and Exceptionally, waste generation in new Member States has remained relatively stable by weight since the 1990s. This may be due to a reduced incidence of heavy mining and construction waste and increased lighter paper and packaging waste. Decoupling economic growth from the environmental impacts associated with waste generation is a key objective of the EU s revised Waste Framework Directive [7, 18]. Stabilising waste generation is no longer enough, waste growth in the EU must now reverse [18]. Waste prevention, the most efficient option in approaching this goal, can contribute to: (i) reduction of environmental impacts induced by waste management, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions reductions, methane released from landfill sites in particular, as well as carbon dioxide from incineration; (ii) improved resource efficiency through energy savings and reduced material use, as well as the hidden environmental impacts of resource extraction, manufacturing and distribution; (iii) reductions in the production of hazardous waste and therefore improved conditions for public health. A broad objective, waste prevention affects and depends on a very wide range of stakeholders. It benefits from national targets and local authority engagement, but it depends fundamentally on changes in the attitudes and behaviour of households and businesses and on new paradigms in industrial processes and product design [19]. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS 2.1. Area Description The Municipality of Paralimni is based in the Eastern Region of Cyprus and according to the last inventory study which was carried out from the Cyprus Statistical Services on November 2011 the permanent population is people [20, 21]. However, as the Municipality consists of the main economical lung of the island due to the fact that in this area there are the largest hotel resorts the permanent population increases during the tourist period (April October) to 50000/d. There is not any major water consuming industry in the project area, and according to the available development plants the situation will remain the same in the future. The main activities of the municipality [20-23] are: 115 Hotels and apartments are presented according to the Cyprus Tourist Organization (2010) [20, 21], almost 6000 houses (of which 70% belong to the more Urban Area (inland), 5 petrol stations and more than 12 cars cleaning services, approximately 20 machinist's craftsmanship, small industries like bakeries, confectioneries, car wash, food suppliers, supermarkets, schools (5 primary, 2 secondary have the ability to guest almost 2000 students), clinical laboratories, 2 private clinics and 1 public hospital, football fields and athletic activities, chicken farms (approximately chicken/y), 2 big laundries, 1 concrete plant and some small industrial activities which do not produce liquid waste. 2.2 Municipality Waste Data According to Zorpas et al. [24] the current waste management plan consist of the collection of the waste (door by door) twice a week and their transmission in the Koshis Municipal Waste Treatment Plant (KMWTP) which is about 65 km from the Municipality of Paralimni traveling to the Capital Town. The total amount of waste according to 2011 data was t while at the end of 2012 it was up to t. The recycle materials are collected from Green Dot Cyprus (GDC) twice a month and the total amount for the year 2011 were kg while for the year 2012 were The total cost (gate fee) for the year 2011 was up to 1.47m while for the year 2012 was up 1.59m. KMWTP charge 54.8 /t for the mix waste, 46.8 /t for the green waste, /t for the recyclable waste and /t for the residual waste [24]. 2.3 Waste Compositional Analysis Until the end of 2011 there was not any compositional analysis of the municipality. The waste characterization study was carried out for a period of summer (2 weeks during August, 2012), autumn (2 weeks October and November of the year 2012), winter (2 weeks during Decem- 2877

3 ber 2012 and January 2013) and spring 2013 (2 weeks during March). A total amount of plastic packs were collected sapling every day, door-by-door covering all the main urban area of the Municipality, but not the tourist area. It is very important to note, that, the tourist area from the urban area has up to 10 Km distance. For the composition analysis, the household waste was separated into 13 several main categories as presented in Table 1. Those categories include Plastics, Metals and Drinking Cartons (PMD), Plastic film, plastics nonrecyclable, aluminium packages, Papers, class, toilet papers, Food Waste (category A), Food Waste (category B), products that can be composted (mainly green and yard waste), stationery and others. The compositional analysis was undertaken according to the standard EN 14899:2005 [25]. 3. WASTE PREVENTION POLICY Waste prevention encompasses a range of policy options and has a broad range of benefits. Targeting atsource waste production, it reduces the amount and toxicity of waste before recycling, composting, energy recovery and landfilling become options. Waste prevention also includes measures to reduce the adverse impacts of the generated waste on the environment and human health. Waste prevention can be achieved by reducing the quantity of material used in the creation of products and increasing the efficiency with which products, once created, are used. Preventing waste by limiting unnecessary consumption and by designing and consuming products that generate less waste are forms of strict avoidance of waste. Waste prevention also encompasses actions that can be TABLE 1 - Waste compositional analysis and proposed targets to minimize each waste stream Main Categories Sub categories Compositional analysis % Proposed target % by the end of 2015 Implemented plan to reach the target Plastics, Metals and Drinking Cartons (PMD) Plastic bottles/pots, metal packages, tetra pack (like milk, juices) Public awareness campaign regarding the recycling program Plastic film (nylon) 5 - Plastics non-recyclable Straws, yoghurts plastics, butter pots 2 - Aluminium Aluminium papers, tins/cans Public awareness campaign regarding the recycling program Paper Package, Newspapers, magazines, offices, advertised Public awareness campaign Class Bottles, others 5 50 Public awareness campaign Toilet-kitchen papers Food Waste (A) Food Waste (B Whole, ready to eat) Bakery s, confectionery, dairy-farming, meat, fish, cocked Yogurt, wine, cooking oil, olives, eggs, banana, apples, pears, peaches, pomegranates, grapes, watermelons, oranges, passions fruits, mandarins, potatoes, girasol, tomatoes, lemons, cucumber, carrots, onions, breads, pasta Development of Cooked book handbook using as raw materials left over 5 25 Public awareness campaign to reuse those foods Compost (products that can be composted) Vegetables, skin fruits, green waste, dust, soil Public awareness campaign Home composting Others Toys, textile, shoes, Pens, pencils medicines, syringe, spays, CDs, kitchen brush, lamps, polystyrene, batteries, chandlery, stones, metals (spoons, knifes, pans, screws) 8 25 Exchanged materials Public awareness campaign 2878

4 undertaken once a product reaches its end-of-life: rather than discarding the product, the final user should consider re-use, repair or refurbishment as options. Extending a product s lifetime or considering options like reuse are forms of prevention though diversion of waste flows [18, 19, 26]. Waste prevention plays a key role in sustainable waste management and is seen as a beneficial waste management option which should be integrated to any waste strategy. The Waste Strategy for England suggests that local authorities and policy makers should now put more emphasis on waste prevention and re-use in order to achieve a reduction of disposal costs, CO 2 emissions and a decrease in the demand for natural resources [18]. There are environmental as well as socio-economic, financial and legal reasons for being concerned about waste prevention [27] which are: (i) Environmental reasons: Municipal waste is merely the final evidence of consumption which entails environmental footprints which are rarely sustainable; (ii) Socio-economic reasons: Production of waste appears to be the result of wasting natural resources and these resources are both limited and unequally distributed; (iii) Financial reasons: Reducing the quantities of waste produced means it should be possible to reduce the budget required for the collection, transportation and treatment of waste products; (iv) Legal reasons: The European framework directive on waste requires national waste prevention programmes to be drawn up. 4. PROPOSED WASTE PREVENTION CAMPAIGN A waste prevention programme should not be a mere list of top-down-measures prescribed by the national government but a plan which integrates the interests and concerns of interested and affected parties (stakeholders) based on a commitment to carry on the programme. There are hundreds of potential or existing waste prevention measures, instruments and initiatives which could be integrated into the programme. The main task of the programme therefore is to provide a vision and a framework that builds up on existing initiatives and to add the most efficient and effective complementary measures. Drawing public awareness to waste prevention is a fundamental first step in stimulating behavioural change. Effective awareness campaigns often focus on a specific waste stream and offer practical, easy to follow guidance on waste preventing actions. Waste preventing actions are in fact much more environmentally beneficial, but often not as obvious. Using materials more efficiently and buying less go relatively unseen. Campaigns may choose to focus on visible actions, such as the use of canvas bags instead of plastic bags, the use of no junk mail stickers or the implementation of home composting [28]. 4.1 How to promote waste prevention in households Informational strategies are likely to form the basis of waste prevention policy towards households. Products in household waste streams that can be effectively targeted include food, garden clippings, junk mail, nappies, batteries, plastic bags, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and textiles. These are constructively addressed through awareness campaigns accompanied by easy to follow instructions for reducing and/or reusing each waste product. Taking into consideration the reduction of hazardous materials that are transferred to the landfills, awareness campaigns will be critical to implement prevention activities focusing on households that encourage the separation, sorting and applicable disposal practices of hazardous materials. Cleaning products, batteries, paints, pesticides, compact fluorescent light bulbs and WEEE, should be an important part of household prevention programmes as well as PMD (Plastics, Metals and Drinking Cartons) and green waste. Furthermore, the promotion of the substitution of less hazardous products should be included here. The EU Ecolabel, for example, makes it easy to identify products with reduce hazardous properties in a range of categories, including paints and cleaning products. The waste minimization prevention campaign as presented and proposed in Figure 1 includes among several activities (a) home composting, Backyard and On-Site Composting. The composting and management of organic materials where they are produced is known as On-Site Composting. For homeowners, this is typically a smallscale backyard operation that may include leaves, grass, pruning, garden materials, and household fruit and vegetable materials, (b) development of traditional recipe book using as raw materials, leftovers (uneaten edible remains of a meal after the meal is over, and everyone has finished eating); thus will reduce the food wastes that are gathers to landfills, (c) materials exchange. The goal of a material exchange program is to connect potential users of discarded materials with the businesses and individuals that produce them, (d) Promoting waste prevention practices like rent and repair, materials exchange, and the use of thrift shops and flea markets is part of a waste prevention education strategy. Table 1 presents the target regarding the waste minimization prevention campaign. The targets were set out after the compositional analysis took place the last year in the study area (Paralimni Municipality). The compositional analysis covers all the seasons through the analysis of the waste during August (summer period), October- November (autumn period), December (winter period), and March (spring period) In reverse series the analysis consists of 26% products that can be composted, 20% Food waste (both categories A and B), 12% Toilets and Kitchen Papers including sanitary, 11% papers, 10% PMDs, 8% others, 5% plastic films and glasses, 2% plastics non-recyclable and 1% aluminium. Very, worrying is the fact that 5% of the total compositional analysis con- 2879

5 FIGURE 1 - Implemented waste minimization prevention campaign 2880

6 TABLE 2 - Proposed actions to reach waste minimization Area Waste Prevention Waste Avoidance Waste Reduction Waste Reuse Home Composting Action The Local Authority i s gravely concerned about the year-on-year growth in waste and would need greater action from the Government to minimise waste. The Local Authority will actively support Business Networks encouraging demonstrably effective waste prevention and minimisation amongst local business. The Local Authority will seek external funding or regional support to develop a packaging waste prevention campaign with local manufacturing companies. The Local Authority will seek external funding to run waste prevention public awareness campaigns across the Municipality throughout the period of this strategy. The Local Authority will share good practice on waste prevention activities and will have regard to the effects on waste arising when introducing new waste services. The Local Authority will consider the opportunities presented by offering incentives and rebates to residents for reducing waste and will review the need for direct and differential charging for waste during the implementation of this strategy. The Local Authority will continue to support actively the development of best practice in waste reuse (and will encourage the development of community sector and other partnerships to deliver effective reuse services. The Local Authority will continue to support bids for external funding of reuse services and will seek to develop a means of rewarding effective reuse services directly through a reuse credit, to reflect the avoided or deferred cost of disposal. The Local Authority will provide a concerted and on-going promotional campaign to encourage home composting throughout the period of this strategy, offering residents purpose-built bins at subsidised rates and providing support to residents wishing to compost at home. The Local Authority will aim to ensure that 15% of all the permanent residents with gardens compost at home by 2018 to divert approximately 4000 tonnes from the waste stream sists of foods (of category B) that are safe to be used like whole and high quality fruits, vacuumed and packed foods which have not been expired (like pasta, cans, rise, frozen, cakes etc.). Using those foods as raw materials high quality recipes could be made. For example, several fruits can be used to make a homemade marmalade. On the other hand, several left-overs from the food waste of category A can be also used to generate safe food for the next day. For example, (i) with delicatessen, tomatoes, and cheese we can prepare a homemade pizza (ii) with the rest of the cooked chicken we can use it to prepare salad or sandwich, (iii) with the vegetables we can make soups or fresh broth for other foods, etc. Several actions must be taken into account in order to reach the proposed targets. Those actions (Table 2) are related to waste avoidance, waste reduction, waste reuse, and home composting which form the top half of the waste hierarchy. On local level several actions were organized in order to reach the proposed targets set on Table 1 which totally aim to reduce the waste sent to landfill by 2018 up to 35% v/v. 4.2 Setting Priorities When looking into the best options for the Municipality of Paralimni it is important to keep in mind that the Municipality is a single purpose authority focused on waste reduction and any decisions made by the Council Members of the Authority must demonstrably focus on achieving that purpose. Food waste and green waste is still one of the largest components of the waste stream from Paralimni Municipality households. To reduce the overall generation of household food waste and green waste, the Waste Prevention Plan is focusing on promotion of food waste reduction messages and home composting of green waste. Implementation of «Best before of Good before», home composting, community presentations, competitions and numerous local events across the Authority area. The Authority would be helping residents identify how to save money as well as how to reduce food waste (and the associated environmental impacts); this would be a key message to encourage take-up of the lower waste producing behaviour patterns. Furniture reuse is proposed as a second focal area due to its high tonnage diversion and increase in visibility and consequently participation to complement the development of the Reuse Network, a not-for-profit social enterprise. The Plan will continue to be complemented by routinely undertaken, smaller scale initiatives which will promote reduction of other waste streams such as unwanted mail and textile reuse. It is proposed that the Waste Prevention Plan includes more action-oriented activities focusing on informational, educational and promotional initiatives that can be applied on a local level on the basis that regulatory and legislative strategies are occurring on a national level. It is anticipated that drawing attention to waste prevention will result in a significantly raised profile for the Authority and its key messages, and thereby contribute to a reduction in total waste arising. All actions 2881

7 proposed will be supported by a cost benefit analysis and evaluation methodology. One of the most commonly used evaluation methods is by estimating the quantity of waste reduced at source. Estimating the quantity assumes that there is a constant relation between private consumption and waste generation although the complexity of factors determining waste generation is high. Progress in waste prevention can be effectively tracked through rates. For the purpose of this plan, diversion rates were used where possible to indicate the portion of a waste stream which is managed through waste prevention as opposed to disposal. Cost benefit analysis was also carried out in order to measure further the benefits arising from the implementation of the waste prevention plan. The Cooked Green Kitchen handbook was used to assess the campaign benefits. However, it should be noted that even though some impacts can be measured with a satisfactory degree and accuracy, some others can only be estimated. There are a number of actions for which the impact in terms of tonnage diversion and/or cost benefit analysis could not be carried out because they are either policy measures without direct tonnage implications or for some actions baseline data could not be established. However, these actions may result in changes in policies and practices, increase in knowledge of waste prevention or attitudinal change, all of which will benefit Municipality residents in the long term. 5. CONCLUSION Waste is a key environmental, social and economic issue and a growing problem. Waste prevention encompasses a range of policy options and has a broad range of benefits. Targeting at-source waste production, it reduces the amount and toxicity of waste before recycling, composting, energy recovery and landfilling become options. Waste prevention also includes measures to reduce the adverse impacts of the generated waste on the environment and human health. The waste minimization prevention campaign is in priority in order to achieve all the targets set out from the Municipality in order to reduce the waste production. Municipality s policy is to reach the proposed targets by the end of 2015 and then to reestablish a new prevention target as well as to set out a complete zero waste approach. In general, the results could be helpful for improving policy actions to the benefits about recycling, prevention and reuse for other municipalities also. The authors have declared no conflict of interest. REFERENCES [1] Bortoleto, P.A., Kurisu, H.K., Hanaki, K. (2012) Model development for household waste prevention behaviour, Waste Management, 32, [2] Eurostat, (2010) Municipal waste generated, 1000 tonnes, (update 11/03/ 2010). 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8 [18] Rappou D. (2012). North London Waste Prevention Plan, North London Waste Authority [19] Zorpas, A., Lasaridi, K. (2013), Measuring Waste Prevention. Waste Management, 33, pp [20] Zorpas, A.A., Coumi, C., Drtil, M., Voukalli, I. (2011). Municipal sewage sludge characteristics and waste water treatment plant effectiveness under warm climate conditions. Desalination and Water Treatment, 36, [21] Zorpas, A.A., Lasaridi, K., Voukkali, I., Loizia, P., Inglezakis, V.J. (2012). Solid waste from the hospitality industry in Cyprus. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 166, [22] Zorpas, A.A, Voukkali, I., Loizia, P. (2013). Proposed treatment applicable scenario for the treatment of domestic sewage sludge which is produced from a sewage treatment plant under warm climates conditions. Desalination and Water Treatment, 51 (13-15), [23] Zorpas, A.A. (2014). Chemical oxidation and MBR reactor for the treatment of household heating wastewater. Desalination and Water Treatment, In Press [24] Zorpas, A.A. Lasaridi, K., Voukkali, I., Chroni, C., Loizia, P., Foitiri, L. (2012). Waste minimization and prevention activities in insular communities. The case studies of a Municipality in Cyprus.. 3 rd International Conference on Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management "CRETE 2012" September 12th - 14th, 2012, Chania, Oral Presentation. [25] EN 14899:2009 Waste Compositional Analysis Standard [26] EU, (2012), Preparing a waste reduction programme; Guidance Document, Directoral General Research [27] Defra (2007). Waste Strategy for England [28] Guide Lines on Waste Prevention program, %20Prevention_Handbook.pdf, Access on March 2013) Received: March 19, 2014 Accepted: April 02, 2014 CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Antonis A. Zorpas Cyprus Open University Faculty of Pure and Applied Science Environmental Conservation and Management P.O.Box Latsia, Nicosia CYPRUS Phone: antonis.zorpas@ouc.ac.cy antoniszorpas@yahoo.com FEB/ Vol 23/ No 11a/ 2014 pages