| The Development of a Waste Management System | |
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| The difficulty government faces is in encouraging the development of a waste management system which incorporates all these elements, BPEO, Proximity and Waste Hierarchy. In doing this government must also take into consideration international and global agreements it has made and the impacts that strategies will have on the economic health of the nation, for example; | |
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The landfill directive agreed at European level requires that organic waste be reduced and finally removed from landfill. Therefore alternatives must be sought for its disposal/reduction. Composting may be an alternative but if not controlled can lead to the production of methane a gas, which contributes toward global warming. Incineration with energy recovery is beneficial as it will obviously not produce methane and recovering energy will result in a reduction of fossil fuel use, however other emissions may be of greater concern. |
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Incineration with energy recovery also requires fairly high-energy input waste, e.g. plastics. However recycling these rather than using them as a fuel source could lead to a reduced need to produce plastics from raw materials, i.e. oil thus saving finite resources.
The management of waste thus becomes a far more thorny issue than it might at first appear. |
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