Conserving the soil on new recycled landfill mining in The Netherlands
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Conserving
the soil on new recycled landfill mining in The Netherlands
Ever since the European Union has
articulated a policy on landfill mining, member countries have been at the
forefront on how to conserve the soil based on or or newly recycled landfill mining.
Thus, The Netherlands clearly abides with
the European Union Directive framework on soil conservation from recycled
landfill mining. It has put forward a coherent policy on the conservation of
soil based on old or newly recycled landfill like cover material and fill
material. It has looked into a rationale that says Dutch environment will depend
heavily on policy developments in Europe and the rest of the world, that the
dependence on international environmental policy developments will also
increase, and finally that the economic interdependence of countries will also
rise.
Landfill mining and the European Union’s
regulation
Landfill Mining (LFM) is a solid waste
management method which combines landfill engineering and mining techniques and
can be generally described as “a process for extracting materials or other
solid natural resources from waste materials that previously have been disposed
of by burying them in the ground.” (Robbinson, 2008). Historically, LFM was
first used in Israel in 1953 in order to produce soil for agricultural use. It
has become more popular in the late 1980’s when never landfills were applied
(Robbinson 2008: Ibid).
Different uses for LFM are established for
different uses: environmental policy and waste valorization opportunity and as
future possibility. An assessment of the current state-of play in Europe showed
that there is a lot of applied research needed in order to produce alternative
technological and financial models that could potentially support large-scale
LFM.
At the regional level, the
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have established
major principles such as the obligation to handle wastes in a way that does not
have a negative impact on the environment or human health. This encourages to
apply the waste hierarchy and in accordance with the polluter pays principle, a
requirement that the costs of disposing of waste must be borne by the holder of
waste, by previous holders or by the producers of the of the product from which
the waste came (Cossu, et. al, 1996: 111). This is the first of all valid for
waste management in general but is to a significant extent applicable to
Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM).
When it comes to juridical
point of view, these complex policies can create serious implications for the
landfill mining projects. It can even pose a halt in a particular project.
However, according to the EU Directive, the mining must be carried without any
significant negative environmental disturbances on air soil and waters as well
as avoiding risks for the health of workers or people living in the
surroundings.
In
Europe, as a response to the EC Landfill Directive of 1999 and later the Waste
Directive of 2008, many landfills have been forced to close down during the
last decade. These directives have also led to the requirement that landfills
have a bottom liner. Likewise, it has also been stated that the landfilling of
organic waste must be phased out.
Nevertheless,
landfill mining is not so clearly regulated in the EU Directive and it has been
noted in the Directive 2008/98/EG that recycling of waste needs to assess the
existing definitions of recovery and disposal. This requires the need for a
generally applicable definition of recycling and a debate on the definition of
waste. The European Commission intended to clearly differentiate between
recovery and disposal and to clarify the distinction between waste and
non-waste. According to Cossu, et. al (1996: 115), clarifying these distinctions is particularly
important in the case of landfill mining.
Realizing
this the EU Council posits that:
“the first objective of any
waste policy should be to minimise the negative effects of the generation and
management of waste on human health and the environment. Waste policy should
also aim at reducing the use of resources, and favour the practical application
of the waste hierarchy. Hence, landfill mining needs to lead to a situation
where resources are used in a better way and old waste will have less effect on
the life of humans in coming generations.”
-EU Directive on Landfill
of Waste (1999)
The European
Council confirmed that waste prevention should be the first priority of waste
management, and that reuse and material recycling should be preferred to energy
recovery from waste, where and insofar as they are the best ecological options.
In the landfill mining concept it must first be decided if the recycling of
material is a realistic option compared to the energy utilisation alternative
(Ibid: 1999).
The EU
Directive means in practice that waste minimisation and pretreatment before
landfilling are encouraged and that this will result in ‘poorer’ landfills in
the future, possibly resulting in a lower interest in material recovery. After
the landfill has been definitively closed, the owner-operator shall be
responsible for its maintenance, monitoring and control procedures for 30
years, according to the Directive, or longer if required by the competent
authority. The costs are dependent on the expenditure and duration of the required
aftercare measures. (Johnson, 2008: 5.1)
Excavated soils and recovery of other
materials
The
waste status of uncontaminated excavated soils and other naturally occurring
material that are used on sites other than the one from which they were excavated
should be considered in accordance with the definition of waste and the
provisions on by-products or on the End of Waste status under this Directive.
It
is necessary to distinguish between the preliminary storage of waste pending
its collection, the collection of waste and the storage of waste pending
treatment. Establishments or undertakings that produce waste in the course of
their activities should not be regarded as engaged in waste management and
subject to authorization for the storage of their waste pending its collection.
Preliminary
storage of waste within the definition of collection is understood as a storage
activity, pending its collection in facilities where waste is unloaded in order
to permit its preparation for further transport for recovery or disposal
elsewhere. The distinction between preliminary storage of waste pending
collection and the storage of waste pending treatment should be made, in view
of the objective of this Directive, according to the type of waste, the size
and time period of storage and the objective of the collection. This
distinction should be made by the Member States. The storage of waste prior to
recovery for a period of three years or longer and the storage of waste prior
to disposal for a period of one year or longer is subject to Council Directive of
1999on the landfilling of waste. (EU Directive on Landfill of Waste, 1999).
Further,
the definitions of recovery and disposal need to be modified in order to ensure
a clear distinction between the two concepts, based on a genuine difference in
environmental impact through the substitution of natural resources in the
economy and recognizing the potential benefits to the environment and human
health of using waste as a resource. In addition, further guidelines or
implementing rules and regulations may be developed in order to clarify cases
where this distinction is difficult to apply in practice or where the
classification of the activity as recovery does not match the real
environmental impact of the operation.
Cost
and benefits for reclamation projects will vary considerably depending firstly
on the goal of the site owner-operator: reduction of the landfill area and cap;
recovery of airspace for continued operation; upgrading or installing a liner;
or removal of the landfill entirely or a combination of these. Secondly,
site-specific physical conditions play an important role in determining whether
the landfill operator’s goals can be achieved. These conditions include the
soil-to-waste ratio, depth of the waste, type of waste and the presence of
standing water, as well as costs for disposing of waste off-site if that should
be required(Johnson,
2008: 5.5).
Landfills
in The Netherlands from the 1960s, for example, have quantities of construction
and demolition waste materials, reflecting that era’s construction boom. Other
landfills include highly specific waste, such as that from vehicle
fragmentation companies. Increased environmental awareness and eco-trends have
favoured markets for recyclable and reusable material. Presumably the biggest
reason is the increase in the price of petroleum, which puts a new focus on
metal and plastic in landfills.
The future ahead of landfill mining and
solid waste and materials recovery
The
production of waste in EU has changed during the last decade as different types
of sorting schemeshave been introduced. The EU Council Directive of 1999 on
landfills has changed the landfill situation in Europe for the future. Scholars
have agreed that the EU Directive was intended to prevent or reduce the adverse
effects of the landfilling of waste on the environment, in particular on
surface water, ground water, soil, air and human health.
Many
earlier problems with landfilling will, to a great extent, be solved for future
projects, and that has motivated old landfill reclamation. No organic material
can go to landfills in the future. Further, they see the following three types
of landfills will exist in the future in the EU region: 1) inert, 2)
non-hazardous, and 3) hazardous landfills. There are hundreds of thousands of
old landfills in Europe and millions on the global scale. How many of these are
economically feasible to excavate and environmentally motivated to do today or
sometime in the future is difficult to say.
References:
Cossu, R., Hogland,
W. and Salerni, E., Landfill Mining in Europe and USA. ISWA Year - Book, International Solid Waste Association (ed),
pp. 107-114. (1996).
EU Directive on
Landfill of Waste. European Union Council Directive 1999/31/EC issued - 26
April 1999.
Johnson, M.,
Commercials prospects for landfill mining as part of a sustainable waste
treatment process, Proceedings of the Global Landfill Mining conference 9
October - 2008, Royal School of Arts, London,
UK, Page 5.1 -5.13 (2008)
Robinsson, G., 2008
Mining for plastics - Extracting plastics from landfills for materials
recycling and energy recovery. Proceedings of the Global Landfill Mining
Conference, 9 - October 2008, Royal
School of Arts, London, UK. Page 10.1 -10.10 (2008).
* Introduced here is an article written by one of KEI's environment correspondents. KEI invites students studying abroad and researchers working for foreign research institutes to send articles on various global environmental issues.
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