Posts Tagged ‘smaltimento rifiuti’

What do you know about recycling?

July 1st, 2010

So you decide you’ll invest in recycling and reclamation. It’s a big decision. But before planning the economic investment side, you should take a look at the basics. What do we really know about waste? And about now much we can re-use, and quite simply, about the ways in which we can re-use waste and process it to come up with new resources?

Like?

Like… did you know that plastic is by far the most difficult of materials to get rid of? It takes as long as a thousand years. A tin or a can, left to nature’s devices, will take 20 to 100 years.

Because they contain many materials which are hard to separate, light bulbs shouldn’t be disposed of along with glass waste.

Recycling 70 kg of paper saves the life of one tree.

An ecological shopping bag can be made of tomato skins.

Hazardous municipal waste includes laser printers, which contain toxic and/or hazardous materials.

Objects like floppy disks, video cassettes and biro pens can’t be recycled because they’re made up of a variety of materials or of hard plastic which can’t be softened.

Do you know what special waste is?

All these questions and answers and many other topics are dealt with in the simple, fun Eco-Quiz on recycling which we discovered on-line (click and see for yourself!): find out how much you really know about recycling, reclamation, disposal and related topics!

Europe and the municipal waste market

May 10th, 2010

Eurostat − the European Union’s statistical office − has made data on municipal waste management in the 27 countries available to the general public. We learn that, as regards incineration and recycling, Italy (the second largest waste producing country in Europe) is still below the mean values.

The European municipal waste market has already reached a value of 42 billion dollars. According to recent estimates given out by Frost & Sullivan, the potential level by 2014 is 46 billion. The only market topping Italy is Germany, accounting for nearly 24% of the turnover. France is the third strategic ‘catchment area’.

Facts and figures for the Italian peninsula (2008 data): each citizen produces on average 561 kg of municipal waste per year. Of this waste, approx. 11% is incinerated and 11% recycled; 44% goes to dumps/landfill (this is 4% above the EU mean value). Among the states of the European Community, the mean quantity of waste incinerated comes to 20% (23% is recycled, the 34% which is biodegradable is composted).

Overall, Italy’s levels are on a par with the United Kingdom’s (the latter being at a more advanced stage for recycling) and France’s (France incinerates more waste). Germany produces most waste, but it shares a record with the Netherlands − both countries dispose of only 1% of their municipal waste by dump/landfill (the remaining 48% is recycled, 35% lands up in incinerators, and 17% is processed to produce fertilizers). Sweden and Austria also perform well (3% dump/landfill). Denmark’s and Belgium’s dump/landfill waste comes to 4 and 5%, respectively.

Statistical data source: Eurostat – Statistical office of the European Community