Agenda - Council - 10/14/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

The waste abatement potentials listed in Table 5 are based on information in the MPCA Resource Recovery Plan (1979) and existing projects in the United States and Europe, and reflect maximum degrees of recovery achievable through a comprehensive system of all land disposal abatement strategies. The percentages listed in Table 5 overlap and cannot be added to determine a total abatement percentage for any five-year period. Waste separation potentials are based on the percent recovery experienced at mandatory curb-side pickup programs at Marblehead, Massachussetts, and Boca Raton, Florida (see "Waste Separation: Preliminary Conclusions"). Waste processing (shredding and baling) abatement potentials listed reflect the maximum amount of landfill space saved from both recovery of materials (for example, shredding followed by magnetic separation) and size reduction of the residual waste. The resource recovery category includes components of both waste separation and waste processing, and reflects the total potentials for comprehensive systems of energy recovery or biological processing. "Other systems" of resource recovery includes the more experimental processes of "guup" aggregates and alcohol production from cellulose material as well as brush chipping to recover wood wastes. Waste reduction potentials are not listed on Table 5 because these strategies do not recover materials or energy but rather reduce the total amount of waste. The preliminary conclusion from the analysis of waste reduction strategies is that the the maximum potential degree of abatement for the year 2000 is around 15 percent. Since the Region currently has no effective waste reduction program, the best schedule for reaching this maximum may be an increase from the current zero percent reduction, to three percent by 1985, five percent by 1990, and 10 percent by 1995. Figure 1 includes an illustration of the current recovery system in the Region, which consists mostly of materials recovery through waste separation programs such as recycling centers, curb-side source separation, office paper recovery, leaf composting, and larger scrap metal recycling centers. The discussion of current markets in the previous section stated that there are strong markets in the Region for corrugated, glass and aluminum. Although good markets exist for newsprint, the current recovery rate satisfies the majority of the newsprint demand. The current total recovery rate in the Region is approximately eight.percent of the 2.5 million tons of mixed municipal solid waste generated annually (MPCA, 1979). Figure 1 also shows the potential land disposal abatement systems for the year 2000. The circles shown in Figure ! differ in size because the .projected population increase will increase the total waste generated per year to 3.1 million tons. However, if the Region can reduce the per capita generation rate through an aggressive waste reduction program (15 percent by the year 2000), the total generation rate for the Region will only increase slightly, as depicted by the smaller circle.