Report on collection set-up performance : DECISIVE Deliverable D6.6 : a decentralised management scheme for innovative valorisation of urban biowaste
Creators: name: Walk, Steffen
name: Körner, Ina
Publisher: name: TUHH Universitätsbibliothek
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Biowaste collection
subject: waste management
subject: Decentralisation
subject: Circular economy
subject: Bioeconomy
classificationCode: 330
subject: Wirtschaft
classificationCode: 380
subject: Handel, Kommunikation, Verkehr
classificationCode: 600
subject: Technik
classificationCode: 620
subject: Ingenieurwissenschaften

description: This report evaluates the waste collection performance of two demonstration sites and two case study sites within the DECISIVE project. It provides insight into quantitative and qualitative data gathered within the new DECISIVE-specific biowaste (BW) collection systems. It also introduces the original waste management of the local authorities and thus the transition to the DECISIVE decentralised BW management concept as proximity management approach. The assessment is carried out through waste characterisations in the ex-ante situation and during the transition for the different studies. In addition, a number of key parameters important for the assessment of the collection part itself is presented and data for each site is included if available. The Lyon urban farm is a full implementation of DECISIVE’s decentralised BW management concept. It includes the collection of food waste (FW) from surrounding restaurants, supermarkets and other food services, as well as the treatment at the farm where the micro-anaerobic digestion (mAD) plant is installed. The Lyon mAD demonstration plant has a capacity to treat 50 Mg a-1 of BW. In this report, the ex-ante situation and the situation after the start-up of the mAD were assessed by waste characterisations. The characterisations followed ongoing communication activities to raise awareness among waste generators about the upcoming separate collection of fFW. Although not commonly implemented in Lyon, a few of the waste generators had already established their own BW management system, mainly in the form of composting at the farm’s premises. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the mAD demonstration plant faced problems, which led to a temporal shut-down and a partial change of waste providers. However, the initial performance results are promising and the waste quantities from the selected waste generators are expected to be sufficient to run the plant at full capacity. However, some waste providers still need to improve the quality of source-separated BW. Impurities can reach between 3 - 5% which is too high for the manual pre-treatment. Also, Dolina town has a full implementation of DECISIVE’s decentralised BW management concept. It includes the valorisation of the municipality’s FW from households and commercial activities in a mAD demonstration plant. The local waste management company A&amp;T2000 already collected FW in a door-to-door system before the start of DECISIVE. As the original treatment plant is more than 100 km away, the company looked for alternatives to reduce the impact of transport and to explore local treatment options. The mAD demonstration plant has a capacity to treat 200 Mg a-1 of BW and is located in a designated BW collection area in Dolina called “biomass platform”. In this report, the ex-ante situation was assessed. Since no additional communication actions or changes in Dolina’s collection system are planned, it is assumed that the qualities and quantities of source-separated BW will remain at the measured level. Dolina’s source-separated BW consists mainly of FW. An additional stream of green waste (GW) will be treated on the designated demonstration site, too. The amount of source-separated BW already exceeds the capacity of the mAD. Including GW, separately delivered by the inhabitants, approximately 360 Mg a-1 are collected. Therefore, the establishment of an additional community composting site is planned. The quality of source-separated BW is high, with impurities below 1%. This excludes collection bags made of paper or biodegradable plastics since they are within the compliance requirements of A&amp;T2000. It is necessary to evaluate whether these bags cause problems in the mAD plant, as it does not include intensive pre-treatment. Residual waste (RW) comprises only small amounts of FW, resulting in a source-separation efficiency of 77% - 92% of the FW generated. The Barcelona UAB campus is a case study where a full implementation of the DECISIVE BW management concept was originally planned but eventually abandoned. However, the potential BW streams for the potential demonstration site were studied. The mainly targeted generators were the three largest restaurants of the campus. Furthermore, BW of the student village and the town of Cerdanyola del Vallès, in which the campus is situated, was characterised. The restaurants showed good BW sorting performances. The FW source-separation efficiency was estimated with 85 – 90%. Impurities ranged between 4 – 5% which leaves potentials for improvements. In the BW of the student village and town, a higher share of impurities was found, between 7 – 13%. Therefore, these were not considered as potential waste providers. Communication activities were carried out to improve FW separation behaviour. The focus was directed towards the staff, but also with customers of the restaurants (Guerrero et al. 2019). Further communication actions could involve the student village. Furthermore, a concept was to homogenise the collection equipment was developed, as most of the equipment did not follow a comprehensible concept across the campus The Lübeck neighbourhoods is a case study that aimed to test an alternative FW collection system in two socio-economically different areas in the city of Lübeck, with a focus on multi-family houses. As is common in Germany, FW is mostly collected as a co-mingled fraction with GW in a biobin. In most cases, the efficiency of FW source-separation is rather low, averaging around 35%. The largest share of FW is collected in the RW bin. Collection of GW works efficiently with source-separation efficiencies above 70%. GW often accounts for far above 50% of comingled collected BW. The tested system aimed at improving the efficiency of FW source-separation and simultaneous reduction of impurities. The system set-up included a single-stream collection of FW. Important elements were the provision of small collection buckets, a high collection frequency of source-separated FW, and intensive communication activities with residents. In result, it was found that in both areas, impurities were reduced to less than 1% from up to 5%. This is all the more impressive given the usual dilution effect of GW, which reduced below 4%. FW had a share of around 95% in source-separated BW in both areas during the test. Source-separation efficiency of FW increased from initially 6% and 17% in areas A and B to 62% and 66%, respectively. The long-term effects were tested on the reintroduced original BW collection system. Results were promising, with shares of FW higher than 50% and source-separation efficiencies between 35 and 50%. Also, impurities remained below 1%.