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Waste Indicators

6 Use of indicators in the entire waste management field

Appendix B discusses assumptions, and below an overall assessment of amount of time required for the three relevant alternatives is given:

1. Status of the entire waste management field (Model A)
2. First statement of indicator calculation for realised savings and potentials (Model B) without previous status (I)
3. Annual updating of Model B, whether on the basis of I or II.

6.1.1 Time required to calculated life-cycle-based factors

Provision of data for calculation of life-cycle-based factors must primarily take place the first time the calculation is carried out. In the current annual statements of realised savings it would not be expedient to update factors, as this would only result in indicators reflecting changes in factors rather than developments in waste management.

In the assessment of amount of time required to provide life-cycle data for materials and treatment options to be included in the status, the point of departure is an assessment of the number of materials and waste treatment options in question. In principle, most materials can be included in waste. However, some materials will be excluded, as they are only present in insignificant quantities.

If it is assumed that within each of the three fractions of metals, plastic, and oil and chemical waste statements are made for seven materials, and within each of the other 12 fractions listed in Chapter 6.1 statements are made for two significant materials, there will be around 45 materials that may be handled in two to four different ways each. This gives a total of 90-180 life-cycle-based data sets. Of these, however, many will be relatively similar, such as incineration of different types of plastic with the same calorific value.

A very large part of this LCA data is already available, even if updates may be necessary. Assuming that 10-20 data sets are non-existent and that 10-20 need updating before being applicable, these will require the largest amount of work with calculation of life-cycle-based indicators.

It should be noted in this context that for the proposed indicators it is merely a matter of providing data for resource consumption from which energy consumption can be derived, as well as data for assessment of landfill requirements in the entire life-cycle of the material. This limits the task of providing relevant data considerably. It is assessed that the work of providing LCA data can be done in around 2 man-months. The work must be done whether it is chosen to make the comprehensive statement (Model A) or an indicator calculation of realised savings (Model B). In the annual update of indicator calculations it should be expected that around 0.5 man-months will be needed for updating LCA data.

6.2 Time required to estimate quantities of material fractions

Time required to set up general principles for calculation of waste quantities of the different material fractions, as well as possibilities of doing this, are explained in Appendix B and discussed briefly below.

Mixed waste fractions such as "domestic waste" are made up of a number of material fractions and will be represented in the calculation of these materials. This means that for each material there will also be an assessment of how large a proportion, for example, is incinerated with domestic waste or bulky waste.

Information on data sources for quantitative data is discussed in Appendix B, including an outline in Table 2.1. The table has not been included in the main report, as for some aspects it is incomplete. For each material fraction data sources are stated and an assessment of uncertainty of data. Uncertainties are a rough estimate made by the authors to the best of their ability. As the largest uncertainties are associated with non-recycled waste quantities, it is further stated how large a proportion of total waste is collected for recycling. As it is seen from the table, for some materials it will be necessary to supplement information from the ISAG and material flow statistics on total quantities disposed of. In addition, in particular for metals, new mass-flow statistics are available that can also be applied. For a study to be applicable, it must have been carried out within the last five years.

The preparation of statuses will probably account for the largest part of time required to set up total calculation principles and provision of quantitative data to conduct the first calculation of indicators. Total amount of time required to update statuses has been assessed in Appendix B at 12-30 man-months. In the calculation some time can be saved if existing mass-flow analyses are used for some of the metals from 1994, or from any similar updated studies. With this assumption, the amount of time required to set up the total calculation principle will be in the range of 10-20 man-months.

An alternative to an extensive status can be to calculate realised savings for the entire waste management field, as well as calculation of realistic potentials for further optimisation of waste management (Model B). Initially, setting up this model will in particular require collection of data focusing on present incineration or recycling of materials. To this should be added an assessment of realistic potential savings. This is assessed to require 3-5 man-months – depending on number of materials assessed to be realistic for recycling.

6.2.2 Annual calculation of indicators

Annual statements of realised savings (Model B) can be carried out with an input of about one man-month for data collection and calculation. A significant proportion of this time will be required to gather and check data on metals from Statistics Denmark.

In addition to updating the data basis, some man-days must be set aside for presentation, assessment and reporting of developments, which is assessed to require 5-10 man-days, depending on requirements for presentations.

6.2.3 Overall assessment of scope of update

The discussion of the amount of time required to prepare a status and current updates of realised savings is summarised in Table 6.1. It should be noted that in the annual updates, time for reporting has been included.

Table 6.1
Total time required for statement and annual calculations of indicators