Second place – Thank you for recycling
This campaign was designed by the national packaging compliance scheme for Belgium, Fost Plus to thank citizens for their separation of household packaging waste for recycling. The campaign used a number of different ways to reinforce the good habits of separation of packaging waste items for separate collection, including posters in places such as metro stations in Brussels, television advertising and magazine advertising.

Third place – The year of glass
The Non-Profit organisation ÖKO-Pannon is the national packaging compliance scheme for Hungary, which had identified that Hungary was not fulfilling its obligations for the separate collection of glass containers. Therefore, it embarked on four ambitious promotional campaigns covering very different approaches to encourage the separation and collection of glass containers to ensure that every section of society could relate to the objective of improving the collection of glass bottles.

The winner of the ISWA Publication Award for 2011 is a review article by Dr Tonni Agustiono Kurniawan and his co-authors: Waihung Lo, G Chan and Mika E T Sillanpää.

“Biological Processes for Treatment of Landfill Leachate” was published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring volume 12, pp 2032-47 in 2010. The review covers a literature survey of 188 papers published between 1976 and 2010, with a critical analysis of the technical applicability of a range of biological treatments for leachate treatment.

The main techniques evaluated for their advantages and limitations are activated sludge, sequencing batch reactors,

The second place was taken by a book Municipal Waste Management in Asia and the Pacific Islands edited by Professor P Agamuthu based in Malaysia and Professor Masaru Tanaka based in Japan.

The third place was held by the two-volume tome Solid Waste Technology and Management by Thomas H Christensen of the Technical University of Denmark, based in Copenhagen, and his associates.

The Awards will be presented at the Welcome Reception of this year’s ISWA World Congress in Daegu, Korea, on 17 October 2011.

ISWA, in addition to the already existing Publication Award and Communication Award, will be launching a new award in 2012: The ISWA Media Award.

The award recognises and rewards professional journalists from the print and internet media throughout the world who have made a significant contribution to the global public’s greater awareness and understanding of waste management issues.

With the Media Award, ISWA aims to raise social awareness about the necessity of high quality waste management systems and stimulate journalists to cover important questions related to waste generation, collection, transportation, treatment and ultimate disposal, in an effort towards sustainable development under a low carbon economy.

Each award edition will be guided by a general theme to orientate authors. The theme of the first edition of the ISWA Media Award in 2012 is “Beyond Sustainability: new practices for solid waste management”.

Terms of reference and deadlines for the ISWA Media Award will be published soon on www.iswa.org

The ISWA Working Group on Hazardous Waste is holding a special workshop and meeting on the 7 October 2011 in Mechelen, Belgium.

Key experts and stakeholders, will come together to discuss and debate ‘hot topics’ in hazardous waste management in Europe and around the world. Invitees will come from all sectors – government, regulators, academia, NGOs, waste generators and consultants as well as the hazardous waste industry. ISWA’s National and Organisation Members have been invited to appoint experts active in Hazardous Waste to attend.

The morning session will address three topics with (a) short opening presentation(s) followed by facilitated discussion to ensure that everyone has a chance to participate.

A networking lunch will be hosted by Indaver. The key themes will include policy approaches, emerging sources and the globalisation of hazardous waste, such as the trafficking of WEEE.

If Hazardous Waste is your field of interest and you haven’t received an invitation but would like to attend this event, then please contact rwilliams@iswa.org

ISWA is very happy to announce the launch of a new feature on its website: The ISWA Job Exchange Platform provides companies and organisations with a highly targeted opportunity to find the most qualified personnel in the waste management sector all over the world. Place your job ad on a website that is visited by 10,000 waste management professionals per month!

This is service is free of charge for ISWA members!

As a member benefit, ISWA company/organisation members (National, Gold and Silver members) may publish a certain number of job advertisements for free for each year of membership:

• ISWA National Members: 5
• ISWA Gold Members: 5
• ISWA Silver Members: 2

Environ Association is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation having the mission to take over the responsibilities of the manufacturers and importers regarding the collecting process, treatment, recycling and ecologically safe elimination of used EEE equipment in accordance with the European and National legislation.

The association cooperates with the central and local authorities, with electrical and electronic equipment manufacturers and distributors in order to develop and implement an operational and competitive WEEE management system.

Environ, as a collection system for WEEE and batteries is looking for innovative companies that intend to act on the Romanian recycling market. Environ is interested in partnerships that provide solutions for the recovery and recycling of valuable secondary raw materials for our Romanian customers. Please visit the Environ website www.environ.ro or contact them at secretariat@environ.ro

Food Production Daily reports that in a briefing note Plastic waste: redesign and biodegradability, the directorate explores how an unthinking pursuit of so-called eco-plastics and eco-design may actually cause more harm than good to the environment.

The unknown effects of biodegradable plastics on flora and fauna as well as the potential consequences on food prices by using crops such as corn or soya for bioplastic feedstock are some of the variables that need to be weighed up in this highly complex environmental equation.

The brief said that more accurate and regionally developed forecasts are need on plastic waste, waste management and the eco-impact of the materials.

Conducting the research would allow a targeted introduction of relatively scarce bioplastics — which currently only account for up to 0.2 per cent of EU plastics — where they would have most effect.

For the full story, please visit Food Production Daily

WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) is launching the new Waste Prevention Loan Fund (WPLF) as announced in the recent Government Review of Waste Policy in England 2011. The Waste Prevention Loan Fund aims to reduce waste at source by supporting organisations to introduce business models and processes, which make more efficient uses of material resources. Examples include product reuse, repair and upgrading services (e.g. through leasing), and materials recovery and reuse by the manufacturer.

The WPLF has £1 million to support businesses, social enterprises and local authorities over the next four years. The maximum investment will be £100,000 and the minimum will be £20,000. The £1m funding will be distributed in phases. In the first phase, a percentage of the funding will be made available as loans to assist with cash-flow for a business (retailer or product supplier) which is switching from generating immediate income through product sales to generating income from service delivery.

Applicants will need to demonstrate new approaches which offer substantial resource savings and can be scaled-up and replicated to have significant benefit at the national level. The loan fund is designed to help introduce solutions where commercial funding is otherwise not available.

Complementing the WPLF, WRAP is separately inviting tenders from businesses seeking help with planning and monitoring REBMs. These projects will support the technical evaluation of business benefits and resource savings, pre- and post-implementation. WRAP's primary interest is in REBMs for electrical & electronic products in major categories (e.g. white goods, televisions and laptops), but developments in the clothing and furniture sectors will also be considered. Support is available on condition that the learning and evidence of savings can be shared (while respecting commercial sensitivities).

CLICK HERE for further details about the WPLF, eligibility and the application process.

Ministers are inviting views on the draft National Planning Policy Framework — which streamlines national policy from over 1,000 pages to just 52 pages of policy — as part of a consultation to get the planning system right for current and future generations. The draft Framework draws on responses to an initial call for evidence earlier in the year. The Government intends to consult on simplifying other guidance on national policy as the next step.

CLICK HERE for copies of Draft national planning policy framework: consultation

Ministers have been consulting on proposals to introduce progressive bans on the types of rubbish that can be dumped in landfill sites, which is expected to lead to separate collection and treatment of a range of material.

As part of this process, regulations will be introduced to ensure that energy-from-waste (EfW) plants such as DERL are "only used to recover value resources that cannot offer greater environmental and economic benefits through reuse and recycling."

The government said separate collections would maximise the amount of high-quality material available for reprocessing.

For the full story, please visit The Courier

Poland may still be a beginner when it comes to delivering eco-innovations that benefit economy and environment, but interest and support is on the up according to a recent report.

The European Commission's ETAP (Environmental Technologies Action Plan) reports that despite opportunities to save costs and cut pollution, interest in eco-innovation remains unsatisfactory in Poland, according to a profile of the country by the European Eco-Innovation Observatory (EIO). Its eco-innovation index is two times lower than the EU average. Only Romania, Slovakia and Lithuania do worse.

But things are changing. Despite corporate involvement in the environment being the lowest in Europe, some — including small and medium-sized enterprises — are waking up to the opportunity for eco-innovation to cut costs. From 2000 to 2007, the index reflecting the growth of gross domestic product generated from one kg of materials increased by over 30 per cent.

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2006 to 2008 found that over a quarter of industrial companies and 16 per cent of service companies in Poland had introduced eco-innovations. They were largely production, rather than use-based and most often cut pollution to soil, water and air rather than CO2 emissions.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, the Netherlands) a grant to 'Reinvent the toilet'. News Medical reports that the aim of this project is to develop new technology for processing human waste without links to water, energy or sewer lines, and at costs affordable to the poor in developing countries.

Desso has developed new carpets that are more effective at capturing and retaining fine dust.

In 2007, Stef Kranendijk, CEO of Desso, a European carpet manufacturer based in the Netherlands had to decide a route forward for the company.
The wider economic scene was looking darker as the full impact of the financial crisis started to become apparent. In that inauspicious commercial climate, Kranendijk faced two choices: either carry on as before and try to compete for market share using tried and tested methods or find a completely new strategy.

The company had been bought out from a US company, the Armstrong Group by private investors (including Kranendijk and the other members of the board). It was at that time that Kranendijk watched a documentary about the Cradle to Cradle concept. Developed by the German chemist Dr Michael Braungart with the US architect William McDonough, the idea was to encourage businesses to develop eco-efficient manufacturing that emulated the continuous cycle in nature.

Like the Cherry Tree, referred to in the book Cradle to Cradle by Braungart and McDonough, manufacturers should produce goods made of materials that are so pure that they can be recycled again and again without ending up in landfill.

For the full story, please visit edie.net

A study funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers has identified and evaluated waste prevention initiatives in the building and construction sector. The main part of the initiatives is based on information tools such as guidelines, handbooks, calculation tools and checklists. Seven case studies have been described to illustrate different categories within waste prevention. It seems that waste prevention measures only to a limited extent are integrated in the building and construction sector. But there are a lot of good ideas for future actions within the sector, therefore a chapter is dedicated to further present these ideas for waste prevention practices that were identified during the mapping of initiatives.

The case studies demonstrated that presently voluntary measures play a leading role in waste prevention. Most of the measures are related to the elimination of hazardous substances from building and construction waste. Respondents in the study have emphasized the need for education and information amongst all actors, from the early planning stage, right through to the implementation and execution of the projects themselves.

For the full story, please CLICK HERE. The report can be downloaded here

Umicore and Rhodia have jointly developed a unique process for the recycling of rare earth elements (REE) from Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries. This recycling process combines the capabilities of Umicore's proprietary Ultra High Temperature (UHT) battery recycling process with Rhodia's rare earth refining competences.

The process can service the whole range of NiMH batteries from portable applications to the batteries for hybrid electric vehicles. It is expected that first recovery of rare earth materials could take place by the end of this year. The process will enable the recovery of rare earths from NiMH batteries that will be treated at Umicore's new battery recycling plant in Hoboken. After the separation of the nickel and iron from the rare earths, Umicore will process the rare earths into a high-grade concentrate that will be refined and formulated into rare earth materials at Rhodia's plant in La Rochelle (France).

To read the full media release, please CLICK HERE