MSW Management in Two Italian Mountainous Areas

Abstract

Two case studies are reported in the present work. They regard municipal solid waste (MSW) management trends in the last decades in two Italian provinces selected to analyse some issues of waste management in mountainous areas. The first case study refers to a selective collection (SC) rate expected to reach 80 % soon. This scenario assumes SC mainly in kerbside mode. The scenario is based on specific local conditions: the absence of a thermo-chemical plant in the territory (but with a part of the residual MSW burnt in a neighbour province), the presence of local plant of anaerobic, and a sanitary landfill for pre-treated residual MSW. The adopted tariff helped increasing the SC rate: indeed, since 2013, a tariff calculated at user level, depending on the behaviour of each user, has been adopted. This is called punctual tariff. The second case study concerns an area where SC reached about 75 %. The punctual tariff has been recently introduced. In this scenario, an incineration plant and a Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) plant allow implementing an industrial symbiosis solution in conjunction with a cement factory. The work demonstrates that SC can be the core of a correct MSW management and that kerbside collection is fully compatible with mountainous area. However, other issues remain to be optimized yet: the low density of mountain areas makes difficult to implement enhanced solutions of SC (e.g. for diapers) and increases costs for light packaging collection; moreover, the presence of tourist fluxes can significantly affect SC efficiency.

Keywords

• circular economy
• guidelines
• management
• mountain
• municipal solid waste