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Sardinia 2003: The Sustainable Wastes Management Conference

It is somewhat frightening to realise that when thenext biennial Sardinia Symposium meets in October2005, it will be the tenth time that this beautiful locationhas hosted what is now undoubtedly the world’s leadinginternational waste management conference. The 2003Sardinia confirmed why this is the case. Althoughattendance in October 2001 was affected by the twintowers tragedy only 4 weeks earlier, and for the firsttime ever delegate numbers did not increase further, thisyear’s event put things back on track.In October 2003, 886 delegates, from 57 countries,

presented 384 oral papers and 77 poster papers, duringan extremely full week. Six simultaneous sessions, from09:00 to 19:40 each day, comprise a technical pro-gramme which initially terrifies first-time attendees.Somewhat less scary than the usual 8 kg of proceedings,however, was the single, 650-page hardback volume ofpaper abstracts, with a CD containing the full papers ina simple searchable format.It is always revealing to look at the proportion of the

programme taken by papers in specific areas of wastesmanagement. Traditional topics such as landfill, lea-chate and gas, lining and capping, incinerator residues,RDF, and waste management in developing countriesremained prominent, with fields such as waste pretreat-ment, life cycle analysis, recycling and health effects ofall waste management technologies increasing rapidly.Remarkably, in the light of the major changes facingEU Member States and similar challenges in othercountries, only two papers in the whole conferenceaddressed the management of hazardous wastes. This isnot a reflection of any agenda of the symposium orga-nisers, but rather the distribution of abstracts received,amounting in total to 640, from which the 461 fullwritten papers had been selected by an internationalpanel.As is traditional, the symposium was opened by a

guest lecture on a broader topic than wastes manage-ment. Gunter Sager, manager of Volkswagen’s environ-ment department, spoke about ‘‘the car of the future—a contribution to sustainability’’. Although wastesmanagement is universally unpopular, personal freedomto emit greenhouse gases by driving a car is far more ofa political minefield. Volkswagen, no doubt in commonwith most motor manufacturers, seeks to develop more

fuel efficient vehicles, and less polluting fuels—sadly,one could not help but compare the outcome to a crossbetween Sir Donald Campbell’s ‘‘Bluebird’’ and theSinclair C5.Developing countries and newly industrialised econo-

mies continue to be remarkably well represented at theSymposium, assisted to a significant extent by grantsand subsidies made by the Sardinia organisers. Dele-gates and presentations from Ghana, Ecuador, China,Columbia, the Philippines, Swaziland, Guyana, andmore than 30 from South Africa, do a good job inkeeping feet firmly on the floor when esoteric aspects ofsustainability, or expensive and sophisticated technolo-gies, are being discussed.Professor Bob Ham, recently retired from the Uni-

versity of Wisconsin at Madison after nearly 40 yearsspent researching and teaching the science and practiceof waste management was selected to receive the biennialSardinia ‘‘A Life for Waste’’ award, in recognition ofhis contributions to waste management internationally.Ann Stringfellow, of the University of Southampton,

collected an award with her colleagues, for the bestpaper on anaerobic digestion, entitled ‘‘Survival ofSalmonella in the Anaerobic Digestion of KitchenWaste’’.An interesting development was the launch of a spin-

off organisation from the Sardinia Symposium, to beknown as the International Waste Working Group orIWWG. This group comprises several key organisers ofthe conference, and was established in 2002, with thespecific aim of providing an international intellectualplatform to promote scientific advances in the wastemanagement field. Sardinia provides by far the bestopportunity for waste managers around the world tomeet each other and discuss common problems—manyenduring friendships and cooperations have begun inworkshops, or even over a pizza, in Sardinia. IWWG isa non-profit organisation that seeks to extend the phi-losophy of Sardinia, by co-organising internationalconferences (e.g., the Asian-Pacific Landfill Symposium,and the Intercontinental Waste Management Sympo-sium during 2004), by publishing textbooks, and per-haps most interestingly, by facilitating lively, web-baseddiscussion groups on specialised waste managementtopics.

0956-053X/$ - see front matter # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2004.01.001

Waste Management 24 (2004) 115–117

www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

IWWG Founders at Sardinia Symposium.

So, what were the key issues discussed? As ever, thegreatest numbers of papers dealt with the control oflandfill emissions—gas, leachate, and odours. Mechan-ical biological treatment was covered by many technicalpapers, and there was increasing recognition that a vitalneed is for increased understanding of the fate of nitro-gen during the composting process. Although in thepast the presence of nitrogen compounds in compostsbeing applied to agriculture was seen as a benefit, nowthat BSE and FMD result in more MBT wastes enteringlandfills, the potential for long-term release of ammo-niacal-N is of increased concern.A key topic raised in many papers at this year’s sym-

posium was the issue of ‘‘final storage quality’’ (FSQ)for wastes being landfilled, criteria for defining FSQ,and approaches to achieving it. Countries now recognisethat existing pre-treatment methods do not approachFSQ, and that the landfilled residues still require con-tinuing aftercare. There was widespread recognition thatan aftercare period of 30 years is meaningless in terms ofreaching FSQ and that for landfills constructed accord-ing to modern standards, the period is likely to be mea-sured in centuries or even millenia. The need to acceleratethe washing out of soluble pollutants from landfills andto accelerate the degradation of biodegradable wasteswas raised by a much larger number of renownedspeakers, from a much wider spectrum of countries,than at any previous Sardinia symposium.Another related area that attracted many papers and

much discussion was research and full-scale practice ofaerobic remediation of old landfills. This involves theinjection of air via one set of wells and extraction of gasvia another set. It might be said that this topic ‘came ofage’ at Sardinia 2003. It has become well establishedfrom the published research now available that definitebenefits can be realised in some circumstances, includ-ing: (1) conversion of the microbial ecology from amethanogenic system to an aerobic system, similar tocomposting, leading to an odour-free landfill gas con-

taining only CO2, N2 and O2 but no methane, andrequiring no further treatmentl and (2) large reductionsin leachate ammoniacal nitrogen concentrations. Smal-ler scale research and field trials have been presented atprevious conferences. However, the quantity of papersand the results presented at this symposium shifted thistopic from the level of ‘interesting idea with potential’ tothat of serious technology, which will undoubtedly be ofgreat importance in future. Even so, much remains to bediscovered: successful application has so far been lim-ited to relatively shallow sites, and it remains unclearwhat would be needed to adapt the technique to deepersites; successful application has also been limited to sitesthat are known to be close to the end of their gas gen-eration curves, and applying aeration techniques to asite containing too much degradable matter could beineffective in changing the overall microbial regime andmight carry a risk of generating very high temperatures,with consequent risks of damage to thermoplasticinfrastructure, sub-surface fires and generation of carbonmonoxide. Clearly these are areas for further research.Another important concept that became more firmly

established at Sardinia 2003 is the dual porosity beha-viour of landfilled wastes. This behaviour is responsiblefor the exponential dilution that is observed duringflushing of both small scale lysimeters and full scalelandfills. This understanding has developed over anumber of years, based on theoretical as well as prac-tical studies, many of which were presented at Sardinia.Relatively few papers looked at groundwater impacts

from landfills, presumably as landfill lining systemsbecome more widespread internationally.The closing round table discussion session, ‘‘Is the EU

Directive the right tool for landfill sustainability?’’,caused the usual levels of debate, from both EU andnon-EU countries. It is widely acknowledged that we allcontinue to landfill in a non-sustainable manner, butthat the concept of sustainability does not feature in theDirective. Dr. Jan Gronow (UK), made a fundamentalpoint, when she referred to discussions that had takenplace regarding the Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC).A significant number of EU Member States wanted theWAC which will apply non-hazardous sites receivingtreated hazardous wastes, also to apply to all non-hazardous waste landfills. These include limits on theTOC content (<5 percent) which would require a mas-sive increase in pre-treatment for non-hazardous indus-trial and commercial wastes, and would also act toprevent the landfilling of MBP wastes—a major futureproblem for many Member States, presently in thethroes of investing hundreds of millions of Euros insuch facilities. It would, in effect, require the incinera-tion of the vast majority of wastes.Jan Gronow’s view was that such legislation is likely

to be on the agenda as early as 2014, when MemberStates meet to review the final targets to be adopted in

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2016, and there may well be a majority of countries whowill support this—completely messing up many nationalstrategies as countries attempt to comply with the pre-sent requirements. Delegates from the rest of the worldwere, as ever, astonished by what Europe is doing, andalmost unanimously take our progress as suicidal and adire warning of what not to do in their own countries.

Winners of the Soccer Competition in Sardinia.

Sardinia is a unique event, not least as a result ofthe amazing setting of the Forte Village—winnerof ‘‘Best Holiday Resort in the World’’ for 2002.The facilities, and reliable warm Mediterraneanweather, enable delegates to discuss wastes with anintensity, passion and duration not encounteredelsewhere!

Howard RobinsonTechnical DirectorEnviros Consulting

UK

Keith KnoxPrincipal

Knox AssociatesUK

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