About Task 36

Rationale

Within the EU the main driver for diverting waste from landfill is the Landfill Directive. The waste can either be recycled (so recovering its inherent energy value) or energy can be extracted directly from the remaining residual waste. In terms of meeting the Landfill Directive EU member countries fall into one of 2 groups: those that already meet the requirements of the Directive - because they have highly developed waste management infrastructure and so consign the minimum to landfill; and those that do not meet the Directive and so provide the greatest opportunity for energy recovery. The former group of countries include Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The latter group includes the southern European nations, the Nordic Countries, the UK and Ireland. Internationally, developed nations such as Canada, USA and Australia continue to rely on landfill and do not as yet have policy measures such as the EU Landfill Directive. Rather, they rely principally on the economic driver for waste diversion.

The potential for energy recovery in these countries is therefore high though institutional and other non-technical barriers pose considerable challenges.The last decade has seen considerable efforts in research work on waste management – including policy development, environmental systems analysis, technology development and economic drivers. Whilst this has assisted in the development of more sophisticated waste management systems in many cases it has also delayed deployment of energy recovery systems (specifically for residual wastes) in particular due to confused policy making, public awareness (and opposition) and uncertainty over environmental performance and technology performance.

Policy makers require guidance and information on all these aspects if waste and resource management systems that are environmentally and economically sustainable are to be developed. It is the aim of the Task to identify key work streams of relevance to the deployment of residual waste technologies and to produce a concise report to inform decision makers in the public and private sectors.