Tyre bales at Pevensey

It will be obvious to our Wastersblog readers that the disposal of vehicle tyres is a real headache, for the waste management industry, and as motorists we are all feeling the pinch from rapidly rising tyre disposal costs.

Certainly, the last time I bought a new tyre, the garage added several pounds to my bill for disposing of the old one.

However, a number of landfill operators have been using tyres for leachate drainage within landfills for some years as an engineering material, and they have found that using tyres as drainage layers in landfills provides adequate flow capabilities, at close to zero cost for their leachate drainage. However, manhandling individual tyres to stack them efficiently on site is a tedious, dirty, and time consuming task, and this fact alone has probably done a great deal to limit tyre use uptake. Whole and granulated tyres have been used for this purpose.

That was for whole tyres, as far as we are aware, just about the only use available in landfills.

Since WRAP published a British Standards Institution (BSI) and has produced a Publicly Available Specification, PAS 108, in collaboration with the tyres reprocessing industry, a whole new range of uses has opened up, from baled tyres.

Almost overnight, baled tyres have become an engineering product with standard bale sizes and shapes, and most important of all, clear design strength data.

Designers and purchasers can now use the structural and drainage characteristics provided from the research done for the PAS, and incorporate tyre bales into designs, just like any other proprietary geo-synthetic material.

In short, providing a specification for producing compact tyre bales of a consistent and verifiable quality and dimension, opens up a new and potentially huge market for waste tyres.

The method re-uses tyres, reducing the demand for the primary aggregate materials used in the past.

The PAS 108 specification can be adopted by suppliers for producing tyre bales such that potential customers will be assured that they are procuring a construction material of consistent and verifiable quality.

Furthermore, the core of this document addresses the production, handling, storage, transport and placement of standardized tyre bales, the dimensions and properties of which are standardised and described in this PAS. So go find out more at the Landfill Site Tyre Bales page here, and you will also find the contact details for one of the first suppliers.

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT – ENVIRONMENT REPORTER – December 26, 2007

The Ministry of Environment has found elevated levels of radioactive tritium in ground water at the municipal dump serving Pembroke, Ont., and several other nearby Ottawa River valley communities.

The dump, the Alice and Fraser Township Landfill, is not licensed to receive radioactive waste, and it is not known exactly how tritium, used to make glow-in-the-dark lights, among other products, and nuclear weapons, got into the dump.

But the discovery, made earlier in December, is being played down by the ministry because the amount of radioactivity was well below Ontario’s drinking-water limit.

Ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan said the Pembroke finding wasn’t high enough to warrant further action. “While there was tritium in the ground water at the site, [it was] well below our ministry standards,” she said. “We don’t feel that they pose a risk to the community or to the environment.”

The highest level – 1,000 Becquerel/Litre – is one seventh Ontario’s drinking water standard. One Becquerel is a radioactive disintegration per second.

But Ontario’s limit is lax by international standards and is currently under review by the government. The reading would have exceeded by wide margins California’s goal of having no more than 15 Bq/L, and Europe’s of having no more than 100 Bq/L, in water supplies.

California’s strict limit is based on the amount of tritium consumed over a lifetime that would cause no significant health risk, which it defined as one extra cancer in a million exposed people. Based on the California risk calculation, Ontario’s limit deems acceptable about 466 extra cancer cases.

The ministry testing is believed to be the first in Canada to find elevated amounts of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, at a municipal landfill, and was prompted by a request from an environmental group in the community, located about 150 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.

“If these levels were found in any other jurisdiction there would be an immediate investigation. Ontario Ministry of Environment staff are using permissive and outdated provincial tritium standards as an excuse to avoid action,” contended Ole Hendrickson, a spokesman for Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, the local group, in a statement.

Elevated amounts of tritium have also been found at dumps in both the United States and the United Kingdom in water that collects under landfills, known technically as leachate. Studies in those countries suggest the radioactivity is coming from the disposal of glow-in-the-dark signs, such as emergency-exit lights used in buildings, and products such as luminous watch paints. A group of U.S. researchers warned earlier this year that landfill workers exposed to construction debris may be at high risk of tritium exposure due to releases from the signs.

The only other testing in Ontario, at a landfill near Waterloo by the ministry in 2004, found low amounts of tritium around 10 Bq/L to 20 Bq/L. Some tritium is produced by natural processes and rain contains about 2 Bq/L.

Although the ministry doesn’t know precisely how the dump water got its radioactivity, Ms. Jordan said the source may have been glow-in-the-dark products.

In response to written questions, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal atomic watchdog, said it believes glow-in-the-dark signs caused the contamination. Canadian nuclear regulations allow the radioactive signs to be tossed into landfills, provided certain limits on their radioactive content are met.

Mr. Hendrickson said he is not aware of efforts by the CNSC to see if discarded signs meet the regulatory conditions and the watchdog wasn’t immediately able to confirm or deny his statement. More at Globe and Mail…

The Waster: The presence of tritium in UK landfills has been known about for more than 10 years and is well documented.

If any of you planned to join us, but have not yet booked there were just a few seats left this afternoon! Hurry, and you may still be lucky!!

The final itinerary is now also available at the Safari Web Site/Blog at:-

www.leachatesafari.com

This is a rare opportunity to see 6 operating Envrios designed biological leachate treatment plants, and one methane stripping plant, and in most cases their operators will be present to show us around.

You will also see a leachate treatability trial in operation.

This opportunity is unlikely to be repeated for a few years. It was more than 5 years ago that Enviros held the last Safari.

There will be plenty of opportunities to exchange notes on the subject of leachate treatment on the coach as well with leachate treatment plant designers, operators, technicians, council waste officers, students, and even some UK Environment Agency staff present.

International safari attendees are also flying in from Sweden, Ireland and Spain for the tour.

The cost is just £225 plus VAT for two days, including a dinner on the first night.

Visit www.leachatesafari.com for more information. Download the Safari Leaflet for more information, and both Subscribe and Register your details online. (Advance payment is required.)

We recommend that you must be there. It is biennial so miss it next year and you’ll have to wait 2 years.

CALL FOR PAPERS ENDS 30th OCTOBER!!!

The Waster has an idea for his paper – if he stops posting to this blog for long enough, he might even get it sumitted by the deadline. How about you?

Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
March 18 – 21, 2007

Has put out a call For papers:

Researchers, educators, government officials, students, consultants, managers, community leaders, and others with expertise in solid waste are invited to submit papers for oral presentation at the Conference.

Abstracts are encouraged from all areas of solid waste technology and management, including: Landfilling topics, Recycling, Energy recovery and thermal treatment, Waste reduction, Economics, Policy, Regulations, Facility siting, Public involvement, EU Directives,  Solid waste, dust, Ash, Education, Household hazardous wastes, Municipal wastes,     Waste composition studies, Industrial wastes, Composting and biological treatment, Contaminated sites, Medical wastes, Chemical and biochemical treatment,
Mining and mineral wastes, Agricultural wastes, Scrap tires, Research topics, Modeling, Utilization of waste materials, Case studies, Innovative technologies, Waste collection , Waste generation studies, Integrated waste management, Equipment, Sludge, Environmental impacts, Use of waste materials in construction, Geotechnical topics, Environmental equity, Construction and demolition wastes, Liners, caps, gas and leachate, Waste in Developing Regions. All other related topics.

More information is available here, and you have until 30 October to submit your abstract.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the Government had no choice but to spend the amount because the landfills were a danger to health and the environment due to their proximity to water catchments.

He said the Bukit Tagar sanitary landfill, responsible for ammonia pollution in Sungai Selangor in February, would continue to operate, adding that the landfill was the only waste disposal solution for Selangor and the Federal Territory.

Najib, after chairing the Cabinet Committee on Solid Waste Management, said phase one of the project required further discussion between the Economic Planning Unit and the company that operates the landfill. More here… 

Waster: Clearly there are big changes afoot for landfill in Malaysia, where inadequate leachate management has been a major problem.

The second annual Environment Ireland conference takes place on 4th & 5th September 2006 in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin.  Environment Ireland is Ireland’s largest conference on environmental policy and management and is organised in association with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Environment, Heritage & Local Government.

The conference brings together – at the highest level – all those individuals and organisations across the public and private sectors with an interest in the environment.  In addition to the plenary sessions, Environment Ireland features a number of focused workshops which will be of interest to policy-makers (government departments, agencies, regulators, etc.) and practitioners, operating in the environmental management field across public and private sectors.

The conference is structured into plenary and workshop sessions, which will examine issues such as -

•  environmental policy and regulation; 
•  resource/waste management; 
•  the built environment; 
•  transport and the environment; 
•  water resources – and
   climate change.

For further information or TO REGISTER for the event – Click Here

Due to popular demand! As we have received a number of emails asking for the James Jackson paper, we have now uploaded the paper to our web space, for your downloading convenience.

Click here for the leachate paper link.