Assessing the composition of municipal solid waste in Wales

S.J. Burnley, J.C. Ellis, R. Flowerdew, A.J. Poll and H. Prosser

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2007, vol. 49, issue 3, 264-283

Abstract: In many regions and countries, national and international targets have been set for municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling, recovery and diversion from landfill. To develop and implement effective strategies to meet these targets requires reliable information on the composition of all parts of the MSW stream. Previous studies on the composition of MSW in the United Kingdom have covered only some components of the waste stream or very localised geographical areas. This research was designed to obtain and analyse representative samples of all the components of the MSW stream across Wales. Samples were taken of household-colleted waste, civic amenity site waste, commercial waste and litter in nine local authority areas across the country and the waste samples were sorted into categories by material type. A questionnaire survey was also undertaken among the households sampled. The results from the research estimate that 36% of MSW in Wales consists of recyclable material and a further 28% is compostable. Sixty-two percent of this MSW is classed as biodegradable and packaging material accounts for 17% of the total. Electrical and electronic goods account for 2% and 0.8% of the MSW consists of potentially hazardous material.

Keywords: Municipal solid waste; Composition; Wales (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344906000620
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:49:y:2007:i:3:p:264-283

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2006.03.015

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().