In the last two years, a new technology that produces energy from waste has become popular in European and Asian countries, such as Korea and Japan.

Korea’s Incheon city is currently running a facility that produces fuel from residential wastes. It gets rid of combustible wastes first, and makes Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) by compressing the rest of the waste.

This facility produces about 200 tons of RDF out of 150 tons of residential waste. RDF is known as efficient as anthracite in terms of energy efficiency. RDF is mostly used at a thermoelectric power plant or a paper-mill. Incheon city is planning to produce 1200 more tons of RDF this year.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s Thisted city gets its heating energy by burning abandoned straw and animal wastes. When straw and animal wastes are being burnt, they emit heat with little carbon dioxide, which makes them eco-friendly. In addition, Thisted city is getting about 20 percent of the electricity it needs from residential or industrial wastes.

There is a reason why many nations are becoming interested in energy made with waste. Since most waste is buried in the ground, many major cities worldwide are having trouble with securing places to bury those wastes. For nations with limited land space, like Korea, this problem is more serious. According to Korea’s Ministry of Environment, 83.6 percent of waste produced in Korea is recycled, but the rest of it is just buried in the ground every year. Therefore, several major cities in Korea, such as Incheon, Busan, Kwangju and Deagu either already built or seek to build a special facility to produce RDF.

European countries started producing energy by recycling waste earlier than Asian countries. Some of European countries not only produce RDF but also bio-gas, from food and sewage wastes.

Public transportation like subway or buses in Sweden’s Hammarby sjostad city are running by 100 percent recycled energy. Hammarby sjostad is known as “the city with zero carbon emission.” It is easy to spot people putting bio-gas in their vehicles at every gas stations in Hammarby sjostad city. According to Eurostat, only one percent of waste was buried in the ground in Sweden last year, thanks to Sweden’s effort to recycle waste.

Meanwhile, in Germany, there were 75 bio-gas plants that produce energy from food wastes and animal drops in the 1980s. However, now you can see about 2,000 bio-gas plants in Germany.

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Guildford, England — The first dispenser in Europe of drinks using new technology is unveiled at the University of Surrey June 26 by its inventor American entrepreneur Mitchell Joseph.

Professor Roland Clift, of the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at the University of Surrey, has been working with the Joseph Company of California in developing a way to deliver cooled drinks without refrigerated storage: the Chillcan technology. To chill the drink to about 15 degree(s) C below ambient temperature, the consumer just has to push a button on the base of the can. This releases pressurized carbon dioxide which is adsorbed onto activated carbon contained in an inner can. The release absorbs heat (the “heat of desorption”) which cools the drink, contained in the space between the inner and outer cans. The liquid is then ready to be poured or drunk from the top of the can in the usual way.

The Chillcan is much more climate-friendly than drinks stored in refrigerators. It avoids the power consumption and also leaks of refrigerant which represent contributions to greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. The carbon dioxide is recovered from waste gases which would have gone into the atmosphere anyway. The activated carbon comes from biological waste – coconut shells, at present.

Roland Clift, Emeritus Professor at the University of Surrey and Executive Director of the International Society of Industrial Ecology, said: “Helping the development of the Chillcan has been a unique opportunity to apply the kind of systems thinking we have developed in the Centre for Environmental Strategy to a potentially disruptive high-volume consumer product.

“We have been able to help Mitchell Joseph by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to ensure that the whole supply chain is environmentally sound. LCA has also shown where best to launch the can: to replace drinks dispensers which may be badly maintained, leaking energy and refrigerant.”

“It also shows the importance of recovering and re-using the chiller units, which is the next important stage in developing the Chillcan system.”

The Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey is celebrating its 20th anniversary and the new drinks dispenser was launched at a special event to mark the occasion.

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Recently, India removed itself from the European Union’s carbon code when asking airlines to not comply with the EU’s carbon scheme when travelling along China. The European Union had directed Indian carriers to submit emission details for their aircraft by March 31 2012.

India’s civil aviation minister said that no Indian carrier is submitting them in view of the position of government. There has been an upward resentment by the world’s top three carbon emitters — China, United States and India — saying that the EU is exceeding its jurisdiction.

Ironically, last October in America, the House of Representatives passed a resolution prohibiting US airlines from participating in the EU’s ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) declaring EU actions directly infringing on the sovereignty of the United States.

According to Matthew Baldwin from the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport, part of the European Commission in Singapore said that from 1990-2006, aviation carbon dioxide emissions doubled while all transport emissions grew only 25 percent.

The real reason for the animosity and political wrangling between the EU and other countries like US, China, Russia and India is the structure of ETS, because under the law, airlines departing from and arriving to Europe are obliged to pay for their entire emission to the EU authorities, and not just on the basis of the quantity of carbon they emit inside the EU.

This year opened a new chapter for the European Union on carbon regulation. The Union began charging all airlines flying in and out of Europe for their carbon emissions.

As a part of new environmental policy, EU adopted a new scheme to regulate green house gases, called EU ETS. Under this scheme, all airlines flying to, from or within Europe will be liable for their CO2 emissions. They will receive trade-able carbon allowances, covering a certain part of CO2 emissions.

The EU believes that the ‘Cap and Trade’ scheme is a fair way to limit carbon emissions by the aviation sector, which represents almost 3 percent of global carbon emissions.

The system involves a regulating body that follows laws designed to curb CO2 emission of factories and airlines. The government set out a cap on pollution through a regulating body in a bid to limit carbon emission, by factories, and other units that emit carbon, including airlines.

The Government then issues credits which allow companies to pollute a certain amount, as long as the aggregated pollution equals less than the cap set. There are alternatives available to limit carbon emissions and they are very diverse in nature. They are known as the Carbon Tax and Carbon Trading scheme or the Carbon Credit Scheme.

Under the Carbon tax scheme, emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will be taxed as per the law; under the Carbon Trading or Credit Scheme a quantitative limit on the emission will be set by the regulating body, and emitters have to buy credits if they cross the cap or limit set by authorities,

But under the current circumstances, countries are reluctant to comply with ETS and it looks unlikely that these countries will find a reasonable alternative soon. In fact the problem is much greater and not just confined to the aviation sector’s carbon emission, because countries who oppose the scheme say that it directly affects their sovereignty negatively.

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Egyptians must prepare themselves for the “black cloud,” a thick layer of smog that is produced from burning straw, every year after the rice harvest. It spreads across the Nile valley and Cairo and lasts for many weeks. The capital already has toxic air, and environmentalists fault burning waste from the harvest for making the air even worse.

Farmers generate 30 million tons of waste every year, and what they burn contributes to 42 percent of the pollution in the air during the autumn season. Experts challenge the farmers’ definition of waste, however, and state that the rice straw has potential for other uses. Egypt’s economy took a hit after the uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, and the country is faced with the challenge of stimulating their failing economy by developing lucrative technologies that are able to convert the waste into fertilizer, pulp for paper, and other useful things, instead of being burned.

“Developed countries don’t even have that term in their dictionary. There is no such thing as waste, anything they produce they use,” said Galal Nawwar, the head of the chemical industries research division of Egypt’s National Research Center. Nawwar is among the environmentalists and Egyptian scientists who contend that farmers are wasting a valuable commodity by burning their rice straw.

They say the rice straw could produce up to 300 Egyptian pounds per ton. However, many farms have not changed their cultivation techniques in decades, or sometimes even in centuries, so they continue to burn about four million tons worth of rice straw every autumn, which emits 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

The impact is the worst in one of the world’s most polluted cities, Cairo, which contains a population of 17 million. Because the city is surrounded by high ground on either side, pollutants become ensnared in a layer that hovers 25 meters off the ground. Farmers are not conscious of the straw’s value. “Burning the rice straw is not good for us either, but I have to burn it anyway, there is no other solution,” said Mohamed Sabah, an Egyptian farmer.

Though the Environmental Ministry has attempted to contain pollution over the past ten years by buying rice straw for 45 pounds a ton from some farms, many farmers still continue to set their waste ablaze. Amr Helal, a board member of the Egyptian Chamber of Industry and Engineering, is trying to create an industry to turn rice straw into useful things.

This project, which is a joint effort made by the National Research Center, the Henri Poincare University, and the German institute of Polymer Technology, has completed its pilot phase. In regards to his firm studying options to create this new industry, Helal stated, “The difficult part is not the money, as we will find funding, but the technology and the know-how.”

He remains confident that it can be done, despite the turmoil in Egypt from Mubarak’s overthrowing. He said, “The most profitable investment is to invest in science.”

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