Nowadays, there is an increasing awareness that today’s life style should aim at more sustainable production schemes in conjunction with limited use of renewable resources and minimal environmental impact on land, water and air (Environment in http://www.tc207.org/articles/). All processes have to be envisaged as potential
resources since their by-products provide the primary material for a subsequent process in a continuous regenerative loop (Tansey and Worsley, 1995). Life cycle assessment, though not a brand new tool any more, is still able to analyze and assess the environmental impacts associated with a product, process or service by multi- attribute product evaluations. The importance of LCA as an environmental decision support tool continues to increase rapidly. A distinction between the objective and subjective elements of LCA is bound to take place in order to clarify the structure of the method and be of great help to the decision-making. Goal definition and scoping as well as interpretation of the inventory results would benefit most from decision
Antibiotics for animal/
fish production
Manure
Leaching Run-off
Leaching
Aquatic environment Ground
water
Impact on aquatic organisms
Impact on terrestrial organisms
Ground water Waste
Manure as fertilizer in fields Sludge
Figure 3.12 Anticipated exposure pathways for veterinary antibiotics in the environment (adapted from Sarmah et al., 2006)
analytic approach and methods. In these phases, subjectivity and the overall goal of the process have a major impact. The important dimensions of the decision problem could be presented in a value tree and this could be exposed to general discussion and modification before deciding the actual content and scope of the study. Pertinent answering of the prioritization questions at an early stage of the study is anticipated to help greatly the decision-makers in terms of identifying both the real decision alter- natives and the concrete environmental problems closely linked with the product’s environmental impacts thus providing the required inventory data. Valuation referring to values is another subjective issue and is closely linked to preference data (Miettinen and Hamalainen, 1997).
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Legislation
4 Presentation and Comments on EU Legislation Related
to Food Industries – Environment Interactions 135 5 Presentation and Comments on USA and Canada
Legislation Related to Food Industries – Environment
Interactions 289
2
Presentation and Comments on EU
Legislation Related to Food Industries –
Environment Interactions
Ioannis S. Arvanitoyannis, Persefoni Tserkezou and Stefania Choreftaki
4
Introduction
The goal of European waste-related legislation is to protect public health and the envi- ronment and, so far, it has had a significant impact. However, given the lack of preci- sion of the definition of waste in the European Community Directive (European Council, 1993), each Member State makes a different interpretation of the definition of waste with regard to specific materials, resulting in trade barriers and the impact of this upon the recycling industry is not to be underestimated. Under the present European definition of waste, recoverable material is seen more as a potential pollutant than as a potential raw material (Bontoux and Leone, 1997). Thanks mainly to the legislative actions of the European Union (EU), the importance attached to environmental protec- tion and awareness is being increasingly recognized across Western European nations.
The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, one of the main pillars of the existing EU legislation on wastewater, has already been incorporated into national law in all Member States and is necessitating investment at both municipal and industrial level in Introduction . . . 135 Topics/categories covered under EU legislation . . . 138
Waste Management for the Food Industries ISBN: 9780123736543
Copyright © 2008 Elsevier Inc All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
appropriate technology, including solid/liquid separation units. The Western European solid/liquid separation market was found to have amassed revenues worth 1.63 billion Euros in 2000 and demand for new and replacement equipment is expected to maintain growth rates in the short and medium term. The impressive range of applications using solid/liquid separation equipment is forecast to overcome the problem of competitive pricing in many market sectors, producing a Western European market valued 2.13 bil- lion Euros by 2007 (Frost and Sullivan, 2001). According to Pongrácz and Pohjola (1997) waste can be classified into four classes:
1 Class 1: non-wanted things created not intended, or not avoided, with no purpose 2 Class 2: things that were given a finite purpose thus destined to become useless
after fulfilling it
3 Class 3: things with well-defined purpose, but their performance ceased being acceptable
4 Class 4: things with well-defined purpose and acceptable performance, but their users failed to use them for the intended purpose.
Although incineration is an effective way of treating municipal solid waste, the poten- tial public health effects associated with stack emissions have become a major public concern. Some of the chemicals emitted are constituents of the waste, which move through the combustion chamber and are not captured by pollution control devices.
Chemicals like polychlorinated dibenzo-p dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs) emitted into the atmosphere as air emissions are directly transmitted to humans through inhalation.
However, these chemicals can also be distributed in various media such as soil, vege- tation, water, biota, etc. Therefore, human health can be indirectly affected through different pathways, such as drinking water or groundwater, skin absorption of the chemicals present in water, consuming contaminated foodstuffs and through ingestion and skin absorption of those chemicals adsorbed to soil (Meneses et al., 2004).
Human health risk assessment requires identification of the pathways through which people can be potentially exposed to the chemicals of concern (PCDD/Fs in this case). The quantitative health risk assessment due to a PCDD/F exposure is con- sidered as a combination of five parameters:
1 intake of contaminated soil (hand-to-mouth transfer) 2 ingestion of vegetables grown in the area under evaluation 3 inhalation of re-suspended soil particles
4 inhalation of both vapor and particle air concentration 5 dermal absorption (Meneses et al., 2004).
In the policies of the EU and its Member States, biomass is expected to play a major role as a renewable energy source (EU, 1997). In the course of implementing this pol- icy, it appeared that a large proportion of the resource base for biomass consists of waste. In the EU, both clean and contaminated biomass types may be used as fuels.
However, the stricter emission limit values for waste incineration will be applied to those waste biomass fuels which are not exempted from the waste incineration
legislation. As a consequence, stricter emission limit values will be set for electricity plants which employ contaminated biomass than for electricity plants which are fired with fossil fuels, or clean biomass. In this manner, the use of non-exempted waste bio- mass for electricity production is either prevented or made more expensive. If pre- vented, the non-exempted waste biomass is likely to be incinerated in a dedicated waste incineration plant at a low electricity recovery efficiency and the balance of the electricity consumption is probably made up by firing additional coal in an electricity plant, with all associated additional emissions. If its use as a fuel in an electricity plant is not prevented, but does takes place, its conversion costs are higher than under a non- waste regime. By substituting fossil fuels, the emission of greenhouse gases will be reduced. But not only those – also SO2and dust emissions from the aggregate of power plants and waste incineration plants will be lower, since stricter emission lim- its apply for these substances if released from fossil fuels or clean biomass. The addi- tional costs therefore for substituting fossil fuels by waste should not be regarded as costs purely made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but rather as expenses to achieve other environmental objectives as well. Perhaps an economic consideration may shed some light on the evaluation. At the root of a waste management chain, the value of a waste is always negative since even its handling by the owner requires some cost. However, what is a waste for one may become a valuable material for another to an extent that this value is paid to the primary owner. For example: in some instances sawdust and wood shavings which serve no purpose at a timber factory, when no space heating or wood drying is required, are disposed of at the factory by means of incineration. In other instances they are sold to fuel briquette manufacturers (Siemons, 2002).
A large number of countries are involved in a process of transformation with regard to the management of municipal solid waste. This process is a consequence of envi- ronmental requirements that occasionally materialize in legislation, such as the European Council Directive 31/99/EC on waste release in the EU. In some cases, the remediation of old landfills can be carried out in compliance with environmental requirements; in other cases, it is necessary to proceed with the closure of the landfill and to assimilate it into its own environment. A diagnosis tool implies the Environmental Risk Index (ERI) which aims to gage the potential for the environmental impact for each observed parameter, reflecting whether or not interaction exists between the processes in the release point and the characteristics of the environment. Environmental Risk Index depends not only on probability but also on the environmental value of the parameter considered. The aim of this concept is to identify and quantify the environ- mental aspect of each parameter in the landfill environment, taking as a starting point the relationship between the landfill’s environmental and/or social and political char- acteristics and the emissions in the release point. A representative example is the land- fill contamination of surface water and groundwater. The most crucial parameters regarding cross-contamination are the following: landfill compaction, waste and organic matter types, age, cover material, aquifer characteristics, surface drainage system, rainfall, landfill lining system, control of leachate, final cover, fault, release- point location in surface runoff, release-point location in floodwater storage volume and operationality (Calvo et al., 2005).