Incineration of waste – incineration of sludge

Incineration of waste is not the primary goal of waste handling. In principle, we should minimise the waste, enable its re-use, change the waste in to the fuel. European Union (EU) would like to stop with waste disposal by 2020 and to reach this goal the incineration of waste might play an important role. Slovenia has adopted, already in 2004, the Decree on the performance of mandatory national public utility service in the field of urban waste incineration (OJ RS, Nr. 123/04 and 106/05), deciding that incineration of waste is not only public service, but also mandatory public service. According to the public available information, the only performer of this public service is Toplarna Celje, which burns appx. 11,5% communal waste in Slovenia.

According to mentioned decree also the sludge, which is a waste product of wastewater treatment plants, shall be burned. This is true only for the sludge, which cannot be used in agriculture. Nevertheless, operators of wastewater treatment plants, which export sludge, are remain free to export it and it does not has to be incinerated in Slovenia. According to that decree, the primary aim is that Slovenia itself incinerates waste, meaning that Slovenia shall own the incineration or more incinerations; and only in case municipal incinerations are ready to incinerate waste they can do it with allowance issued by the government. Now, this shall be done by way of concession, which can be awarded directly, without any public tender. This is strange, legally inconsistent.  In general, concession is to be awarded to private companies, not to public entities. In addition, concessions are awarded on transparent, competitive basis, like the use of tenders. None of this is the case of mentioned decree.

But, this is not the primary subject of this blog. What I would like to write about is to give an overlook on legislation regarding incineration of waste, especially the sludge from wastewater treatment plants. The sludge from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) is not an optimal fuel and usually has to be mixed and prepared as a fuel together with other kind of waste and fertilised. This is not an easy or uncostly procedure and therefore, among other reasons, incineration is not cheap. It is far from being cheap. However, since, usually the sludge cannot be used in agricultural purposes, because it consists of too many dangerous substances and ingredients, its incineration remains as the only feasible solution. In order to use the sludge for incineration purposes, it is usually mixed and prepared as a fuel together with other kind of waste. This is regulated under EU and also under Slovene law.

Decree on the recycling of non-hazardous waste into solid fuel and on its use (OJ RS, št. 96/14) defines what kind of waste can be used for fuel, what is the procedure to obtain the environmental permits, etc. What is important and needs to be stressed, that although the sludge is mixed with other waste, such as biomass, this does not mean that fuel from waste becomes a fuel and that is not treated as a waste. It is. This is important, since one can understand, at the first look, that once the sludge is transformed to fuel, it loses its character of being waste. As written, this is not the case. Consequently, the sludge transformed to fuel can still not be incinerated as a fuel in all kind of stoves, but only in incineration plants. Also, the environmental permit which is needed by operator of such a incineration plant, needs to be obtained according to waste legislation and not according to fuel legislation; meaning that such an environmental permit has to fulfil more strict conditions. Among the strict conditions are also emission standards and values, which are set in different level (stricter) than in case of fuel. In other words, transforming the sludge into the fuel has no legal consequences; transformed sludge, although named fuel, is still treated as a waste.

Therefore transforming the sludge into the fuel usually serves only for the purposes of better energetic value. If the sludge is only fertilised to the level that it can be easily incinerated at the one hand, and on the other hand, if it is mixed with other kind of waste to become fuel, has no legal consequences in a sense that it would be treated any differently from the waste.

Having wrote this, I think that it is logic and in line with EU rules, but again, this is not the only think I would like to point out. Namely, it is not so easy to come to this conclusion by simply reading the EU or Slovene legislation. Frankly speaking, it took me quite some time to get through the rules, which are written in several decrees:

–        Decree on waste incineration

–        Decree on waste

–        Decree on emission limit values discharged into the atmosphere from large combustion plants

–        Decree on the recycling of non-hazardous waste into solid fuel and on its use

–        Decree on the performance of mandatory national public utility service in the field of urban waste incineration

–        Decree on the emission of substances into the atmosphere from waste incineration and co-incineration plants

It is about 100 pages of very exact rules, full of inter relates references, very long articles, not friendly to readers and especially not very systematic. From doctrinal and methodological point of views, the result as written above (namely, that that fuel of waste is still to be consider as waste, of course in case the sludge) can be written in more direct, undisputable, intelligible way. Nevertheless, although I express this critic, I have to admit, this is not an easy topic and that it would not be proper to regulate every single waste in its own regulation or decree. It is right that incineration of waste is regulated at one place, but such regulation could also include all related questions, also incineration of fuel, that is transformed of different kind of waste.

Categorised in: Blog

This post was written by Rajko Knez