Designed for dumping
Managing piles and vats of stinking waste is day to day business for some, but an urgent need to deal with the mess has produced new technologies that designers and developers are taking seriously.
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Images of steaming piles of rubbish piling up for days in Italy’s Naples over the last year may have entered the consciousness of the general public but probably hit home a little harder to the average facility manager. Imagine being the FM of a larger integrated facility for which the vision might become reality. The range, type and volume of the waste produced varies wildly in community and mixed use developments, and complaints about smells and unsightly waste storage are already common amongst users.
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But what should strike fear to the heart of the FM managing the property (and what occupiers and investors should check out in advance) is whether the facility is designed with waste in mind. Waste management is now a LEED (New Construction) requirement, but there’s way more to this than merely managing your construction waste. Health and safety is just the first worry when systems grind to a halt and poorly designed refuse areas overflow. If master-planners, architects and engineers have not allowed for an efficient waste management collection and handling system, either at building level or development wide, it will cost money. Because municipal governments are running out of landfill space (the Hong Kong EPD says it has about six years before landfills reach capacity) they will take action. Separation and recycling will become mandatory, councils will collect domestic waste less frequently, and those that haven’t already will begin charging.
A solution?
Envac markets a system that literally sucks rubbish out of buildings. The Envac Automated Refuse Collection System (ARCS) was developed in Sweden in response to a request by a hospital as to whether their central vacuum system (for dust) could be extended to also cover waste. After that successful first installation, the next one was in a new residential district. Major growth then occurred when Sweden introduced legislation in 1978 to improve the work environment of the waste collectors. Hospitals also use a version of the system in the transportation of linen to the laundry. One example of such a system is in the well-known 301 Hospital in Beijing.
Governments play a massive part in developing effective waste management systems both for their own and private sector developments. The effectiveness depends on how interested specific governments are in improving hygiene, in recycling, in reducing land-fill, in the health of their waste workers and in having an attractive and accessible city. In Singapore, Green Mark points are awarded to buildings equipped with an ARCS (and buildings with a lot of points receive monetary incentives and faster regulatory approvals). In Korea, in the area around Seoul, any development with more than 500 apartments is required by law to have an ARCS. In China, in Guangzhou, the municipal government has invested in a public network for waste collection in a nine square kilometer development at Jinshazhou. All buildings in Jinshazhou must then connect to this public network. Using a compaction system with municipal collection authorities or outsourced providers is simple if the waste is deposited into standard containers, after having compacted it.
Collection points designed using a centralised system can be better looking and smarter. People are more likely to put waste in the bin and recycle it with a centralized system. According to Stevens the total amount of waste recycled depends on the proportion of participants in a recycling scheme (participation rate) and what percentage of their waste each participant recycles (the recycling rate). With a classical waste collection system, both the participation rate and the recycling rate are around 60 percent, resulting in approximately 36 percent of the waste that can be recycled being recycled. Envac’s data for Spain indicates that with an Envac system, both rates are around 80 percent, resulting in approx 64 percent of the waste being recycled.
Piet Stevens, Executive Vice President, Asia, Envac Far East Ltd sees two main challenges for owners of mixed use developments with regards to waste management. “As people get richer, waste weight and especially volume increases, as we use more and more packaging. Also, the composition of the waste changes.” This is illustrated in the graphs.
Buildings are built for a useful life of 30 years or longer. In those 30 years, particularly in developing markets, the tenants tend to become a lot richer and therefore produce a lot more waste. The buildings do not have the infrastructure or the space to deal with these increased waste volumes. Pressures on municipal governments such as efforts to reduce landfill waste, says Stevens, will all increase space requirements in buildings and housing developments for storing waste, with all the waste problems that generates in a hot and humid climate with respect to smell and pests. “As countries become richer, these changes are inevitable.”
Stevens continues, saying that in most countries the municipal government is responsible for the collection of the household waste, whereas the collection of retail and commercial waste is not a municipal responsibility. This often means that there is a choice of many waste collection services, and each commercial operator has its own provider. This system has its own challenges. For example, according to a study by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), current systems of refuse collection are already overtaxed. Delhi for example manages to collect, dispose of or recycle only 62 percent of municipal waste. With growing affluence pushing resources further, the private sector developments will be expected to shoulder the load. As unglamourous as it may sound designing to hide, store and filter all waste produced in mixed-use developments is vital to project success. Stevens explains that for new developments, the main challenge is to take into account this growing waste volume and the pressure from municipal governments in the design of the project. The best way to do this is to have an Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) plan. There are specialist consultants who can help in this regard. The principles on which such a plan are based are 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle). A good ISWM plan can optimize space consumption and increase the living and working environment in a building or a housing development over its life while making 3R easier. This also makes for a greener building, with the resulting increases in building sales or rental value.
For existing developments, the key is to get the collaboration of the tenants. This requires a good strategy, and especially regular communication with the tenants about waste volumes generated and the effects of the strategy in reducing these volumes. Architects, designers and developers will soon discover that the look, feel and smell of a development not designed to manage waste will be unmarketable.
