Niels Jørn Hahn ~ Full interview

President of the International Solid Waste Association

1.  What are in your view the most urgent problems in the field of waste?

These answers will be my personal point of view.

The most urgent problem is the lack of treatment facilities – in developed as well as developing countries. Nobody wants to have treatment facilities in their neighbourhood. Politicians in many countries do not have the guts to make decisions to establish the necessary capacity. Therefore we see in many countries in the world that too much waste is land filled under outfall conditions, where it causes a lot of health and environmental problems.

2.  What kind of problems do these treatment facilities cause then?

Environmental problems, often due to uncontrolled land filling where you have no collection of the leaking water coming from the field; where you have no collection systems for the water or methane that is produced when the waste is deteriorated. So you see a high emission of methane to the atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gasthan CO₂.

3.  How can we solve this?

Establish treatment facilities. The debate we have now on global warming and global change is a gift to the waste management sector and the politicians. It becomes more and more a public debate. And the waste industry can make a big contribution to the reduction of CO₂. This is a big opportunity.

4.  How can the waste management industries do that?

The companies can not do that alone. But through the infrastructure of waste treatment the industry can do it. Reducing the amount of waste that is going to the land fills and especially to the uncontrolled land fills will lead to a huge reduction in the emission of methane into the atmosphere. When you use waste to produce energy, you will have CO₂ reduction and you are reducing your need for other fossil fuels.

And also when we look on recycling of specific types of waste, the recycled products have a lower emission contribution than virgin material.

5.  What materials are specifically suitable for this?

If we are looking at household waste the most obvious materials to recycle are paper, cardboard, glass and specific types of metals.

Biotechnology can also offer special tools and strategies for an improved and more efficient site monitoring and risk analysis. Biotechnology is not suitable for the remediation of heavy metal contaminated soils and sediments and for the aerobic remediation of highly-chlorinated compounds.

6.  Can you name necessary conditions for successful solutions?

Political will. In every country there have been plans for new waste facilities. But when the public debate was more based on feelings than on facts and politicians did not dare to make the decisions on establishing the facility you get situations like in Naples. Naples has a shortage of treatment facilities. This is a showcase of the lack of political will.

7.  So political will is essential to establish more treatment facilities, but on the other side people do not want these facilities in their neighbourhood. How can we deal with this?

We must make sure that the public debate is based on facts and not on feelings. And that is one of the biggest problems, always. Too many people still mention dioxin when they speak about waste-to-energy. But dioxin is not anymore a problem and any expert will confirm that. However, when it comes up indebate and the media show pictures of Soweto and so on, that gives rise to an emotional discussion that is impossible to control by anybody. So the only way is to involve NGO’s in the debate about establishing the national waste strategy and the development of local and regional waste treatment plants.

8.  Can biotechnology play a role in any of these solutions?

It can play a role, but it is not the solution. Biotechnology is not able to deal with the treatment of every category of waste. There are specific categories where biotechnology is a suitable solution and maybe even the preferred one. For instance for bio waste from agriculture and also for specific types of bio waste from the industrial sector, from restaurants, catering and food companies. Biotechnology can play a very logical role. But if we are looking at municipal waste as one category, it can not solve that problem.

9.  Can GMO play a role compared to other biotechnological techniques?

There are enzymes that are genetically modified to have the right characteristics to deal with that waste. And it is very natural to use them. They have to be used to be an economic efficient process. You see that in the bio-ethanol process where a lot of these additives are added to further the process.

10.  Do you think we should use genetically modified bacteria for the production of bio fuels?

Yes, that is an option and has its advantages. For instance to have a more economical process. With quicker processing and higher energy production.

11.  Do you think that processes that use these technologies should be placed higher on the agenda?

At the moment it is in the right place on the agenda. Universities, scientists and the pharmaceutical industries already use a lot of resources on biotechnology. There might be a risk in placing it higher on the agenda, namely that too many people, both politicians and managers, will wait for techniques that still have to be developed and use that as an excuses for not doing anything right now.

We can compare this with recycling. When we talk about recycling, too many people say that recycling will solve all problems. But first we have to establish efficient, basic treatment systems. Another example is that in Italy people say that they have a promising development in biological treatment techniques. So they wait until that is further developed and finished and then they can do it that way. And in the mean time they do nothing. That is in my opinion a big mistake.

12.  What are the differences between developing and developed countries in your view?

Both in developed and developing countries we see a lack of treatment facilities. The big difference is of course that in developing countries there are a lot of social and health problems caused by not having an efficient collection system and where we have people that exist by sorting waste on the open land fills.

The social problems will be less when you try to involve this unofficial sector in your official treatments; when they can play a role in these treatment facilities.

13.  What will the field of waste look like in 20 years time?

I hope we will look at waste as a resource and not as a problem. That we utilize waste as any other resource that could be used for generating both materials used in industry and to produce energy.

In order to achieve this, we need more facilities. And the public should look at waste as a resource. Not just something they have to get rid of in the easiest way. And that is a task of the International Soil Waste Association. On a local level we promote sustainable solutions by having information materials, seminars and training courses. In the Netherlands we do it mostly through national organisations. The NVRD is a national member in ISWA.

14.  Do you have a statement, dilemma or quote for the website?

Either accept that your energy production is also based on waste or you will have to consider the waste problems; both when buying your products, but also by accepting much higher costs of waste treatment.