Festival waste will be sorted to some degree at the event site and then transported to a transfer station or materials recovery facility. This is where the various types of waste are segregated to go on their way to the next treatment step. This could be:
- Directly to a recycling processing facility.
- To a materials recovery facility for fine tuned separation (if sent to a transfer station only directly from the festival).
- To a materials consolidator and then transported to a recycling processing facility in Australia or offshore.
- Directly to landfill.
- Directly to incineration/pyrolysis for waste to energy.
- Biodegradable waste to composting, worm farms or anaerobic digestion (biogas).
Below are more details on some of these processes:
RECYCLABLE WASTE
Recyclable materials such as timber, glass, plastics, paper and metals can all be recycled. Most countries see great value in recyclable materials as they provide a raw ingredient for onward processing into new materials. Paper, cardboard boxes, and shrink wrap from deliveries, beverage bottles, cans and cups, timber offcuts, scrap metal – these are likely to be produced in significant volumes at music festivals.
The way that waste is treated in each city will be dependent on many factors and will range from highly technical automated facilities through to hands-on separation along conveyor belts.
Check with the recycling contractor what can be sent for recycling and how they need it separated while on-site for optimum processing.
Once known what the recycling service can take, recycling procedures on-site can be adjusted accordingly.
Material Recovery Facility
In many municipalities an automated or semi-automated facility exists to process recycling. All the rubbish is sent in one end and each type of recyclable material is sent shooting off in a different direction, contaminants pulled out each step along the way. Some facilities are semi-automated with hands-on ‘picking’ along conveyor belts by staff.
Knowing how the festival waste will be treated at the MRF is important to understand the way to manage it at the event to optimise effectiveness at the MRF. Each MRF will have different specifications on the type of materials they will accept and in what condition for optimal processing.
The end result of an automated or semi-automated MRF is separate types of recycling – glass, metal, paper, plastic, etc – which are then sent onwards for recycling processing.
Mechanical Biological Treatment
Where it is impossible to separate out biodegradable waste from other general or recyclable waste, mechanical biological treatment is an option. This is where the non-biodegradable materials are sorted and separated from the biodegradable materials. Non-biodegradable materials are recycled or sent for waste to energy and the biodegradable materials are then sent on for composting or anaerobic digestion.
BIODEGRADABLE WASTE
Sending biodegradable waste to landfill or for incineration should be prevented. If sent to landfill it will rot down and create methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Incineration, (waste to energy) although counted as zero emissions, actually emits CO2 at a rate similar to a coal fired power station. The optimum end for biodegradable waste is to be composted and used to replace chemical fertilizer, or to be placed into anaerobic digestion to produce bio-gas.
Composting
Collecting compostable waste separately and sending it to the closest processing facility, whether an in-vessel composting site, windrow setup, worm farm or even composting on the land your event is held, is an important step to reducing the landfill footprint and consequential production of methane emissions.
Anaerobic Digestion
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is composting biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. The result is bio-gas (a mixture of methane & CO2) used to generate electricity and heat, and digestate the solids/liquids left at the end of the decomposition process.
GENERAL WASTE
After the recyclable material is taken out, what is left is generally sent to landfill or incinerated. Maximising recyclable materials and biodegradable materials in the waste at the festival is important so that the residual general rubbish is significantly reduced.
Landfill
Landfill, as it suggests, is direct burial of waste. Buried organic waste when it ‘rots’ creates methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas between 25 and 75 more so than CO2. Therefore you also don’t want to send your organic waste to landfill. Some landfill sites do ‘harvest’ methane, however there is controversy over the effectiveness of this method. Rubbish which is toxic should also not be sent to landfill as there is a high potential of the toxic substances leaching into ground water and eventually making their way to waterways.
Incineration/Gasification
Waste to Energy plants convert the heat from burning to electricity. The end process of the incineration or gasification is a gas which is then combusted, creating CO2 emissions. Prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere as a greenhouse emissions by not sending waste to be incinerate, but rather through sending it back into the system as a valuable resource: compost your biodegradable waste, don’t turn it to energy; recycle your recyclable waste, don’t turn it to energy. Leave renewable energy supply to solar, wind and other new truly zero emissions sources.