1.2        Short History

Milestones

Resources and supplies being widely available, the Mayan Indians of Central America did not take much care about discarding all their waste. They had dumps, which occasionally exploded and burnt as the result of the accumulated methane. In Europe, the first municipal landfill was established by the Greeks in Athens, 500 BC. The only restriction was that waste should be dumped at least a mile away from the city.

 

 

 

 

Land-filling was, however, not so common. Historical evidence shows that people of the past extensively made use of recycling. In early times everything that could be mended was repaired or reused, while the rest was either fed to livestock or used as compost. If something was of no use anymore then it was burnt.

Waste began to be a true problem with the onset of urbanization. The growing population numbers and their settling in big cities increased the volume of waste. By 1400, for example, the garbage pile was so high outside the gates of Paris that it was a potential problem when defending the city.

Although the Roman Empire maintained a garbage collection service, there was no organized waste collection until the late 19^th century, which led to sanitation problems. Unmanaged and untreated waste, which was often improperly discarded – it was not uncommon that even human waste was simply thrown out of the window – stimulated various diseases (plague, cholera, typhoid fever etc.). The lack of waste management obviously resulted in a generally low level of public health and hygiene. No wonder that as early as 1842 a report made a connection between diseases and the state of the environment, hence marking the commencement of the age of sanitation.

By the end of the 19^th century, industrialization and the launch of large-scale manufacturing made it clear that the amount of waste should somehow be managed. For this reason more and more incineration plants were put into operation. The first prototype plant called “the Destructor” was established in Nottingham, Britain, 1874. It was fed by a mixture of various wastes and used for steam production in order to generate electricity. The US history of waste-to-energy started some years later in 1898, when an incineration plant in Governor’s Island, New York was set up. Before the appearance of the first incinerators much of the burning was accidental, being the result of natural methane generation.

As the number of incineration plants grew, so did opposition, due to the significant amount of ash, dust and charred paper discharged. Despite public resistance, by the year 1935 the US, for example, burned 40% of her waste at 22 incinerators. However steady rejection and the change of economic situation finally led to the fallback of waste incineration, which saw its lowest point in 1945. By no means was this a result of the propaganda which was advertised throughout the 1940s: “waste helps the enemy, conserve material”.

Though generating an incredibly huge volume of waste, the post-war period saw the increase of public awareness. Subsequently there was a renewed and fierce opposition against incineration in the 1960s. The change in attitude is also well represented by the introduction of the Clean Air Act of 1956 in England. The Act reduced the number of uncontrolled open fires in households, thus changing the composition of waste for disposal.

At the same time when pollution control grew to be an increasing concern for Europe, the U.S. Navy, Wheelabrator, and Ogden acquired European mass burn technologies, which dominated the U.S. industry until the late 1980’s. Although there was also opposition from Americans, at the end of 1963 the scarcity of landfills resulted in a shift to mass burning, streaming 35 % of the waste to incinerators. Shortly after that the US government introduced the Clean Air Act of 1967. With its enactment, opposition was no longer a nuisance but a real concern over environment. As a result 250 plants were closed due to non-compliance between 1965 and 1980. During this period the U.S. gained much experience with researching waste incineration systems, pyrolysis and the production of waste derived fuels. Fuels derived from refuse, resulting from this experimentation, were used in conventional coal fired boilers. However, due to material handling problems, these waste treatment operations also had to be closed down by 1980.

In 1981 the US introduced the Public Utility Regulation and Policy Act that urged public and private utilities to purchase power from waste-to-energy plants in order to promote the use of solid waste as a fuel in generating electricity. It set a trend to propagate waste-to-energy technologies, which is now gaining worldwide acceptance in scientific circles.