Waste management in Poland
null
by Agnieszka Oleszkiewicz
In 2006 Tokarz-Technologie Ekologiczne – a Polish company, otherwise known as T Technology – won the EEP (European Environmental Press) Gold Award, an annual prize that recognizes the efforts of European companies to improve the environment with innovative environmental technologies.
A small, family run company, T Technology was established by Zbigniew Tokarz in 2003 following 10 years of research and development. Its technology breaks down plastic waste into a component of liquid fuels via polymerizing the waste through catalytic processing.
An overview of the process
In brief, the process takes place in the presence of a catalyst within a hermetic reactor at temperatures of 390º–420ºC. Heating the plastic waste in this environment ‘cracks’ the long polymers that make up plastic, thus generating hydrocarbon vapours which are directed to the cooling system and fraction separation equipment. The reactor therefore has two main outputs – hydrocarbon vapours and a solid residue.
 T Technology’s hermetic reactor at the Pionki plant, near Radom, Poland, treats plastic waste at temperatures of 390º–420ºC |
The cooling and separation equipment draws off hydrocarbon vapours, including a mixture of n’paraffins, iso-paraffins and olefins. Thereafter, the focus turns to cleaning the gasesous output, removing pollutants such as nitrogen and chlorine, and then both cooling and separating the liquid into its main fractions. Heavier chains are returned to the reactor for a second time for further cracking.
 |
All impurities such as metal, glass, paper and food residue remain as solid residue to be removed by an auto-cleaning system. This by-product is similar in consistency to sand and has its own calorific value.
At the end of the process, T Technology aims to produce 50%–70% of the total amounts of hydrocarbons introduced into the reactor as a clean liquid fuel. Currently the maximum output is about 400 litres of this product per hour (from about 560 kg of plastic waste). The mixture of n’paraffins, iso-paraffins and olefins referred to above can be processed to yield a heating oil similar to the heavy heating oils currently produced from crude oil.
Recent developments
Since winning the EEP award, the company has continued to develop its technology. For example, it has developed an automatic feeding system to input the waste materials into the reactor, it has refined its approach for automatic cleaning of the reactor and has added an enhanced process for monitoring and automation (covering 140 parameters). In addition, T Technology is co-operating with the refining industry to diversify final products from its depolymerization process. And it continues to research into the application of turbines for electricity production using the by-products of the process as a fuel.
The company has seven installations operational in Poland; one is being constructed in Slovakia; and projects in Spain, Italy and Sweden are being prepared. It is an exciting time for the company, not least because the treatment process can be applied to different kinds of plastic waste, such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). And since many stakeholders across Europe (and beyond) are struggling to cope with the large variety of plastic waste being produced, such a solution sounds well-suited to market demand.
However, the company is faced with an immediate challenge: namely, to expand and exploit its offering from within a country that is not renowned for advanced waste treatment solutions. T Technology’s future is therefore best explored by understanding a little more about the evolving nature of waste management in Poland.
In need of a system approach
Even though EU legislation is in force, landfilling is the dominant disposal strategy in Poland. Up to 97% of the country’s municipal solid waste (MSW) is sent to landfill without any pre-sorting. Poland does have a National Waste Management Plan (KPGO), which was adopted on 29 December 2006, but in reality its weight is limited. Actual decision-making competencies are defined imprecisely and they are divided between a province, a district and a commune i.e. between different administrative levels. There is no systematic approach, a deficiency that is apparent in the lack of comprehensive regulation governing the country’s many landfills. (NB: a commune is the smallest territorial unit concentrated around a single, basic administrative centre; several communes form a district, and several districts form a province.)
At the end of 2005, there were 764 landfills in operation for the disposal of MSW. By 16 October last year, each one should have had an associated integrated permit. The KPGO makes such a permit obligatory for all waste facilities with a reception capacity of over 10 tonnes of waste per 24 hours or with a total volume of over 25,000 tonnes (except those dedicated to inert waste). However, according to data provided earlier this year by the Polish Ministry of Environment, it appears that, out of approximately 500 facilities that should apply for a permit, only 260 submitted applications and roughly 200 obtained the licence (i.e. an integrated permit). Consequently, as of today, fewer than 30% of waste storage facilities in Poland meet European standards. Their volumes and methods of operation are unrecorded but it is known that only half of them have scales for weighing the incoming waste.
The economics of Poland’s waste system
By the end of 2007, the price for disposing of unsorted municipal waste in the facilities built mainly from EU funds was €25–30 per tonne. While this price has been raised by law by 500% – with the new rates for household waste collection coming into force at the start of this year – nothing was done to tighten the waste transport and storage system. As time passed, various irregularities have developed, linked with inappropriate waste management practices.
Basic irregularities in waste storage in Poland are caused, first of all, by a lack of clear definition of waste storage and recovery. It is likely that the translation of Council Directive 199/31/EC on the Landfill of Waste was not complete or accurate, in particular concerning the words ‘disposal’, ‘storage’ and ‘acceptance’.
In fact, in Poland, the facilities called landfills handle waste management in two different ways: they store waste informally and recover ‘inert waste’. There are no criteria for admission of waste separately to storage and recovery on a landfill. Inert waste is used to form a so-called inert interlayer in the landfill, which covers stored waste to prevent emission of dust and odours, and dispersion of fine fractions. Usually, in compliance with standard good practice, 0.1 to 0.2 metres of inert layer is placed on a 1–2 metre layer of stored waste. But in many cases in Poland this ratio is reversed, whereby operators of landfills argue with officials that their landfills contain 2 metres of interlayer on top 0.5 metres of stored waste. In this way, operators avoid paying an ‘ecological tax’ on waste that performs an interlayer function, and as a result disposal is made cheaper at the ‘gate’.
Recovery and recycling of packaging waste in Poland
Focusing on packaging waste, in general terms the economics of separate collection of plastics for private operators in Poland have not been favourable, and so such services have not evolved. But about 30 recovery organizations have emerged, carrying out the obligations imposed by the European Commission to recover 60% and to recycle 25% of the packaging introduced to the market.
Recovery organizations, according to Polish law, are joint-stock companies and their shareholders often include packaging manufacturers and importers, distribution companies, and companies that generate a lot of food packaging within their business activity, for example McDonalds, Coca Cola, Nestle, glassworks, paper factories etc.).The three biggest recovery organizations in Poland are Eko-Pak, Rekopol and PSR.
 Loose bales of plastic waste ready for treatment at the Pionki plant |
In 2004, it was estimated by Eko-Pak that Poland produced about 3 million tonnes of packaging, though the accuracy of data available on packaging waste is questionable. For example, the Ministry of Environment indicated that 11.8 million tonnes of MSW were produced in 2004, 40% of which was packaging, i.e. approximately 4 million tonnes of metal, glass, plastics and paper. The obvious discrepancy with the figure of 3 million tonnes mentioned above highlights the extent of this problem.
It is likely that this problem has a widespread impact across the whole small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, since companies are not being made to record their waste arisings. Instead they introduce amounts of packaging below the lower limit for recording; or declare an amount smaller than the actual one to avoid penalties; or they do not report to a recovery organization at all. In addition, there are problems embedded within some of the organizations to which the SMEs report.
Some of these organizations are unreliable, whereby instead of performing waste recovery or recycling they issue fake documents that confirm execution of a recycling obligation; in this way the organizations enable entrepreneurs to avoid paying a penalty to the State for failing to recycle specified materials.
In a situation such as this, it is difficult to highlight and assess what are the most popular recycling technologies. There in no register of recyclers (a list of companies participating in a given market) in Poland – only recovery organizations have data on such companies and their technologies.
 |
In the face of a lack of infrastructure for selective waste collection at the source, last year the price for the most expensive plastic, i.e. white PET, from the most modern Polish sorting plants (built using money from ISPA – a financial instrument of the European Commission) was approximately €400 per tonne. However, sorting plants can receive a subsidy from some recovery organizations, possibly amounting to €12 per tonne, if they sell this material to a recycler for €200 per tonne. This is an improvement on the less scrupulous recovery organizations that do not contribute to actual recycling activity, but it highlights that the economics of the current situation do not work.
Sorting in Poland is therefore not profitable, but the system is propped up by the circulation of false data and documents that confirm fictitious recycling. Clearly this hampers actual market development and the situation is slow to improve. The one positive about the current situation is that the competitiveness of a technology such as that promoted by T Technology in the future is likely to be governed as much by the price of oil as any other factor.
The future of T Technology
One key goal for T Technology to achieve is to secure a reliable and relatively local supply of raw materials suitable for processing – currently it is much easier to import raw materials from other European countries. There are no tools, such as government subsidies, to support recycling within Poland – the market is ‘free’ with a number of private companies collecting waste from the population in return for direct payment from those citizens. The fact that there is no public sector support means that the future development of recycling in Poland depends on private funding and investment. So the prospect of connecting two markets – collection and processing followed by the end product – adds to the challenge: T Technology gains raw materials within the waste market, while final products must be sold in the fuel components market.
Undeterred, Zbigniew Tokarz is confident that his technology has ‘what it takes’ to succeed. And he is not alone. Initially the oil industry in Poland kept track of T Technology’s efforts with some scepticism. But a series of successful tests run in co-operation with the oil industry has helped to convince the sceptics. The company’s studies on improving the final product are in full swing. And while T Technology is still looking for new fuels, it believes a time will come when the words such as economy and efficiency will have similar meanings in the fuel sector as they have now in the power industry. This will spell good news for the company’s development and for its place within an evolving Polish waste industry.
Agnieszka Oleszkiewicz is an environmental journalist for Ekoparter, Poland
e-mail: pr@ekopartner.com.pl
