Xu Haiyun: Domestic waste incineration with industrial solid waste is the trend
For many incineration enterprises, now facing the construction gradually to the top, the disposal of gradually multiple background, a breakthrough way is "collaborative incineration". Since the beginning of this year, domestic waste incineration plants with industrial waste incineration have also attracted more attention from the industry. Zhejiang, Shanghai, Guangdong and other places have successively issued policy documents on the coordination of general industrial solid waste and domestic waste disposal. The trend of collaborative incineration of domestic waste and general industrial solid waste is becoming more and more obvious, and the market is gradually standardized. This article takes a look at Xu Haiyun, chief engineer of the China Urban Construction Research Institute, on the topic.
The domestic waste disposal market is far from saturated. The industrial waste disposal market still has a lot of room
Xu Haiyun introduced that whether in Taiwan, China, or developed countries in Europe, general industrial waste is mainly disposed of in coordination with domestic waste. Except for hazardous waste, you can't build a separate incinerator for general industrial waste. For example, in Germany, even a part of hazardous waste, including medical waste, is incinerated in coordination with domestic waste as much as possible. Such collaborative incineration can create the best benefits compared to individual construction.
It is reported that in 2020, the amount of waste incineration in Europe was about 100 million tons, of which about 60 million tons were domestic waste, and the remaining 40% were basically industrial and commercial waste. According to the EU development plan, by 2035, in addition to recyclable waste, Europe also plans to achieve zero landfill for general waste, while industrial waste and domestic waste strive to account for half of the total waste incineration. In fact, some European countries, such as Poland, are still landfilled. In other words, the amount of waste incineration in Europe, including industrial waste, will continue to increase in the future.
Europe as a developed area in the world, the amount of industrial waste incineration accounted for 40% of the total amount of waste incineration. As a developing country, our country is also a big industrial manufacturer. If compared with the proportion of Europe, the amount of waste needed to be eaten by waste incineration plants is not saturated, and the amount of industrial waste that can be treated still has a lot of room for growth.
The institutional barriers are gradually loosening and the coordinated disposal of industrial waste is the general trend
According to the waste incineration data reported by Zhejiang and Hebei provinces to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Reform Commission in 2021, there is a large gap between the two, and the gap between the two is actually mainly the amount of industrial waste incinerated jointly. This difference is mainly caused by the fact that different garbage is managed by different departments in our country. For example, domestic garbage is generally managed by the housing and construction departments, industrial solid waste is managed by relevant industrial departments, and agricultural solid waste is managed by agricultural departments. Although the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for the overall management, it lacks overall planning for the specific management.
The core principle of the ecological environment is "who pollases, who controls", that is, the waste generated by industrial enterprises needs to be dealt with by industrial enterprises themselves. But the industrial enterprise of general management has no special treatment plant, do not have a way to deal with alone. At the same time, due to the complex composition of industrial solid waste, some may be classified as hazardous waste, so according to the relevant environmental protection policy, industrial waste cannot be processed in the domestic waste incineration plant. General industrial waste was also defined as unacceptable waste in earlier franchise agreements for some domestic waste disposal projects. In Xu Haiyun's memory, a waste incineration power generation company in Zhejiang was once sued by some environmental organizations to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment for accepting industrial waste incineration.
In Xu Haiyun's view, the fact that industrial waste cannot be processed in domestic waste incineration plants is logically problematic. For example, the shoes we wear belong to the household waste, but the scraps made of shoes belong to the industrial waste. The same materials and ingredients, because of the different production processes, are divided into different categories of waste. This defies logic as well as common sense. In addition, there is no special industrial waste incineration plant, even if the shoe scraps are classified into industrial waste, where do enterprises burn them? For industrial enterprises, industrial waste has no suitable place to go, nor can it be piled up for a long time, which becomes a dilemma.
Xu Haiyun believes that industrial solid waste cannot enter the domestic waste treatment plant for collaborative treatment, which is the cause and result of the segmentation management in our country. Therefore, in his view, the collaborative incineration of industrial waste must promote the coordination between departments from the national level. From the point of view of efficiency, it is not only necessary to coordinate the incineration of different types of waste, but also the waste of different industries and different regions.
A more scientific and reasonable price mechanism is needed to continue to improve the market
With the continuous development of industry and the continuous improvement of environmental protection policies, in recent years, the national policy here has gradually begun to loosen, and some places have made breakthroughs in policy and practice. For example, this year, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Guangdong and other places have introduced policies on the coordinated disposal of domestic waste and general industrial solid waste. They not only explicitly encourage domestic waste to cooperate with industrial waste, but also publish lists and negative lists for the coordinated incineration of general industrial solid waste.
Xu Haiyun introduced that the core and the most important thing to pay attention to is the charging system -- the policy encourages collaboration. The list makes clear what can be coordinated, and the charging system solves where to cooperate.
At present, domestic waste disposal is mainly paid by local government finance, and industrial waste disposal is paid by industrial enterprises. In Xu Haiyun's view, although industrial enterprises also pay a certain amount, the cost paid by industrial enterprises does not reach the price that the market should pay because of the financial payment of domestic waste itself. From this point of view, in fact, the industrial waste into the domestic waste treatment plant, in fact, is to take advantage of all taxpayer-supported government payment cheap.
Because, Xu Haiyun believes that, as mentioned above, only a scientific and reasonable charging system can make the domestic waste treatment plant more motivated to accept general industrial solid waste, and can also better improve the operational efficiency of waste treatment facilities. The key to the charging system is that there needs to be some top-level design, such as: for general industrial waste, how much money should be charged for what quality of waste, how to check and monitor, and so on. Only these clear, with an open, transparent and reasonable price mechanism, industrial enterprises and incineration enterprises can be relatively clear two-way choice. Especially if industrial enterprises feel that the price is high, they can also easily find a treatment plant that meets their needs.
At present, the country does not have a unified policy here, mainly by the local regulations, and the local is also more to the enterprise pricing power. For example, in 2020, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Ecology and Environment revealed in response to the Guangdong Municipal Committee members' Proposal on uniform Charges for Industrial Waste and Solving the Problem of stealing Industrial Waste. According to the spirit of the Guangdong Provincial Pricing Catalogue (2018 edition), industrial waste disposal fees are not within the scope of government pricing and market price regulation management is implemented. Guangzhou will further standardize the business behavior of enterprises, promote the sound development of the industry, and gradually solve the problem of industrial waste collection, transportation and disposal by correctly guiding enterprises to carry out source reduction, actively building a cooperation platform for resource utilization and continuously strengthening the combination of joint supervision of departments.
It can be seen that Guangdong's policy actually makes it clear that the collaborative disposal of industrial waste belongs to the category of market price regulation management, which requires incinerators and industrial enterprises to negotiate their own prices. Does this seem unfair to industrial enterprises that have waste production before and environmental protection supervision after? Does the country need to issue a unified document on industrial waste charges? These are all issues that may need to be discussed together.
Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KvxyllKrNaItg0r6pyhNBg