Current state of municipal waste management in Poland has been established during the last 50 years. Unfortunately, except the last 10 years this period in the Central and Eastern Europe was characterized by gross negligence in all branches of economy, including also carelessness in the sphere of waste management, the results of which have been intensifying and will be perceived for many years. The changes which in Western Europe occurred after the Second World War stimulated progressive technological development and simultaneous cultural development. In Poland the systemic transformations after 1989 happened rapidly, which led to a tremendous increase in consumption and in turn raised the amount of generated municipal wastes. In near future Polish legal system will have to adjust to the regulations in force in the European Union. In the area of municipal economy one of the most important regulations is the Directive of the Council of Europe No. 99/31/WE dated 26 April 1999 on waste deposition. The directive requires reduction of the contents of biodegradable substances deposited on municipal landfill sites. According to article 18 par. 1 of the directive, municipal wastes, which undergo biodegradation and are brought to the landfills after 1 May 2009 must be reduced ...
The amount of municipal wastes is growing every year and the negative social and environmental impacts became more severe. While integrating with the EU Poland was obliged to reach a 25% recycling level by 2007 and at least 55% level until 2014. Currently 25.6% wastes are recycled, which mainly results from segregation of processing wastes, withdrawing from use multi-use packaging and packaging originating directly from large retail outlets. Currently the recycling level of municipal wastes in Poland is 5.1%. About 1.5% is segregated from the mass of gathered mixed wastes. Poland will have to increase these levels in order to meet the EU requirements. The solutions adopted in the National Plan of Waste Management do not meet either the expectations of the society or local governments. Therefore, new methods of waste recycling should be sought. In the Scandinavian countries one of such methods is Communal Point of Selective Waste Accumulation, commonly known as “Recycling Centre”. The paper presents the methodology of selecting the localization for the “recycling centre” using GIS-based multicriteria analy-sis. The places were chosen on the basis of elaborated localization criteria indi-cating the excluded areas and the terrains predestined for the localization of a recycling centre. ...
The municipal waste is a waste type that includes predominantly household waste (domestic waste) with sometimes the addition of commercial wastes collected by a municipality within a given area. EU waste management principles were defined in the Waste Framework Directive 75/442/EEC. A transfer station is a building or processing site for the temporary deposi-tion of waste. Transfer stations are often used as places where local waste collection vehicles will deposit their waste cargo prior to loading it into larger vehicles. The primary reason for using transfer station is to reduce the cost of transporting waste to disposal facilities. There are many countries in Europe using this solution in waste management system, for example: Germany, Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. Waste transfer stations play there an important role in a community's total waste management system, serving as the link between a community's solid waste collection program and a final waste disposal facility. In Poland only several waste transfer stations exist, but none of them fulfils the role like this station located in EU or United States of America. This article includes characteristics and role of solid waste transfer stations (located mainly at rural area) in waste management systems.
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Self-government organization started their chase after funds for infrastructural investments already several years ago. Each year a growing number of selfgovernments use the EU money accessible from various programmes and preaccession funds. However, their importance has grown since 2003 owing to radically increased amount of funding allocated for investments carried out by selfgovernments from means of coherence funds and equalization funds targeting particularly rural areas. The highest increase, exceeding 500 per cent was registered in rural minicipalities. More importantly not only the amount of obtained means increased but primarily the number of self-governments using the subsidies. The most serious hazard is connected with a group of municipalities which do not get any subsidies. It is due to problems they have with providing their own financial input, necessary for project application. No subsidies can be obtained if municipalities do not declare their own contribution. This leads to the outcomes contrary to the assumptions of the EU cohesion policy. Its main objective is equalizing development of all regions and not strengthening or increasing the differences. The analysis was conducted to seek correlations between the rate of development of infrastructure in the rural areas and selected budget ratios characterizing financial conditions of municipalities. ...
The Białka stream is a tributary to the Biała river with a basin area of 31.4 km2. In its upper course the catchment is situated on the south-eastern slopes of the Beskid Śląski Mountains. The research was conducted was to compute the area of the Białka river upper catchment limited by a planned dam. The area computations were conducted automatically by GPS device (GARMIN GPS map 76S) from the recorded trace which proceeded along the catchment boundaries. The catchemnt boundaries were marked by the watershed line passing through the highest peaks in this region: Szyndzielnia (1023 m a.s.l.). Klimczok (1117.0 m a.s.l) and Magura (1115.0 m a.sl) and the site of the planned retention reservoir. The conducted measurements comprised the surface leveling of the catchment fragment. The measurement was made using GPS technology for determining location points, whereas the altitudes of points were determined by GPSmap 76S built-in altimeter. The digital barometrical altimeter was calibrated each time prior to measurements to known points of the base line. The points were recorded automatically with time interval of every 10 seconds, whereas the characteristic points were recoded using MARK functions and a description was added. The data was elaborated initially using Trip ...
Water surrounds us, it is the essential component of all living organisms and all the life on earth is inevitably connected with it. From times immemorial people used to settle close to water reservoirs (rivers, streams or lakes) aiming to have water resources and natural protection against attacks or wars, as well as abundance of food (fish). Only later paths joining subsequent villages changed into roads, small settlements became towns, which later turned into large city agglomerations which we know today. On the scale of Poland there are only several cities which are not situated close to rivers. These are: Katowice, Kielce, Koszalin, Leszno, Łódź, Radom, Siedlce and Wałbrzych. As far as their history is concerned these are relatively young cities and their establishment was conditioned by other factors. Currently they face grave problems of water deficiency. In cities the problem of water supply concerns mainly its purity, but in rural areas it is connected with considerable capital consumption because of greatly dispersed holdings. Formerly water had to be carried into houses in pots and subsequently a technical progress made possible its supply directly to households. This caused a rapid increase in water consumption. Further development through increasing the number ...
Biogas, landfill gas originates from fermentation of organic compounds. The fuel contains between 30 and 70% of methane, between 30 and 60% CO2 and small amounts of other components, such as nitrogen, hydrogen or water vapour. Its fuel value oscillates around 17-27 MJ/m3. Biogas is widely used, mainly as a fuel for electricity generators, the source of energy for water heating and after cleaning and compressing also as a fuel for engines. It is manufactures mainly in small agricultural biogas plants. It is obtained by means of degassing post-landfill objects. The investigates conducted by the Authors aimed at determining the amount of biogas possible to obtain from typical fractions which occur in municipal wastes, i.e. potato peelings, cabbage leaves, vegetable peelings, citrus fruit and banana skins and animal wastes. The research considered six kinds of biowastes of plant origin and one control sample randomly mixed of all five kinds of wastes. The fractions were broken and liquefied to dry matter content of about 10%. Biogas was obtained through anaerobic fermentation process in a regulated temperature environment. A chamber with fixed temperature was used for this purpose (the temperature was set at c.a. 33oC – optimal for mesophilic methane bacteria) in ...
Galvanic batteries and electric batteries which occur in large and smallsize forms are among the products which once run down become hazardous wastes, dangerous for the environment and human health. Constructed of highly processed materials, they contain harmful substances, such as lead, cadmium or mercury. Management of waste batteries is especially difficult due to the fact that they are present as sources of electricity in a variety of appliances used in many spheres of life. It leads to a considerable dispersion of places where wastes are generated and processed. A commonly used practice involves penetration of wastes, such as batteries and vehicle batteries, particularly small-size ones, into the municipal solid waste stream leading to their deposition on municipal landfills. It results in the extraction of hazardous substances by precipitation waters filtrating the soil mass into the underground waters leading to their dangerous contamination. On the other hand these wastes can be valuable secondary materials. Recycled they may provide the resources protecting natural deposits. Currently there are three main groups of chemical sources of electricity, used in almost all spheres of life: a) primary batteries and remaining secondary batteries, b) nickelcadmium, large and small-sized vehicle batteries, c) lead-acid vehicle batteries. The ...
Implementation of new provisions concerning road inventory imposes an obligation on Communal Units of Local Self-Government to create and keep Road Books. The regulations state the new scope and principles of keeping inventories of public roads and bridges. They change fundamentally the scope and degree of precision concerning description of data necessary for a road inventory. The information pertains to among others: road safety barriers and road acoustic screens, bus stop bays, exist and roadside objects, etc. Due to the required preciseness of detail of Road Books, one of the most labour consuming but most important stages in the process of creating, keeping and practical application of the inventory is the stage of collecting data on road technical parameters. The work presents the method of collecting and archivization of data on technical parameters of a road section using GPS technology, GIS and SIP software. The developed method allows for simple and fast acquisition, using MapSource programme functions, of necessary spatial information collected using GPS appliance and then process it to the required tabular format. The paper contains precise data of a road book creating and addresses some issues which have been omitted in the interpretation of the law. Irrespective of ...
