Prospects for extracting secondary material resources from the MSW in the Leningrad Region
Introduction. Municipal Solid Wastes may represent a large resource potential and economic interest. For the Leningrad region, targets for recycling and disposal of waste have been established in territorial waste management scheme in July 2019. Methods and Materials. The forecast of the amount of waste generated and the content of secondary material resources is based on specific physical indicators of waste. The morphology of the MSW generated by population and socio-cultural organizations has a similar component composition. The morphological composition of MSW (and the potential content of secondary resources) varies during the calendar year, depends on the climatic zone; on the improvement of the housing stock, the welfare level of the population and other factors. Wastes monitoring of wastes in the sanitary cleaning system in most of the settlements of the Russian Federation does not include a regular empirical study of the morphological composition of MSW. Results. Retrospective analysis of the morphological composition of the MSW of the Leningrad region in 1985 - 2019 shows that the share of food waste, metals (both black and non-ferrous), glass, printed paper products decreases in modern household and municipal waste, but the content of paper and cardboard packaging, plastics, composite packaging increases. The density of waste gradually decreases due to the use of polyethylene packaging. Discussion. Promising indicators for extracting Secondary material resources from the MSW of the Leningrad Region are proposed based on the analysis of the morphological composition of the waste and the review of scientific and practical literature and regulatory documentation. Conclusion. Reliable predictions about the morphological composition of MSW are possible for a period of no more than 3-5 years. It is necessary to supplement (develop) guidelines for the study of the morphological composition of MSW, taking into account the intra-annual variability, and limit the time frame for the relevance of studies on the morphological composition to 5 years. Prospective indicators for extracting Secondary resources from the MSW of the Leningrad Region can be offered 10-30% of the mass in the next 10-15 years with the introduction of selective collection and processing (sorting) of MSW on specialized complexes, etc. Of particular importance is the participation of the government of the subject of Federation in the development of infrastructures and in encouraging municipal authorities to work with the public.