LCA Consulting investigated the costs of separate collection of consumer packaging waste  

LCA Consulting investigated the costs of separate collection of consumer packaging waste  

LCA Consulting carried out a report to the Ministy of Environment that evaluated the current costs of separate collection of consumer packaging waste, as well as possible costs if property-specific separate collection was expanded considerably from the existing system. 

– The report produced information for the Ministry of Environment for the renewal of waste legislation. The report was based on EU legislation as well as the Finnish National Waste Plan and its goals concerning the recycling of municipal waste. Expanding the requirements of the separate collection of packaging waste is a significant act with which recycling rates can be further increased. Expanding separate collection to more and more properties would mean own packaging waste containers for each of them which would ease the source separation of residents. Progressive separate collection would increase accrued packaging waste and thus its recycling. On the other hand, expanding separate collection would cause additional waste management costs, the CEO of LCA Consulting Antti Niskanen notes.

The report was conducted by evaluating the costs of consumer packaging waste collection with different scenarios by utilizing previously executed regional life cycle assesments of waste management systems and their initial data.

According to the results of the report, by setting requirements for residential packaging waste (metal, glass, cardboard, plastic) to all residential buildings with at least five (5) apartments would, with current calculations, mean 24-34 million euros in national costs in municipal waste management annually, depending on the efficiency of the residents' sorting, while setting the requirements to all residential buildings in urban areas would result in annual waste management costs of 59-96 million euros. Currently, the costs of the supplementary waste management of municipalities and waste management companies is evaluated to be around 15 million euros. In addition to household waste, this cost includes the waste of public properties, such as schools, day care centers, hospitals and nursing homes, and partly company waste as well. In addition to direct waste management costs, the expansion of separate collection would cause administrative and communicational additional costs, as well as costs concerning equipments, that haven't been taken into consideration in the report.

It should be noted that the consumer packaging waste collection was examined in a way that all properties would have individual containers for separate collection waste and waste collection vehicles would only collect one waste type at a time. The estimated waste management costs indicate the highest possible costs.

At the moment, LCA Consulting is conducting a report on how these costs can be decreased with more waste containers and expanding waste collection to entire city blocks, for example.