Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that property rights can have on the implementation of circular waste economies, in which waste is reused, recycled or recovered, within the European Union’s Waste Framework Directive.

A theoretical lens is applied to the legal definition as well as production and treatment cycle of waste to understand the property rights that can exist in waste.

This paper argues that even though different property rights regimes can apply to waste during its creation, disposal and recovery, the waste management regulatory and legal system is currently predominantly set up to support waste within classic forms of private property ownership. This tends towards commodification and linear systems, which are at odds with an approach that treats waste as a primary wanted resource rather than an unwanted by-product. It is recommended that adopting state or communal property approaches instead could affect systemic transformative change by facilitating the reconceptualisation of waste as a resource for everyone to use.

The property rights issues are only one dimension of a bigger puzzle. The roles of social conceptualisation, norms, regulations and policies in pursuing circular strategies are only touched upon, but not fully explored in this paper. These provide other avenues that can be underpinned by certain property regimes to transition to circular economies.

The literature focused on property rights in waste has been very limited to date. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to consider this question in detail from a legal perspective.

This paper aims to examine the effect of circular economy’s ending of waste on marginal property practices.

This paper utilises doctrinal and theoretical legal analysis, along with theoretical perspectives and qualitative empirical evidence drawn from non-legal academic disciplines.

The current legalistic conception of waste depends on control and value. The indeterminate status of waste as goods at the margins of consumption attracts attention from legal regimes. This process is evidenced by a commercialised treatment of goods at the margins of consumption, limiting the scope of radical marginal property practices such as freeganism (taking goods abandoned by others, to use such goods).

The circular economy aims to end waste. Restriction, and ultimately elimination, of marginal property practices is necessary for circular economy. Freegans will be limited to acting in a “challenge” role, identifying breaches of commercial commodification processes. Control over the use (including disposal) of goods reduces the spaces available for marginal property practices, which in turn raises problematic normative implications for “normal” consumption practices involving waste.

This is the first examination of the impact of circular economy on freeganism. It is also the first sustained application of marginal property theory (van der Walt, 2009) in a legal analysis of circular economy and waste.

The purpose of this paper is to give a recommendation to the municipalities what local tax/taxes sensu largo (a waste charge or an immovable property tax increased by a local coefficient) are to be collected to achieve expected and necessary incomes and limit the administrative costs.

To reach the aim, it was necessary to analyze the number of municipalities increasing the property tax by the local coefficient and abolishing the charge on communal waste to save money for the waste charges administration. The evidence of municipalities applying the local coefficient was used as a basis for the research. To get the information on charges on communal waste collected in these municipalities with the local coefficient within the past at least five taxable periods, the information from Monitor was used. If there was any such a significant change, then it was necessary to use the bylaws and to do thorough analysis of the reasons.

The hypothesis that a high number of municipalities in the Czech Republic are replacing the charge on communal waste with the local coefficient applicable for the immovable property tax was rejected. In the opinion of the author, the ideal approach is to have just one local tax – immovable property tax. This tax is administered by the state tax office and the revenue should cover the cost of waste management. Adopting only the property tax increased by the local coefficient, it is necessary to explain the benefits to the taxpayers, that is, locals and voters.

The research on the given topic was never done in the Czech Republic, as there is no evidence of local charges collected in individual municipalities.

This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.

The authors investigate the entanglement of law and the built environment through an analysis of waste-related legal case studies in the Canadian context. They investigate a notable Supreme Court case and three examples of Canadian cities’ by-laws and municipal regulations (particularly regarding informal recycling practices). They mobilize what Valverde calls the work of jurisdiction in their analysis.

The authors argue that the regulation of waste and wasting behaviours is meant to discipline relationships between citizens and governments in the built environment (e.g. mitigating nuisance, facilitating service provision and public health, making individuals more visible and legible in the eyes of the law and controlling and capturing material flows). They find that jurisdiction is used as a flexible and malleable legal medium in the interactions between law and the built environment. Thus, the material treatment of waste may invoke notions of constraint, freedom, citizenship, governance and cognate concepts and practices as they are performed in and through built environments. Waste storage containers appear to operate as black holes in that they evacuate property rights from the spaces that waste regularly occupies.

There is scant scholarly attention paid to legal orderings of waste in built environments. This analysis reveals the particular ways that legal interventions serve to construct notions of the public good and the public sphere through orderings of waste (an inherently indeterminate object).

Describes the novel utilization of waste newsprint paper as inexpensive agro‐fibers for production of lightweight building panels. Thermal gravimetric analysis of treated news paper fibers was studied as a method for testing fire retardancy of agro‐fibers in light building panels. The activation energy of degradation stages was evaluated by applying the Coats and Redfern method of analysis. Results showed that the treatment of newsprint waste with 6 per cent sodium silicate also improved fire retardancy in addition to improving the compressive strength of the produced panels, with the reduction in the bulk density to ∼28.6 per cent compared with gypsum panel. Such treatment gives the produced panels a relatively low water absorption property compared with those produced by other treatments.

Concentrates on those provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which directly affect the property manager in general practice. Discusses the background to the Act, Part I: Integrated Pollution Control, Part II: Waste disposal on land, Part III: Statutory nuisance, and further provisions of Parts IV to IX. Concludes that the provisions relating to Integrated Pollution Control in particular are likely to have future significance.

Rapid economic growth and urbanization in India have increased demand for municipal services. In response, privatization has emerged as a policy solution to a growing deficit in urban infrastructure and service provision. But, privatization assumes prior state ownership of those services. Certain waste management services, specifically doorstep waste collection, have never been truly public in the sense that private informal actors have historically provided them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the tensions and contradictions between two related policy imperatives – universal service provision and privatization – that appear to be guiding the municipalization of solid waste collection services in urban India.

Research for this paper relies on detailed analysis of key government documents (reports of various committees, regulations and laws) that have been important in defining municipal responsibilities for waste management in India from 1990 to 2016. In addition, where appropriate, research materials from the author’s doctoral dissertation fieldwork in Delhi from October 2012 to December 2013 have also been used.

An analysis of key policy documents revealed that the government’s efforts to document deficits in service provision ignored, and thus rendered invisible, the work of the informal sector. While a consensus on the need for universal waste collection service had emerged as early as the late 1990s, it was not until 2016 that municipal responsibility for service provision was codified into law. The rules issued in 2016 municipalized this responsibility while simultaneously opening up spaces for the inclusion of the informal sector in waste collection service provision.

This paper fills a gap in the existing literature on how policy interventions have brought the space of the doorstep into the ambit of the state such that it allows for the opening up of those spaces for the entry of private capital. Under the guise of universal service provision, the shift to municipalization and outsourcing to private corporations is not in fact privatization – service provision is already private – but involves the dispossession of informal workers and the transfer of their resource to the formal, corporate sector.

The purpose of this study is to explore the feasibility of utilizing agricultural (almond shell, rice husk and wood) waste biochars for partial cement replacement by evaluating the relationships between the physiochemical properties of biochars and the early-age characteristics of cement pastes.

Biochars are prepared through the thermal decomposition of biomass in an inert atmosphere. Using varying percentages, biochars are used to replace ordinary Portland cement (OPC) in cement pastes at a water/binder ratio of 0.35. Characterization methods include XPS, FTIR, SEM, TGA, BET, Raman, loss-on-ignition, setting, compression and water absorption tests.

Accelerated setting in biochar-modified cement pastes is attributed to chemical interactions between surface functional groups of biochars and calcium cations from OPC, leading to the early development of metal carboxylate and alkyne salts, alongside the typical calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H). Also, metal chlorides such as calcium chlorides in biochars contribute to the accelerate setting in pastes. Lower compression strength and higher water absorption result from weakened microstructure due to poor C-S-H development as the high carbon content in biochars reduces water available for optimum C-S-H hydration. Amorphous silica contributes to strength development in pastes through pozzolanic interactions. With its optimal physiochemical properties, rice-husk biochars are best suited for cement replacement.

While biochar parent material properties have an impact on biochar properties, these are not investigated in this study. Additional investigations will be conducted in the future.

Carbon/silicon ratio, oxygen/carbon ratio, alkali and alkaline metal content, chlorine content, carboxylic and alkyne surface functional groups and surface areas of biochars may be used to estimate biochar suitability for cement replacement. Biochars with chlorides and reactive functional groups such as C=C and COOH demonstrate potential for concrete accelerator applications. Such applications will speed up the construction of concrete structures and reduce overall construction time and related costs.

Reductions in OPC production and agricultural waste deterioration will slow down the progression of negative environmental and human health impacts. Also, agricultural, manufacturing and construction employment opportunities will improve the quality of life in agricultural communities.

Empirical findings advance research and practice toward optimum utilization of biomass in cement-based materials.

Aluminum alloy AA5083 is applicable in ship building, military, railway and industry because of its excellent properties like resistance to chemical and sea water attack. However, its performance is affected by weak wear resistance. Hence, this should be solved to improve the performance of AA5083 alloy in the aforementioned fields. The purpose of this research is to enhance the wear properties of AA5083 alloy.

In this research, AA5083 alloy was reinforced with industrial wastes such as red mud and granite particles using stir casting method. Totally, four types of composites were fabricated, namely, AA5083/3 Wt.% red mud (C1), AA5083/3 Wt.% granite (C2), AA5083/1 Wt.% red mud-2Wt.% granite (C3) and AA5083/2 Wt.% red mud-1Wt.% granite (C4). Wear properties such as mass loss and coefficient of friction (COF) were analyzed for different wear parameters. Further, the mechanical properties like hardness and tensile strength were investigated.

Results showed that the inclusion of reinforcement particles improved the wear and mechanical properties of AA5083 alloy (C0). The C2 sample displayed the maximum hardness of 87 HV and tensile strength of 317 MPa owing to the inclusion of 3 Wt.% granite particles. Furthermore, the wear study results showed that the C2 sample displayed the minimum mass loss and COF. It was concluded from this research that C2 sample could be a good candidate to be applicable in marine, military, railway and industrial applications with improved performance.

This work is original as the industrial waste is used as reinforcements in the performance improvement of AA5083 aluminum alloy.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the case of the Valorbio research project, in which students of different high-level programs were involved in the experimental work and in the dissemination of results in collaboration with the research team.

The inclusion in higher education curricula of content related to the sustainable development should be a preferred mechanism for the dissemination of good practices of sustainability. Another equally important way to achieve this is to involve students in research projects that seek solutions to the societal challenges related to sustainable growth. The Valorbio project aims to meet the needs for treating and reusing wastewater and solid waste. Its main goal was the development of modular systems for wastewater treatment based on constructed wetlands, exploring the possibility of the treatment systems being composed of solid waste and by-products from significant industrial sectors.

The students’ contribution to the research work was relevant and simultaneously allowed them to acquire skills on sustainable development. Additionally, the students contributed to the dissemination of the results. The Valorbio project can thus be considered a successful application of the concept of project-based learning (PBL), as a way to include sustainability issues content in the higher education curricula.

The applied experimental work had an original approach regarding the equipment design, the waste materials valuation, as well as the integration of waste treatment processes in the circular economy paradigm. This paper is the first reported PBL experience involving students of short-cycle technical–professional programs in partnership with first and second-level students and a research team.