Professional Sharing Series:
Strategic Issues for Urban Waste Management
By Professor Jim Swithenbank
Chairman, Sheffield University Waste Incineration Centre
1 July 2010

A growing interest in climate change has kept waste issues in the back seat among the many environmental challenges facing the world today. However, there is renewed interest in the prospect of waste management in reducing climate burden through significant CO2 reduction. Can an effective waste management regime help reduce carbon emissions load, and slow down global warming? Can waste be a viable alternative to fossil fuel?

Showing the way to harnessing waste as a sustainable resource is Professor Jim Swithenbank, the Chairman of Sheffield University Waste Incineration Centre, which is a leading research centre in the United Kingdom focusing on waste incineration solutions. SEI was privileged to host Professor Swithenbank on ‘Strategic Issues in Urban Waste Management’ on 1 July 2010 at its Professional Sharing Series (PSS) Platform. Prof Swithenbankm, who is currently advising a number of government panels and international committees, was a past president of the Institute of Energy in UK, and held fellowship appointments at several prestigious institutions. He has authored more than 450 scientific papers, developed over 20 patents and has received several international awards for his research work in computational fluid dynamics.

Sharing Sheffield’s waste management experience to over 80 participants from the industries and public agencies, Prof Swithenbank’s presentation affirmed the importance of integrating the waste management process in climate mitigation efforts. Underscoring a sustainable low-carbon environment is the active recovery of materials and energy to reduce the environmental burden from high consumption patterns. As a first step, Professor Swithenbank highlighted that the implementation of the 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, is necessary to conserve resources and reduce the amount of waste going to the incinerator and landfill, hence reducing emissions. Thereafter, city authorities should embark on ‘Waste-to-Energy’ as the preferred practice to maximise energy from municipal waste. Waste being largely carbon neutral, has similar calorific value as raw material, and could serve as feedstock to power the energy cities need. Ensuring efficient energy recovery is the next step and could be achieved through combined heat and power (CHP) system, cogeneration in short, or even tri-generation system which recovers waste heat for cooling. Reflecting on Singapore’s situation, Singapore’s energy-intensive industries and power generators look to be in the best position to exploit both cogeneration and tri-generation capabilities. Harnessing CHP requires the consumer of heat energy to be near the power generating source, and the industrial clusters in Singapore could benefit from such an implementation.

The audience found Professor Swithenbank to be very knowledgeable on the topic and enjoyed the lecture. Participants with technical background appreciated the technical details in his presentation. Others liked the practical advice he had for government and city planners in waste management planning. And thanking Prof Swithenbank for an informative session, Mr Ong Eng Kian, Director, Singapore Environment Institute presented him the ‘Clean Green & Blue’ publication as a token of appreciation.

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Last updated on 15 Jul 10