Impact of the municipal solid waste incineration plant in Warsaw on air quality.

Abstract

In recent years there have been over 12 million tonnes of municipal waste gen-erated in Poland a year, with about 10 million tonnes a year collected, including only 10% selectively [1]. Among the management methods of collected waste the predominant role is still played by landfilling. According to the statistics, in 2011 about 79% of the mixed municipal waste mass was deposited in landfills, with only 1.1% thereof subject to thermal treatment [1]. The amount of incinerated municipal waste results mainly from the activity of the one and only municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerator in Poland, which is operated since 2000 within the organisational structure of the Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Plant (ZUSOK) in Warsaw.By 2016 it should, however, be expected that a couple of new MSW inciner-ation plants will have been completed, for which by June 30, 2010 there were ap-plications submitted for subsidies from the Operational Programme Infrastructure and Environment or which will be financed within the Public-Private Partnership [2, 3]. Those facilities will be situated in such cities as Bialystok, Bydgoszcz, Konin, Krakow, Szczecin and Poznan. Additionally, there are also plans to modernize the MSW incinerator, operated within ZUSOK in Warsaw which was taken over by “Miejskie Przedsiebiorstwo Oczyszczania (MPO) w m.st. Warszawie Sp. z o.o.” on December 2011. Within the framework of planned modernization, first it was decid-ed to build one additional line of incineration in the existing building and then to replace the existing one with another one, a modern installation with comprehen-sive infrastructure [4, 5]. According to the voivodeship waste management plans developed in 2012, construction of municipal waste incineration plants is planned also for many other Polish cities (after 2015). In most cases these will be regional waste treatment plants.