WtERT News & Events

Salman Zafar, CEO of BioEnergy Consult, talks to Power Today magazine on India’s tryst with waste-to-energy and highlights major challenges and obstacles in making waste-to-energy a success story in India.

Madhya Pradesh's first biomethanation plant that can generate biogas to power street lights or for other similar use, was inaugurated by mayor Alok Sharma at Bittan Market in the state capital.

In the past two weeks there’s been a significant spurt in the waste-to-energy (WtE) industry across the developing world. South Africa opened its first (and also the continent’s) WtE conversion plant in Cape Town last week. Sharjah in UAE just announced plans for two such facilities including one that will process e-waste. Indonesia said it was teaming up with Japan to turn waste into renewable energy. India is currently unravelling bureaucratic and legal hurdles to get a number of waste-to-energy facilities operational to cater to its capital and satellite areas. And in the Philippines the debate over WtE management technologies, currently banned in the country, is beginning to heat up.

Current and former neighbors near landfill owned by the town of Wheatfield, New York, are threatening to sue the town for a total of almost $1 billion, accusing the town of failing to clean up a toxic landfill, according to a report in the Buffalo News.

Short documentary produced for science program "TM Wissen" for the Austrian channel ServusTV/Red Bull TV.

Profs. Themelis and Bourtsalas of Columbia University contributed to the 2016 Thermal Spray Roadmap, published in the 2016 December issue of Journal of Thermal Spray Technology edited by Prof. Armelle Vardelle, a Research Associate of EEC-Columbia (Volume 25, Issue 8, pp 1376–1440).

A total of 32 students, accompanied by Professor Thanos Bourtsalas, visited a Waste to Energy Plant located on the banks of the Rahway River in New Jersey. The plant is owned by the Union County Utilities Authority and operated by Covanta Energy under a 25-year lease negotiated in 1998.

An interview with Prof. Themelis and Dr. Thanos for State of the Planet in Columbia University's Earth Institute

WTERT members worldwide:
This is to remind you that the Global WTERT Council (GWC) is participating in the world Atlas of all known waste management facilities www.atlas.d-waste.com/

Here is something for those who continue to deny global warming: The highest worldwide temperatures recorded in January-August 2016. See the GISS (Earth Institute, Columbia University) graph here.

The collection of the "commercial" stream of MSW in NYC, over three million tons annually, has been a big environmental problem. Finally, a glimmer of light has appeared at the end of the tunnel.

By Ben Messenger

The gulf region produces around 150 million tonnes of waste annually, with only 5% of it being recycled and vast quantities going to municipal dumps and landfill or, worse, being illegally dumped at unauthorised sites. This is a growing problem too, since the rapid urban expansion of ME countries means that their annual waste production rates are also on the rise.

Dr. Eftsratios (Stratos) Kalogirou represented the Global WTERT Council at the IRRC in Vienna, Sept. 5-6, 2016.

Dr. A.C. (Thanos) Bourtsalas, Adjunct Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering represented Columbia University at the 2016 Gordon Conference on Industrial Ecology, held in Stowe, Vermont. (June 19-24)

Report by Ms. Yenaxika Bolate (EEE graduate) on the May 2016 visit to the West Palm Beach, FL facility.

Tim Sharobem, PhD Thesis, Mitigation of High Temperature Corrosion in Waste-to-Energy Power Plants, EAEE Columbia University (2016) Now Available.