Sustainable waste management in Northern rural areas: Local utilisation of bio-wastes

The Finnish Lapland is the most sparsely populated region in Europe and the population is decreasing all the time. The constantly growing tourist visits and overnight stays cause large amounts of wastes and erosion of local nature. Tightening waste regulations and increasing fossil energy prices provide motivation to improve local waste processing in order to reduce the amounts of bio-waste transported to landfills and use bio-waste as material in bioenergy production. In this study, the current status of waste management at two tourist centres in Finnish Lapland is mapped and proposal for a more sustainable waste management is given. The amount of bio-waste in area where no separate bio-waste collecting is organized is estimated based on the developed prediction model. The estimation of local bioenergy potential produced by anaerobic digestion process in these two case areas is calculated. Usage of liquid and solid end products of anaerobic digestion process as a fertilizer and soil improvement is also presented. It is found that the annual bioenergy potential is fair, but the bioenergy production is not economic profitable around the year using only bio-wastes due to the significant seasonal variation of the amount of wastes. Copyright © 2017 International Energy and Environment Foundation All rights reserved.