Risk assessment for handling hazardous substances within the European industry: Available methodologies and research streams.

After the Seveso disaster occurred more than 40 years ago, there has been an increasing awareness of the potential impacts that similar accident events can occur in a wide range of process establishments, where the handling and production of hazardous substances pose a real threat to society and the environment. In these industrial sites denominated "Seveso sites," the urgent need for an effective strategy emerged markedly to handle hazardous activities and to ensure safe conditions. Since then, the main challenging research issues have focused on how to prevent such accident events and how to mitigate their consequences leading to the development of many risk assessment methodologies. In recent years, researchers and practitioners have tried to provide useful overviews of the existing risk assessment methodologies proposing several reviews. However, these reviews are not exhaustive because they are either dated or focus only on one specific topic (e.g., liquefied natural gas, domino effect, etc.). This work aims to overcome the limitations of the current reviews by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the risk assessment methodologies for handling hazardous substances within the European industry. In particular, we have focused on the current techniques for hazards and accident scenarios identification, as well as probability and consequence analyses for both onshore and offshore installations. Thus, we have identified the research streams that have characterized the activities of researchers and practitioners over the years, and we have then presented and discussed the different risk assessment methodologies available concerning the research stream that they belong to.

Are deposit-refund systems effective in managing glass packaging? State of the art and future directions in Europe.

Glass packaging gives rise to major environmental concerns because it develops more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic packaging and its improper discarding causes the loss of high-quality desired resources. The reuse and recycling of glass packaging reduces greenhouse gas emissions and the use of newly extracted resources sand and soda. To mitigate the environmental impacts of glass packaging, countries have set-up various collection and recycling systems, which are often organized and financed through extended producer responsibility schemes. The most common collection systems are deposit-refund systems (DRS), separate collection in drop-off containers and comingled collection with lightweight packaging waste. By the end of 2035 a minimum of 65 % of glass packaging waste must be prepared for re-use and/or recycled within the EU Member States and thus proper policies and solutions should be adopted to achieve this target. In this sense, the present study aims at verifying if deposit-refund systems and their different configurations affect glass packaging waste reduction and recycling/recovery. To achieve this aim, annual data regarding consumption and recycling/recovery of glass packaging for each European Economic Area/European Free Trade Association (EEA/EFTA) country were extracted over the time period 2010-2019. By using the selected European countries as units of analysis, a hybrid methodology was developed which includes the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and other descriptive statistics. Findings show that the different waste management systems affect neither the amount of glass packaging consumption nor the glass packaging recycling/recovery. In countries which adopt DRS, not more glass packaging per capita was retrieved than in countries which adopt other collection and management systems. In fact, it turns out to be a mechanism that allows for high quality glass packaging collection avoiding its ending up in landfills, but it does not influence consumption choices and the subsequent potential waste production. The adoption of DRS-based collections does not result necessarily in a successful management model for glass packaging. Since setting up additional drop-off collection points and recovering mechanically glass from municipal solid waste (MSW) does not result in glass qualities to be used in glass packaging, DRS represent still the sole progress towards a more circular economy.

Door-to-door waste collection: Analysis and recommendations for improving ergonomics in an Italian case study.

In the last decade, door-to-door waste collection methods have been largely applied by several municipalities in Italy, with the main purpose to achieve higher rates of sorted waste. This approach requires waste collectors to handle a high number of small waste containers during their work-shift, especially in urban areas and historic city centres. Workers may experience ergonomic issues during door-to-door waste collection, due to the characteristics of the waste containers, the waste collection equipment, the work organization and citizens' behaviour. If not well planned and managed, this activity may expose waste collectors to ergonomic risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders. This study proposes a detailed investigation of the door-to-door waste collection strategy operated in an Italian city centre for the collection of organic municipal solid waste, green waste and residual waste. The aim is to investigate the impact of door-to-door waste collection strategies on the health and safety of the workers involved in this activity. The results show that the lack of proper waste collection equipment determines poor ergonomics conditions during door-to-door collection of green waste. The poor design of operations and technology is the cause of ergonomic issues in the door-to-door collection of organic municipal solid waste and residual waste. Finally, work organization factors impact on the safety and health of all the waste collectors involved in this study. A set of recommendations and suggestions are provided to managers, workers and citizens involved in door-to-door waste collection, showing that this activity can be sustainable if well designed and managed.