Month: February 2019

Samples

World GHG Emissions 2012

This “dense” or “block-style” Sankey diagram might look familiar to some. Indeed it is based on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions Sankey diagram for 2000 published by the World Resources Institute WRI (see this post). Consulting firm Ecofys (now Navigant) has updated the data and refined it, but kept the overall appearance of the figure.

World_GHG_2012

via @ChrisChambers64

Total emissions of climate gases were 51,840 Mt Co2-eq. Carbon dioxide and methane contributed more than 90%. The industry sector is the largest emittor, followed by agriculture and land use.

Very clear and compact Sankey diagram, conveying the most important information about GHG emission sources.

Samples

European Plastics Packaging Waste Study

Deloitte Sustainability in a 2017 report titled ‘Blueprint for plastics packaging waste: Quality sorting & recycling’ showed the results of “a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the main packaging resins (PET, HDPE, LDPE, PP) based on the flows in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, which represent 70% of the plastic waste generated in Europe”.

The plastic waste streams for the year 2014 are shown as a Sankey diagram on page 16.

deloitte_EU_plastics_waste_2014

The collection rate that year on a European average was at 37% and the recycling rate at 13%. Most of the packaging waste goes to incineration and landfill.

The study also looks at improvement potential in plastics waste collection and recycling. The plastic packaging waste streams for a possible 2025 scenario with a collection rate of 74% and a recycling rate of 55% is also shown as Sankey diagram for comparison.

deloitte_EU_plastics_waste_2025
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Household Waste Recyling in Spain

An interesting blog post titled ‘Cuando las cuentas no cuentan’ (which I would figuratively translate as ‘When the numbers don’t match’) by Sergio Sastre over at the ‘Residuos Profesional’ blog.

Looking in detail at the official municipal solid waste recycling numbers for all 17 autonomous communities in Spain, published by the Environment Ministry (Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica – MITECO) for 2016, Sergio and his team found that there are discrepancies in the data, and that data quality needs improvement.

The overall recycling rate for municipal solid waste (MSW) in Spain is 33.6% … still far from the 2020 goal to reach a 50% recycling rate.

This Sankey diagram shows the breakdown of waste streams.

flujos-residuos

Flows are in tonnes per year. Of the overall 21.7 million tonnes of MSW generated in Spain, only some 7.2 million tonnes were recycled in 2016 (pink streams). A large chunk if household waste is mixed (grey stream, residuos mezclados, RM), while only a quarter is collected separately (colored streams in the lower part of the figure, recogida selectiva, RS).

Some material can be recovered from the mixed waste stream at sorting facilities and in composting plants or biogas digestors.