Article
foto Lizet, Thijs Thijs Schaap, Nadia Nadia Remmerswaal, pic2.jpg Antonio D'Aquilio

Chapter 1: Challenge, problem statement, ambitions and research questions

The island of Texel has a very high production of waste compared to the main land, this is caused by the high number of tourists visiting the island every year. The island of Texel has expressed its ambitions to become independent of the main land. In this the problem of waste is an important topic. Huang (2008) explains in his article about Eco-islands that in order for Islands to become self-supportive it is important to ensure an equilibrium between the environment en the economy. Four relevant requirements must be met before this equilibrium can be reached with regards to waste and material management. All six are discussed in this chapter. They have been incorporated into our ambitions and plans. Furthermore in this chapter we research the criteria that must be met in order for the future system to become self-sufficient. Also we put further research into our scale, focus and the needs of the society.

The challenges

The island of Texel is meeting many challenges in becoming as self sufficient as possible. With regards to our subsystem, Materials and Waste, we find that the challenge lies in both reducing the current waste streams and deal with the remaining waste streams in a way that is both energy efficient and economically feasible. We find that it is important to not lose sight of a realistic sollution, in this the economical situation must be taken into account.

Ambitions:

Our ambitions are based on the article on Eco-Islands written by Huang (2009). He states that in order for an Island to reach an equilibrium between the environment and the local economy four requirements must be met which are relevant to our waste and materials subsystem. Since we as a group would like to set ambitious goals we would like to incorporate all these four items into our ambitions:

1.  Usage of renewable materials should be regulated
     An example of this is the usage of renewable building materials.

2.  The efficiency of resources must be improved
     This will be achieved through both lessened economical consumption as through a high degree of
     recycling.

3.  The current amount of waste generated must be significantly lowered
     This can be made possible through reuse and concentrated waste treatments.

4.  A very strict governmental control must be set on:
         a. The import of environmental-risk resources and materials
         b. The export of scarce resources and materials


Problem statement:

The people from Texel produce 700 kg of waste per person, this is high due to tourism. The current way of dealing with waste is unsustainable. The current mindset about dealing with waste we find old fashioned. All current waste streams are transported to the main land for incineration. This is an unsustainable practice.


Research question:

How can the waste streams of Texel be improved to become as C2C as economically feasible?

 

Bibliography

Huang, B., Ouyang, Z., Zheng, H., Zhang, H., & Wang, X. (2008). Construction of an eco-island: A case
        study of Chongming Island, China. Ocean & Coastal Management, 575-588.