Co-processing

The project "New partnership with local authorities for the environmentally sound management of hazardous and other wastes in the context of the Basel Convention in South America" was implemented in Ecuador.

This project focused on oily wastes and was concluded with a workshop that took place in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on 13 October 2011. The aim of the workshop was to disseminate the results of the project among local and national authorities of Ecuador, as well as other countries of the region such as Chile and Peru. The Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Latin American and the Caribbean Region, based in Uruguay, and the Basel Convention Regional Centre for the Central America Sub-region including Mexico, based in El Salvador, participated in the workshop.

A key project milestone was the development of a national law on co-processing of hazardous wastes in cement kilns, adopted by the Government of Ecuador in May 2011.

The project aimed at building a public-private partnership to establish, operate and maintain a comprehensive system for the environmentally sound collection, testing and final disposal of oily waste, including the co-processing of oily waste in cement kilns.

It involved the local authorities in the Municipality of Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Ministry of Environment of Ecuador, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the private company HOLCIM, local industry, as well as the Universities of Quito and Guayaquil.

The project was implemented in phases. The first phase, completed in April 2007, consisted of feasibility studies at the national level and in the District of Guayaquil. Both studies examined the feasibility of setting up a mechanism for the environmentally sound management of used oils. Also, the studies tested various options from minimization to recycling to destruction by co-processing in a cement kiln, in compliance with most stringent environmental regulations of Ecuador for the management of used oils.

The second phase, completed in 2011, aimed at testing the burning efficiency of a local cement kiln as a solution for the final disposal of oily wastes and at comparing this solution with two other alternative methods for recovery and recycling. In addition to the national law, draft legislation at the municipal level was developed to integrate the ESM principles outlined in the Technical Guidelines on Environmentally Sound Co-processing of Hazardous Waste in Cement Kilns and to regulate co-processing in Ecuador.

For more information, please contact
Maria de Lourdes Cepedes, MoE of Ecuador at mariadelourde10@hotmail.com
Ms. Carola Zambrano, project coordinator at sciaplicrom@gmail.com or 
Francesca Cenni, Programme Officer, Secretariat of the Basel Convention, tel: +41 22 917 8364, email: francesca.cenni@unep.org.