B4-Stakeholders involved and main target audience of the project
STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVED AND MAIN TARGET AUDIENCE OF THE PROJECT (OTHER THAN PROJECT PARTICIPANTS)discuss (max. 10.000 characters)
The main stakeholder of the COWS project are:
* the citizens, as the first beneficiaries of the advantage of using COWS
* the municipalities, as the organizations that manage the interests of the citizens, but also in their role as fulcrum on which the costs that the collectivity pays to rid itself of waste gravitate (in this case sludge from sewage treatment on the one hand and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste on the other).
The utilities are fundamental players, as the operators to which the public administration delegates the service. They include the managers of integrated water supply services, which produce sludge through sewage treatment, and the managers of municipal solid waste services, which treat and separate solid waste for disposal in landfills or incineration of the non-reusable portion.
Other important stakeholders are the users of the by-products resulting from the various treatments: in particular these are structures that deal with spreading, incineration or disposal of sludge that those market compost produced by aerobic fermentation.
The Civil Society Organizations represent an important sector as they act on the basis of environmental concerns and bring other viewpoints into play. While the environmental organizations are certainly a significant stakeholder, it is important to remember also the organizations of citizens who in some way feel potentially damaged by the presence or expansion of the plant.
Another significant stakeholder is represented by the providers of technology and services that revolve around these activities and that will naturally support the project (for example those who see in the spread of technology like COWS the possibility of opening more than one niche in the market), as well as potential detractors (for example those companies and workers - generally subcontractors – that truck waste to distant dumps).
The stakeholders mentioned are systematically involved in the project on several levels and different times in the project’s life.
The citizens will be involved through citizens’ committees and their representative structures. It is essential to initiate a clear dialogue with them from the outset, illustrating the advantages of the approach proposed. A strong point of COWS is that this type of communication has already taken place to some extent, because between 2005 and 2007 a first pilot project was carried out. The population is thus likely to be rather well prepared to listen. However, the partners are not unaware of the fact that when similar cases are presented it is a good idea to take into full consideration the risk that they may generate reactions of psychological refusal by the population. This may at times also lead to a deterioration of relations with the inhabitants of the zone involved and cause, for example, the transformation of the use of the land on which the plant is built, through the creation of zoning regulations that cause a loss of value of the land and buildings around it, increased traffic on the roadway network and sometimes may even eliminate existing ecosystems. In the case of the COWS solution, luckily, there is the possibility, foreseen by the model itself, of building the plant inside an existing treatment facility located in a peripheral zone, with the only possible addition of traffic in the area which, however, will not affect inhabited zones because it is near a motorway interchange. Nonetheless, the project must be explained very clearly to the citizens. Above all they have to understand that, unlike installations with aerobic management, which generally also have a very strong impact, anaerobic management generates fewer collateral effects (some dust, a potential increase in the noise, an increase in the need of treatment of the wastewater, etc.) The design of COWS takes account of the fact that the reception, storage and treatment stages all take place in a closed environment and with a slight depression of the atmosphere so as to reduce the fermentation odors of the OFMSW. Lastly, the point should be emphasized that, though indirectly, the COWS effect could mean savings on their waste disposal bills in the long run.
The municipalities are the main stakeholder of COWS because on the one hand they are attracted by the hypothesis of solutions that lead toward a reduction of the management costs and, on the other, they always have a strong perception of the need to manage large quantities of bio-waste resulting from the good outcome of waste separation, but that paradoxically risks turning into an increased cost to be billed to the citizens or cover in some other way, unless solutions are found for its disposal. COWS is a solution that solves the problem of reducing the volume and costs associated with bio-waste.
The municipalities are involved in the project both directly and through the action of the partner COMVIA, which can act as a spokeperson toward other administrations. The COWS system has an important advantage that can be emphasized and can become highly visible because, with the electrical energy produced by the plant it is possible to power not only its own operation but also all of the normal uses of a town’s administrative offices (or the equivalent of about 3000 inhabitants). In any case, in addition to the city of Viareggio, involved in its dual role as partner and "carrier" of the seed of COWS, the vital element of the demonstration will be the other municipalities that could replicate the solution proposed.
The involvement of the citizens will be secured both through action A2 and the actions of group D, and through the associations. The primary objective is to see to it that there is an informed appropriation by the citizens of the solution proposed.
The contribution that we hope will arrive from the citizens is that, little by little, their attitude will change and that it is clear from the outset that no one is proposing the construction of a new installation, but a process that will improve the treatment of the organic fraction as well as that of sludge.
The utilities will also be involved in the stage of assessment of the solution proposed, and will follow the entire project in the role of observers. Their involvement is perhaps the strongest, and targeted actions of dissemination will be organized specifically for them. Actually, the involvement of the utilities if fundamental from the earliest preparatory stages. They are asked to specify the variables that could affect installation in the towns where they operate, as they dispose of the project reference elements Taking account of the different contexts and different needs that will be reported, we will try to ensure that the plant can be configured in a sufficiently flexible manner to respond even to the variables that come from other potential users of the solution. As anticipated, the utilities involved in COWS are mainly of two types, those that produce sludge or manage sludge treatment plants, and waste management companies. In the demonstration stage, the information that they can give to the project will refer to the identification of the characteristic parameters that each potential user can declare as special with respect to the normal condition of operation foreseen. In this way it may be possible to understand to what extent the COWS solution can or cannot be generalized and what we must/can do to customize or generalize it depending on which is the more economical strategy. The question is whether we should make an effort to have a plant that is always the same and that adapts to different situations and contexts (such as the existing type of treatment plant) or whether what should be valorized is the modularity, thus the possibility of assembling standard parts, with a standard approach that in different cases is calibrated to the user’s conditions. The project partners think that the solution applied – and they have good evidence for this – is sufficiently tolerant to be able to function as it is in most cases, with minor adaptations or adjustments. The reason for this conviction lies in the fact that the discriminating element is the pretreatment system, with mechanical separation of the richer organic fraction, which is a different solution from the one normally used. Basically, COWS concentrates the solution of a problem of quality of nutrients to use in the digestion so as to deal with it in one point only. It does this to prevent a large expenditure of equipment, thanks to a single main treatment unit (the extrusion press) that replaces the traditional pulpers.
The fact of starting a new season of equipment that valorizes even the OFMSW in energetic terms is certainly of interest to two large groups of enterprises: those linked to the finer technology of the technical media that gravitate around digestion, the chemistry of production of biogas, and the more typically mechanical enterprises linked to installations, that are, in any case, a rather important factor in the transformations that have to be made. In addition, there is a part of technology that is already rather well developed but that will develop further, represented by efficiency controls (such as remote control of installations).
In conclusion, COWS has been developed largely to solve the problems of two particular subjects. The former have sludge and plants for the treatment of sludge with production of biogas prevalently used to supply torch functions and, at the most, used to support the process thermally. These are extremely large and not very efficient plants, and also have a potential environmental impact (because the final efficiency means that the digestates are produced in large quantities). The latter have the problem of having to treat OFMSW without having plants nearby, and thus with rather high overhead costs and equally high environmental costs. The solution proposed is positive for these stakeholders because COWS brings the two problems together in a precise way, obtains a solution that is advantageous from the environmental standpoint as well as that of economic sustainability of the process. This advantage is returned to the citizens and municipal administrations that use it. One of the tasks of the environmentalist associations is just to grasp and explain this advantage. For this reason they are one of the most critical stakeholders and can be a positive amplifier or become a suspicious, critical element, simply because they do not understand the environmental advantage.
In the background, there are over 35,000 plants for the treatment of sewage sludge in Europe, and the problem that, in general, is experienced at the European level is one of a progressive difficulty in using the sludge. The COWS solution thus impacts a real issue and one that is already current in the environmental debate at the Community level, and is all the more pressing for those countries that have to adapt rapidly to the Community regulations on wastewater because they have not done so until now and are forced to build new installations.
Marketing of the "COWS concept" starts from the name, from the idea that the cow is an excellent digester, and one that is acceptable from the environmental standpoint. Actually, it is based on three main ideas and three key messages: the first – that is up to the citizens – is to make good use of large installations that are inefficient because the material they treat (sewage sludge) is too poor for the process of cogeneration of heat and energy. This means, among other things, explaining to the people that in this way they can avoid the need to build new, higher impact plants; the second idea, linked to the first, is that two advantages are combined for those who have to manage solid urban waste and have to find a way to reduce the quantity and those who have sludge for which the solution often identified of greatly improving selection becomes impractical or too costly. The COWS solution is very simple and efficient, on the other hand, because it transfers the best part, from the organic standpoint, to the production of gas and can lead once again to the composting cycle with a material that is fairly easy to treat, even if not excellent in quality, but in any case greatly reduced in quantity. The third idea for marketing is that of the energy output of this operation that, in the end, can cover the needs of the entire plant and even make some energy available. In some ways we can say that COWS "sells itself" as a WIN-WIN solution from the environmental standpoint. During the stage of preparation of the project the partners have already encountered many positive opinions, and two other important organizations in Tuscany have expressed their interest: the management of the water service for the area of Livorno, which immediately wanted to follow the realization of the COWS demonstration to assess its repeatability, and the waste management company. Their letters of participation are at the disposal of the Commission.
