Solid Waste Systems

Overview

In the United States, no winery site utility subsystem has changed more dramatically in the last decade than the management of solid waste. Other wine producing regions of the world are also reexamining their solid waste handling and disposal practices. The principal forces which have brought about the changes were as follows:

• Landfill sites were being filled at an alarming rate.

• Untapped opportunities for waste-to-energy projects emerged.

• Concern was expressed at all levels of government on the poor management of natural resources.

• The strong and sensible voice of the environmental movement was finally being heard around the world.

Before the radical changes in waste management policies and legislation took hold, the United States had for many years been rather complacent about solid waste generation and disposal methods, whether it occurred on land, in the oceans, or by conventional incineration within large urban centers. Europe and Japan on the other hand, not being blessed with an abundance of land area, became the leaders in the philosophy and practice of waste minimization at the source. The scarcity of land in those two densely populated areas, coupled with the need for ever-increasing blocks of electrical energy to satisfy domestic and industrial demands, stimulated the development of waste-as-fuel technology that produced either steam or electrical power as an essential by-product. This technology is also synonymous with power co-generation. Power plants fueled by nuclear fission, during this period, were in a down cycle, and the two-pronged waste-to-energy systems had just too many benefits to be ignored.

Waste minimization and segregation, together with salvage and recycling of waste materials, are the cornerstones of contemporary solid waste management systems. They will be discussed in this chapter, as they relate to the solid wastes generated by a typical winery. When significant, the differences in the solid waste stream of a table winery brandy distillery, a bonded cellar, and a sparkling winery will be noted. Vineyard operations also produce solid waste, with the major component almost entirely in the biomass category of vineyard prunings.

The disposal of residual solids from both sanitary and process wastewater systems has been previously discussed in Chapter 8. Reference is made to the appropriate sections of Chapter 8 for the optional methods of disposal for septage (septic tank sludge) and settled sludge from process wastewater settling cells or clarifiers.