9th World Convention on Recycling and Waste Management October 22-23, 2018 Osaka, Japan

Jennifer Attard has pursued her BSc in Chemistry with Materials from the University of Malta. Currently she is pursuing PhD at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York, an internationally-leading academic facility for pioneering pure and applied green and sustainable chemical research. Throughout the course of her PhD, she has worked on collaborative research projects with companies including Unilever, Circa Sustainable Chemicals and LEO Pharma.

Sinae Park is currently pursuing PhD in the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University. She has received her Master’s degree in Urban Planning. She has served as the Program Director in Resource Circulation Bureau and International Cooperation Bureau of Ministry of Environment of Republic of Korea.

Waste generation is primarily rooted in consumer behaviors. Lifetime of a device is determined from the interaction between users’ characteristics and a product’s functional lifetime. This study investigates the lifetime of home appliances across countries and clarifi es the determinant of the length of lifetimes. Understanding how a social background links to the products’ lifetime can provide useful implications for resource effi ciency improvement. To estimate the determinants of the lifetime of home appliances, an empirical analysis was conducted using house living standard survey data for developing countries from the World Bank. Logistic regression model was designed for three home appliances- television, refrigerator and PC with a total of 13,619 households’ samples of Bulgaria, Albania, Panama and Nigeria. Th e results showed that households in Bulgaria and Albania tend to hold on to the appliances for signifi cantly longer than households in other countries. Among the demographic variables of household, education, region and age show signifi cant and consistent effect on the lifetime of all the appliances, whilst income, family member, dwelling type and marital status have only weaker eff ect on limited appliances. It was found that the lifetime of home appliances diff ers considerably across countries. Countries which had once been governed by communist regime display tendency to hold on to the appliances for longer period of time. Moreover, a country’s communist experience has even stronger eff ect on lengthening appliance’s lifetime than its economic scale. It is noticeable that this behavior, which had once been formed under a severe planned economy system, is still observed. Further research is recommended to assess the product lifetime in countries which had experienced communist regime yet with developed economy or of non-European state. This may clarify the relative magnitude of communist effect which still resides in consumer behavior to a country’s economic scales on product lifetime.

There are increasing concerns about the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in our aquatic environment. Several reports have already demonstrated that behaviors of aquatic life were signifi cantly altered by exposure to very low levels of neuroactive pharmaceutical pollutants. Many such neuroactive pharmaceuticals are not able to be removed eff ectively by conventional wastewater treatment processes and are directly discharged to the receiving aquatic environment. Assessment of their environmental risks is complicated by their relatively low lethal toxicity. In our previous studies, we developed an analytical method for the profi ling of classical neurotransmitters and their metabolites in the CNS of a small model fi sh. We found that their profi les are very sensitive to in vivo neurotoxicological impacts. Zebrafi sh (Danio rerio) is an increasingly recognized vertebrate model for neurobehavioral studies and is also an ideal model for translational neuroscience research. In this work, we exposed zebrafi sh to a commonly prescribed antidepressant, which is also an emerging environmental contaminant, Fluoxetine (Prozac™), for a period of 14 days. Aft erwards, novel tank test was conducted to evaluate behavioral eff ects of the drug to the fi sh. Immediate aft er behavioral test, the whole brain tissue of the fi sh was subjected to neurotransmitter profiling. Multivariate analysis was conducted to correlate the perturbation of the neurotransmitter profi le with behavioral changes induced by the drug. Results of our study provide metabolomic information to link the neurotoxicological eff ects of neuroactive chemicals with their in vivo neurobehavioral impacts. Th is profi ling approach can also become a new tool for environmental risk assessment of neuroactive contaminants.

Ka-Ki Yuen is a PhD student in Environmental Science from the City University of Hong Kong. His current research focuses on development of an analytical protocol to estimate population exposure to environmental contaminants based on wastewater-based epidemiology

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of ubiquitous environmental contaminants which have aroused public concern over the years. Human exposure to PAHs can take place through various routes including ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact. 1-Hydroxypyrene (1-OH-pyr), which is a Phase-I metabolite of pyrene, has long been a biomarker to monitor human exposure to PAHs. Nevertheless, because of the complexity of PAH occurrence in the urban environment, we cannot solely rely on 1-OH-pyr for the assessment of population exposure to PAHs. Various metabolites of PAHs together with their parent compounds may be needed. In this work, an analytical protocol based on Solid-Phase Extraction (SPE) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) has been developed for the direct quantifi cation of six Low-Molecular-Weight (LMW) and one High-Molecular-Weight (HMW) PAHs, which are all listed as priority PAHs by the United State Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), as well as 15 mono-hydroxylated PAHs (OH-PAHs) including 1- and 2-OH-naphthalene, 1-OH-acenaphthene, 1-, 2-, 3- and 9-OH-fl uorene, 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- and 9-OH-phenanthrene, 1- and 2-OH-anthracene and 1-OH-pyrene in municipal wastewater. Extraction of the PAHs and OH-PAHs from wastewater samples were carried out by mixed-mode solid-phase cartridges and silica cartridges in series. We aim to evaluate whether these PAH metabolites in municipal wastewaters can act as population exposure markers for PAHs by the technique known as Sewage Chemical Information Mining (SCIM). In this context, assessment of the stability of targeted analytes in infl uent sewage is vital as their concentrations will be used to back-calculate and to correct errors associated with their transformation, degradation or formation inside sewer systems. A stability experiment which was lasted for 21 days was conducted at relevant conditions at two temperatures that aimed to imitate typical temperature situations in winter and summer in sewer systems of Hong Kong. Stability models were generated for the targeted analytes based on linear, exponential or quadratic ways depending on the R2 values of the models. Our results suggest that degradation of compounds with prominent stability problems should be taken into account for wastewater-based epidemiology. Besides, other detailed sewer information such as temperature and hydraulic retention time is required to back-calculate the original concentrations of the target analytes more precisely.