Taiwan: Taiwan Cement plans to spend at least US$19m on building waste gasifiers at its Ho-Ping cement plant in Hualien County. The unit will be used to burn solid municipal waste, according to the Taipei Times newspaper. The Hualien City government awarded the tender to the cement producer in May 2019. Taiwan Cement intends to build the unit by 2022 whilst it gathers the necessary operating permits. However, Taiwan Cement faced opposition at a public meeting on the project in June 2019. It defended the plans saying that its Guigang plant in Guangxi Province, China burns 0.33Mt/yr of solid waste.

Philippines: Republic Cement has signed a co-processing agreement with Century Pacific Group to burn post-consumer plastic waste as an alternative fuel. The deal is part of a move by the group to become ‘plastic neutral’ by 2020, according to the Philippine Star newspaper. Century Pacific Group includes brands such as Century canned tuna and the Shakey’s Pizza chain. Republic Cement is licensed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to use and dispose of waste streams through cement kiln co-processing.

Mexico: Geocycle Mexico processed 0.41Mt of industrial and municipal waste in 2018. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim estimates that it will process around 0.46Mt in 2019. It supports the handling, treatment and co-processing of waste at LafargeHolcim’s cement plants.

Iceland: Geminor has signed a five-year contract to export 70,000t of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from Iceland to an energy-from-waste (EFW) plant in the Netherlands. The first shipment will leave Iceland in mid-2019 and regular shipments will start in October 2018. The Norwegian resource management company says that this is the first ever export of treated waste from Iceland. Previously, all local waste was landfilled.