The Organization’s conventional, non-hazardous waste consists of industrial waste, electrical and electronic equipment (which is subject to monitoring according to the Swiss regulation OMod), aluminium and other metals, glass and PET, paper and cardboard, biodegradable waste, coffee capsules and household waste.

CERN’s hazardous waste consists of chemicals and their containers, batteries, printer cartridges, lightbulbs and any type of equipment and materials contaminated by hazardous substances. In 2020, the latter included personal protective equipment, such as facemasks, used to protect against COVID-19 transmission.

Data on end-of-life equipment picked up by or sent back to the supplier is not included in this report. Data on waste generated by contractors is also not included, as they managed the waste disposal themselves. As part of an improvement announced in the 2017-2018 report, a small fraction (8%) of the non-hazardous waste generated and eliminated by contractors active on the CERN sites has been integrated into the 2020 data. CERN strives to continuously increase the traceability of waste disposed of by contractors.

CERN has a centralised waste management system that oversees all conventional waste collection and transportation. This is designed to ensure that waste is managed safely and appropriately, in ways that present no unacceptable risk to people or the environment. The system also includes an inventory of the waste leaving CERN in order to ensure the traceability of waste pathways. In 2019 and 2020, CERN generated and disposed of a total of 5985 and 4704 tonnes of conventional waste.

CERN works with authorised third-party service providers to manage the disposal of conventional waste other than metals. Metal and electronic waste is sorted and sold for recycling. Hazardous waste is temporarily stored in a buffer zone where it is collected weekly.

More than 70% of the Organization’s waste is non-hazardous. In an effort to boost the recycling rate of non- hazardous waste, CERN initiated a pilot sorting-bin project in several buildings in 2019. Instead of individual waste bins in every office, sorting stations for paper, PET and household waste were installed. The same year, CERN also started to replace single-use plastics with reusables in its restaurants in an effort to reduce plastic waste as much as possible. The effects of these projects have been hard to measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent reduction of CERN personnel on site as part of the health measures implemented at the Laboratory.

CERN aims to increase its current recycling rate for non-hazardous waste. In 2020, the recycling rate was 59%, compared to 56% in 2018 and 57% in 2019. This was mainly achieved thanks to more thorough sorting of household waste introduced by CERN’s service provider in 2020 in response to objectives set by the recycling policy of the Canton of Geneva. It should be noted, however, that the effects of the pandemic also had an impact on the waste produced and disposed of by CERN.

The CERN Environmental Protection Steering Board launched a working group for waste management in 2020 that identified and proposed action plans to be implemented in future years. The group looked at different waste issues such as traceability, reduction objectives, waste recovery rates and consolidation of storage areas.

CERN’s scientific activities produce radioactive waste with low-level activity, generated by the interaction between particle beams and equipment present inside CERN’s accelerator complex. Equipment that is activated by this process is managed as radioactive waste at the end of its life cycle.

Radioactive waste consists, for example, of metal components, cables and ventilation filters, as well as waste from maintenance and upgrade work, such as gloves and overalls.

Radioactive waste management has always been a high priority for CERN. It is handled in the framework of the tripartite agreement with the Host State authorities on radiation protection and radiation safety (see Management approach).

The Organization minimises radioactive waste in the design, operation and decommissioning of accelerators, experiments and other equipment by avoiding or recycling and re-using activated material. Activated shielding components are a prominent example of re-use. For instance, 3255 tonnes of steel structures, cast iron and concrete blocks were re-used and thus diverted from disposal in 2019. In 2020, the figure was 1060 tonnes.

CERN’s specialised radiation protection team categorises radioactive waste and treats it in a dedicated facility where it is dismantled, sorted, compressed and packaged according to radioactive waste treatment and elimination criteria. It is disposed of through agreed pathways in France and Switzerland, and the Laboratory regularly reports on radioactive waste matters to the Host State authorities. Before being eliminated, radioactive waste is temporarily stored in a dedicated secure storage area.

CERN strives to reduce radioactive waste as much as possible by making consistent use of the possibility for free-release in Switzerland. After demonstration that waste no longer qualifies as radioactive according to the Swiss ordinance for radiation protection (ORaP), such waste is treated as traceable conventional waste.

In 2019 and 2020, CERN generated 641 and 202 tonnes and disposed of 1472 and 358 tonnes of radioactive waste respectively. During this period, with CERN’s accelerator complex in its second long shutdown (LS2), accelerator and experiment equipment coming to the end of its life was dismantled. This is why more radioactive waste was generated during LS2 than during periods of accelerator and experiment operation.

David Widegren, leader of the Information Management group in the Engineering department.

— In short, what is TREC?

DW: TREC, which stands for Traceability of Radioactive Equipment at CERN, is an IT application primarily used to trace and manage potentially radioactive equipment at the Laboratory. As it is based on our central asset-management platform, it avoids duplicating data in multiple information systems and helps us treat radioactive traceability as an integral part of our physical assets’ lifecycles.

— What does the future hold for this system?

DW: The application has evolved from mainly being a traceability tool to also becoming an application with integrated workflows. Additionally, TREC has evolved to cover other related processes linked to safety and the environment. For example, we are planning an extension of the application to also support and formalise water release processes.

Questions regarding this report may be addressed to environment.report@cern.ch.