Design for excellence

Abstract

The cross-regional mobility of waste has become an important approach to achieve a higher waste recycling rate in some countries. However, there is a lack of study to examine the associated environmental impacts. To address this gap, a life cycle thinking based environmental assessment model with 12 indicators was developed. The foreground data obtained in this study came from multiple sources and the background data was mainly obtained from GaBi Professional. Three main scenario settings including 51 sub-scenarios were developed. The results show that at current situation in Australia, the environmental impact in terms of GWP 100 years shows -6.73E+11 kg CO 2 -Equiv., AP -2.92E+09 kg SO2 -Equiv., EP -5.18E+07 kg Phosphate-Equiv., and Land occupation 3.55E+06 m 3 . The results showed that if the recycling rate passed 50%, the environmental impacts deduction value of recycling will surpass the environmental impacts. Amongst the waste materials, steel is a critical contributor to the environmental impacts for most environmental indicators. This study revealed that if the cross-regional mobility of C&D waste increases the overall recycling rate of the waste generated in all regions involved, it can reduce the environmental impacts of the waste, and vice versa. This study gains the knowledge of environmental impacts of the cross-regional mobility of C&D waste, which is largely overlooked in previous studies. Meanwhile, it provides the index and fundamental data for the development of LCA methodology in assessing the performance of C&D waste management. Future studies should seek for more local background data and up-to-date environmental impacts data.