Economic assessment of municipal waste management systems—case studies using a combination of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC)

Abstract

This paper examines some possibilities and limitations of linking economic information to an life cycle assessment, LCA, when studying municipal waste management systems. A terminology and methodology for economic assessment of municipal waste management systems is proposed and tested through a case study. The methodology consists of a financial LCC, life cycle costing, (which is used in parallel with an LCA) and an environmental LCC (functioning as a consecutive, weighting tool). In the case study, the financial LCC covers all the costs incurred by the extended waste management system, as though the LCA system was a single economic actor. The environmental LCC uses three different weighting methods to monetarise environmental effects such as emissions and resource use. As both LCCs use the same unit of account, they can easily be added together to a welfare economic tool. This step-by-step aggregation leads to a transparent, reproducible analysis method. A conclusion is that the methodology facilitates the analysis, but that problems remain as municipal waste management often diverge from existing economic systems.