Environmental Assessment of Possible Future Waste Management Scenarios

Yevgeniya Arushanyan,Ola Eriksson,Åsa Stenmarck,Göran Finnveden,Jan-Olov Sundqvist,Anna Björklund,Maria Ljunggren Söderman

doi:10.3390/en10020247

Abstract

Waste management has developed in many countries and will continue to do so. Changes towards increased recovery of resources in order to meet climate targets and for society to transition to a circular economy are important driving forces. Scenarios are important tools for planning and assessing possible future developments and policies. This paper presents a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) model for environmental assessments of scenarios and waste management policy instruments. It is unique by including almost all waste flows in a country and also allow for including waste prevention. The results show that the environmental impacts from future waste management scenarios in Sweden can differ a lot. Waste management will continue to contribute with environmental benefits, but less so in the more sustainable future scenarios, since the surrounding energy and transportation systems will be less polluting and also because less waste will be produced. Valuation results indicate that climate change, human toxicity and resource depletion are the most important environmental impact categories for the Swedish waste management system. Emissions of fossil CO2 from waste incineration will continue to be a major source of environmental impacts in these scenarios. The model is used for analyzing environmental impacts of several policy instruments including weight based collection fee, incineration tax, a resource tax and inclusion of waste in a green electricity certification system. The effect of the studied policy instruments in isolation are in most cases limited, suggesting that stronger policy instruments as well as combinations are necessary to reach policy goals as set out in for example the EU action plan on circular economy.

Highlights

Waste management has in many countries gone through significant changes during the last decades
Waste management needs to continue the transition towards increased recovery of resources in order to meet climate targets and for society to transition to a circular economy [2]
The environmental impact from the whole waste management system was analyzed in 18 impact categoriesEnergies using2017, the Midpoint (H) method

Summary

Introduction

Waste management has in many countries gone through significant changes during the last decades. In Sweden, material recycling and energy recovery have increased and landfill disposal of for example municipal solid waste has decreased [1]. This is largely in line with the waste hierarchy (ibid.), which promotes reuse, recycling, and energy recovery as the guiding principle for waste policies in the European Union and many other countries. The features of the scenarios described in Dreborg and Tyskeng [20], such as changes in the society behavior (e.g., increased use of the secondary materials, local production, general environmental policy direction, etc.) as well as changes on the energy market (fuel prices, government policies or incentives) were taken into account. Depending on the goal of a specific study, either or both of these may be relevant (e.g., [28,48])

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Conclusion