Environmental performance of peruvian waste management systems under a life cycle approach

Present Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation in Sri Lanka is around 6,500 to 7,000 metric tons per day of which 50% is collected and disposed by local authorities. Western province collects 2,100 metric tons of MSW of which Colombo Municipality is responsible for 800 metric tons per day. Open dumping has been the most common method of disposal of such waste. After prohibition of the use of the Bloemendhal site in 2009 by the Supreme Court, Colombo municipality used Meethotamulla area for waste dumping which had a small dump site used by the Kolonnawa municipality. Currently 800 metric tons of MSW is being dumped daily and around 1000 households have been affected around the dumpsite. Open dump sites often generate certain non-uniformly mixing pollution externalities. The main objective of the study is to assess the variation of damage perceived by the surrounding community with the distance from the dumpsite. A household survey was conducted using a pre-tested questionnaire among the surrounding community of the dump site. Stratified random sampling was adopted and households were selected from distances of 100m, 200m, 300m, 500m and 700m along three directions. Total of 117 households were surveyed from May to August 2016. The respondents were asked to rank various disturbances in a 1-5 Likert scale. Common disturbances identified in a pilot survey including damages to the property, risk of life and health impacts, disturbance from insects and other animals, etc. were used in the survey. Kruskal-Wallis test was performed to test the significance between different strata. In general, results indicate that all the damages decline with the distance. The damages to structure of the houses, damages to pipe lines etc. have a higher impact within first 100m from the dump site. Risk of illness had a gradual decline with the distance away from the dump site. The disturbances due to dust significantly declines after 200 m away from the dump site. Disturbances due to mosquitoes and flies tend to drop significantly after 200 m. Disturbances from crows have a higher impact within first 300 m. The odor seems to have a higher impact up to 700 m compared to other disturbances. Impact of flooding due to blockage of channel system by the dump is high within first 200 m. The disturbances by stray dogs prevail to exist only within first 100 m. The risk of life has a higher impact within first 200 m. The noise nuisance of heavy vehicles used for operations of dumpsite has a gradual reduction however it significantly reduces after 100 m and beyond 300 m there is no significant change in impact. The study emphasizes the usefulness of assessments of damage variation for their subsequent estimation. Keywords: Municipal solid waste (MSW), Open dump site, Damage variation, Distance

With the escalated increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Malaysia reaching a shocking 38,000 ton/day in 2017, a sustainable waste management system is much desired. Nationwide, there are 176 landfills but only 8 are sanitary landfill with the rest are open dumpsites. In the campus of University of Malaya, UM Zero Waste Campaign (UM ZWC) was introduced in 2011 to start a long-term campaign to achieve an integrated and sustainable waste management model and ultimately a zero-waste campus. Since year 2015, UM ZWC is fully funded by Sustainability Science Research Cluster of UM (Susci) as one of the living labs of UM as well as by JPPHB under the RMK-11 budget. UM ZWC operating projects including in house composting center, food waste segregation scheme, research composting emission and waste characterization, anaerobic digestion (AD), used clothes collection program, wood waste separate collection, e-waste collection and drop-off recycling collection were initiated under the campaign. Since the inception of the project in 2011 until December 2017, almost over 620 tons of solid waste has been diverted from disposal in landfill with composting, AD, recycling, re-use and energy recovery. A roadmap of UM ZWC was drawn up in 2013, with a goal to achieve 60% landfill diversion by year 2040. In the next 5-10 years, UM ZWC plays a vital role to formalize the recycling collection in UM and further increase the organic waste recycling with green waste shredding and composting. Besides environmental benefits (pollution prevention and carbon emission reduction), UM ZWC brings various benefits such as academic research opportunities for UM, contribute in UM LCCF (Low carbon city framework) target and serve as platform to improve students soft skills and entrepreneur skill. Multi stakeholders participation, support form top management and industrial collaboration are the key factors that are able to drive the development of a sustainable waste management model in UM campus.

Environmental and economic performances of municipal solid waste management strategies based on LCA method: A case study of kinshasa

Open dumps not only cause environmental degradation but also cause losses to the country’s economy. Due to ignorance by many, it has become the most common method of disposal of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in the country. Meethotamulla dump site is one such open dump site located in Kolonnawa Municipality in Western Province of Sri Lanka. Until its collapse in April 2017, 850 metric tons of MSW was dumped daily and around 1000 households were directly affected around the dumpsite. The externalities of open dumping are not directly observed in the market, thus often underestimated. Hence, the main objective of the study was to estimate the total cost of major externalities caused by an open dumpsite. A household survey was conducted using a pre-tested questionnaire among the surrounding community of the dump site. Stratified random sampling was adopted and households were selected from distances of 100m, 200m, 300m, 500m and 700m along three directions. A total of 117 households were surveyed from May to August 2016. Various externalities were assessed by using different valuation techniques and cumulative value of all estimates was taken as the lower bound value of total annual damage cost of Meethotamulla dumpsite. The total cost of health damages perceived by surrounding community was estimated as Rs.91.50 million by using Cost of illness method, Human capital approach and Contingent valuation method whereas the value for loss of life was estimated as Rs.102.9 million based on value of statistical life. Annual preventive expenditure used to mitigate externalities such as odor, dust, disturbance due to insects, mosquitoes and flies, floods were estimated as Rs.2.77 million. The estimated cost for foregone benefit of clean groundwater based on the opportunity cost method was estimated as Rs.0.22 million per annum while loss of productive time on additional cleaning was estimated as Rs.7.37 million. Use of hedonic price method revealed that the annual loss of esthetic value due to the dumpsite was Rs.37.56 million. The study further revealed that dumpsite emits 24,632 tons of methane per year causing not only global warming but also an opportunity cost of carbon credits worth of Rs.928.18 million. The annual cost of all the externalities was estimated as Rs. 1,115.74 million with a per ton cost of Rs.3,596. Most of the time policy decisions on waste management are based on monetary values of costs and benefits which are directly observable in the market. However most of the costs are hidden thus they are underestimated, causing huge private and social costs to the country’s economy. In order to make correct policy decisions related to municipal solid waste management, a proper identification, understanding and estimation of such externalities related to disposal of solid waste is a must. Keywords: Open dump site, Externalities, Damage estimation

Life Cycle Inventory Tools: Supporting the Development of Sustainable Solid Waste Management Systems

Advancing towards circular economy: Environmental benefits of an innovative biorefinery for municipal solid waste management

Sustainable solid waste management (SSWM) is the practice of waste management according to the ideal hierarchy where prevention is most preferred followed by 3R (reuse, recycle, and recover), and the least preferred option is landfilling. Globally, 22approximately 1.3 billion tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) was disposed of in some form of landfill (Kaza et al., 2018). Therefore, achieving SSWM has been a challenge for every country, although the challenges may vary from one country to another. Developed countries are trying to increase recycling and energy recovery through incineration and pyrolysis and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills in the European Union (EU). On the other hand, majority of developing countries are struggling to cut down open dumping and move towards sanitary landfills along with increasing the overall national recycling rates. The amount of attention sustainable waste management receives depends on the economic status of each country.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management represents a major expenditure for third world countries, and could be very challenging as it results in environmental impacts including pollution of water resources. The major expenditure of the municipal solid waste management is attributed to overlooking revenues generated from waste. Due to the uncertainties of data, the value of the recyclables is overlooked. Therefore, a key in the development of an effective and sustainable waste management system is having reliable information and a clear characterisation of the municipal waste generated from the community being studied. Hence, this paper presents a waste audit to characterise household waste and more importantly estimate revenues generated from recyclables. The focus was on household waste generated from high income districts. The study found that there was a surplus resulting from the difference between the revenue of recyclables and the cost of its management. This surplus could be used to fund the deficit in waste management system in other lower income districts.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management represents a major expenditure for third world countries, and could be very challenging as it results in environmental impacts including pollution of water resources. The major expenditure of the municipal solid waste management is attributed to overlooking revenues generated from waste. Due to the uncertainties of data, the value of the recyclables is overlooked. Therefore, a key in the development of an effective and sustainable waste management system is having reliable information and a clear characterisation of the municipal waste generated from the community being studied. Hence, this paper presents a waste audit to characterise household waste and more importantly estimate revenues generated from recyclables. The focus was on household waste generated from high income districts. The study found that there was a surplus resulting from the difference between the revenue of recyclables and the cost of its management. This surplus could be used to fund the deficit in waste management system in other lower income districts.

The present study was developed to comprehensively analyze experts' views and content of documents focusing on goals and criteria of sustainable waste management system in Tehran, Iran. To this end, the suitable goals for sustainable waste management system in Tehran city were adopted from domestic, national and international documents. For this purpose, 27 national and international documents and 2 domestic documents related to waste management were selected and analyzed by using content analysis according to Gall, 1994. Further, in order to formulate goals in case of bottlenecks and challenges of waste management in Tehran, the focus group technique was used based on Stewart and Shamdasani, 2014. At this stage, 24 key experts in the field of waste management were interviewed in the form of 4 focus groups. Data collection were performed via audio recording and word-for-word implementation of conversations, taking notes and writing field notes. The data collection continued until reaching theoretical saturation. Next, content analysis and coding methods were used to analyze the data. Finally, the goals of waste management were divided into five general categories including: institutional (with emphasis on the integration and inclusion of the key elements of the urban waste management system), technical and infrastructural (with emphasis on the optimization of existing processes in the use of urban waste management technologies), environmental (with emphasis on minimizing the adverse health and environmental effects of the urban waste management system, economic (with emphasis on the economic and financial sustainability of the urban waste management system), and cultural-social (with emphasis on attracting the maximum participation of citizens and service recipients). The results clearly showed that sustainable waste management measures in Tehran should follow these five components in order to reduce the problems caused by unrealistic waste management and make sustainable use of basic, natural, financial and human resources.

Life cycle cost analysis of municipal solid waste management scenarios for Mumbai, India

Evaluation of greenhouse gas emission and reduction potential of high-food-waste-content municipal solid waste landfills: A case study of a landfill in the east of China

Even though landfilling of waste is the least favourable option in the waste management hierarchy, the majority of municipal solid waste (MSW) in many countries is still landfilled. This represents waste of valuable resources and could lead to higher environmental impacts compared to energy recovered by incineration, even if the landfill gas is recovered. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool, this paper aims to find out which of the following two options for MSW disposal is more environmentally sustainable: incineration or recovery of biogas from landfills, each producing either electricity or co-generating heat and electricity. The systems are compared on a life cycle basis for two functional units: ‘disposal of 1 tonne of MSW’ and ‘generation of 1kWh of electricity’. The results indicate that, if both systems are credited for their respective recovered energy and recyclable materials, energy from incineration has much lower impacts than from landfill biogas across all impact categories, except for human toxicity. The impacts of incineration co-generating heat and electricity are negative for nine out of 11 categories as the avoided impacts for the recovered energy and materials are higher than those caused by incineration. By improving the recovery rate of biogas, some impacts of landfilling, such as global warming, depletion of fossil resources, acidification and photochemical smog, would be significantly reduced. However, most impacts of the landfill gas would still be higher than the impacts of incineration, except for global warming and human toxicity. The analysis on the basis of net electricity produced shows that the LCA impacts of electricity from incineration are several times lower in comparison to the impacts of electricity from landfill biogas. Electricity from incineration has significantly lower global warming and several other impacts than electricity from coal and oil but has higher impacts than electricity from natural gas or UK grid. At the UK level, diverting all MSW currently landfilled to incineration with energy recovery would not only avoid the environmental impacts associated with landfilling but, under the current assumptions, would also meet 2.3% of UK’s electricity demand and save 2–2.6million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

Healthcare waste in Bangladesh: Current status, the impact of Covid-19 and sustainable management with life cycle and circular economy framework

The potential environmental impacts associated with two landfill technologies for the treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW), the engineered landfill and the bioreactor landfill, were assessed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. The system boundaries were expanded to include an external energy production function since the landfill gas collected from the bioreactor landfill can be energetically valorized into either electricity or heat; the functional unit was then defined as the stabilization of 600 000 tonnes of MSW and the production of 2.56x108 MJ of electricity and 7.81x108 MJ of heat. Only the life cycle stages that presented differences between the two compared options were considered in the study. The four life cycle stages considered in the study cover the landfill cell construction, the daily and closure operations, the leachate and landfill gas associated emissions and the external energy production. The temporal boundary corresponded to the stabilization of the waste and was represented by the time to produce 95% of the calculated landfill gas volume. The potential impacts were evaluated using the EDIP97 method, stopping after the characterization step. The inventory phase of the LCA showed that the engineered landfill uses 26% more natural resources and generates 81% more solid wastes throughout its life cycle than the bioreactor landfill. The evaluated impacts, essentially associated with the external energy production and the landfill gas related emissions, are on average 91% higher for the engineered landfill, since for this option 1) no energy is recovered from the landfill gas and 2) more landfill gas is released untreated after the end of the post-closure monitoring period. The valorization of the landfill gas to electricity or heat showed similar environmental profiles (1% more raw materials and 7% more solid waste for the heat option but 13% more impacts for the electricity option). The methodological choices made during this study, e.g. simplification of the systems by the exclusion of the identical life cycle stages, limit the use of the results to the comparison of the two considered options. The validity of this comparison could however be improved if the systems were placed in the larger context of municipal solid waste management and include activities such as recycling, composting and incineration.