Comparative environmental assessment of alternative waste management strategies in developing regions: A case study in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The management of municipal solid waste in the Republic of Kazakhstan is still in its infancy. This situation poses a potential threat to the environment and public health and, therefore, it is necessary to introduce improved management schemes in the country. In this study, the life cycle assessment methodology was followed to evaluate the potential environmental benefits of implementing alternative management schemes based on low-waste generation and renewable energy production. The current situation of the capital city Astana was considered as the base case. Environmental results showed that air emissions in terms of landfill gases are the major contributor to climate change impacts, while landfill disposal of the non-recovered fraction of recyclable materials was responsible for the highest impacts in the other categories (especially land use). However, the reuse of recycled materials largely offsets the related environmental burdens, along with energy generation. In comparative terms, it was demonstrated that the proposed waste management scenarios are more environmentally friendly than current practices (S0), mainly owing to the credits associated with the valorisation of renewable energy (S2) and recovered materials (S3). Consequently, the evaluation showed that greater efforts should be made to exploit the energy potential of organic fraction, together with higher recycling rates, to move towards lower environmental impacts associated with municipal solid waste management.

Seasonal characterisation of municipal solid waste from Astana city, Kazakhstan: Composition and thermal properties of combustible fraction

“…As reported by Kamran et al (2015), such economic tendencies typically lead to an increase of goods consumption and solid waste generation in general. In 2018, less than 5 wt.% of generated MSW was processed in most of the sorting plants in Kazakhstani cities, while the remaining 95 wt.% was disposed in sanitary landfills, except for Astana city where an engineered landfill was in operation (Noya et al, 2018; The Government of Republic of Kazakhstan, 2013). According to the latest report published by the municipality of Astana, the recycling rate of MSW reached 10–12 wt.% in 2018 (Urcha, 2018).…”

Qualitative and quantitative characterization of municipal solid waste and the unexploited potential of green energy in Tunisia

“…Along with the MWM issue and analogous to lowand middle-income developing countries, Tunisia has been facing energy deficit issues. Consequently, recent research (e.g., Mihai and Ingrao 2018;Miezah et al 2015;Khandelwal et al 2018;Panepinto and Zanetti 2018;Noya et al 2018) has embarked on assessing schemes of MSW valorization that may enhance energy recovery, human health protection and the environment preservation. Scarlat et al (2015), for instance, have investigated, at the African level, how waste could play a crucial role in providing citizens with energy extracted from waste incineration and from landfill gas (LFG).…”

Life cycle assessment for solid waste management in Lebanon: Economic implications of carbon credit

“…Recent efforts targeted LCA applications in the environmental assessment of waste management. Many of these efforts focused on developed economies (Di Maria and Sisani, 2017;Di Maria et al, 2016;Herva et al, 2014;Ripa et al, 2017;Thomsen et al, 2017;Tunesi et al, 2016) with limited applications on economies in transition or developing economies (Liu et al, 2017a(Liu et al, , 2017bNoya et al, 2018;Othman et al, 2013) where waste composition is different and management practices still concentrate on landfilling or open dumping (Laurent et al, 2014a(Laurent et al, , 2014b). In addition, most studies emphasized individual processes instead of integrated systems (Laurent et al, 2014a(Laurent et al, , 2014bTabata et al, 2010).…”