Economic efficiency of resource recovery—analysis of time-dependent changes on sustainability perception of waste management scenarios

Abstract

Waste management systems are modelled to provide a public waste management service and need to be able to meet environmental sustainability requirements at a cost that is acceptable to system users/citizens. Overall environmental, economic, and/or socio-economic sustainability of waste management in previous publications is done through independent analyses and comparisons of obtained results or through multicriterial ranking of different alternatives where final results do not have a meaningful physical significance and cannot be interpreted independently. At the same time, those analysis either neglect time dependant changes by focusing on moment in time, or take into account changes in some timeframe changes but report only ranking focused single-score results, thus, results neglect time-dependent developments. All of these approaches are lacking some information needed for informed decision-making and/or are difficult to understand by wider groups of people. Thus, in this study, link between economic and environmental sustainability is analysed through newly defined single-score Economic Efficiency of Resource Recovery (EERR) index that shows the specific system cost for achieving identified resource recovery, while legislation based time dependent changes are taken into account through successive analyses for legislative most important years. This approach can be used for benchmarking the overall (environmental and economic) sustainability trends, while its graphical representation enables easier presentation of sustainability results and can be used for easier comparison of possible solutions and decisionmaking. The results show that the quality decision-making process needs to take into account the impact of expected changes on overall sustainability and evaluate how they will affect the actual perception of used technologies. In this context, it is shown that overall changes in sustainability, in comparison to the existing perception, can significantly change, depending on which technologies the system is based on.

Debromination with Bromine Recovery from Pyrolysis of Waste Printed Circuit Boards Offers Economic and Environmental Benefits

“…37,38 In addition, effective waste management can bring significant economic benefits. 39,40 Therefore, there is an urgent need to study the migration and transition of bromides during the coupled pyrolysis of various additives and WPCBs. Some review articles currently summarize and look forward to precious metal recovery, 41,42 recycling methods, 43,44 recycling policy, 45,46 and so on.…”

“…Furthermore, many scholars have studied the effect of additives on the pyrolysis of WPCBs recently and found that additives can enhance pyrolysis oils’ quality and fix pyrolytic halogens effectively . Recovery of low-bromine and light pyrolysis oils from WPCBs is crucial to carbon reduction since these oils can be used as fuels. , In addition, effective waste management can bring significant economic benefits. , Therefore, there is an urgent need to study the migration and transition of bromides during the coupled pyrolysis of various additives and WPCBs.…”

Techno-economic review of pyrolysis and gasification plants for thermochemical recovery of plastic waste and economic viability assessment of small-scale implementation

“…Similarly is done in (Westerhout et al 1998) and (Larrain et al 2020) for the average composition of mixed plastic waste, where in (Westerhout et al 1998) differences between three different processes are also analyzed. In (Tomić et al 2022a) economic indices of thermochemical conversion technologies are compared with results for other technologies. In these publications literature review data are used for system and economy modeling.…”