LCA of waste management systems—research opportunities

Gheewala, Shabbir H.

doi:10.1007/s11367-009-0128-y

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…It is employed to compare NPS, in which the functional unit is usually the amount of waste generated, equal in all NPS, and the system boundaries include the processes once the waste is generated, that is, downstream processes (e.g., sorting, transport to waste treatment facility, and waste processing). Moreover, Gheewala (2009) revealed the inability of "traditional LCA" to include the effects of waste prevention activities in the responsibilities of waste management, and the limitations in the applicability of the methodology as a decision support tool in waste management planning and policymaking: these are to be addressed in future research.…”

Section: Lca and Psmentioning

confidence: 99%

An LCA-based model for assessing prevention versus non-prevention of construction waste in buildings

et al. 2021

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Waste generated by the Construction Sector represents an environmental problem in many countries. To achieve increasingly eco-efficient waste management, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides an objective method for the quantification of the potential impact that waste management exerts on the environment. Traditionally, LCA has focused on the evaluation of non-prevention scenarios once the waste is generated, mainly by showing the benefits of recycling vs. disposal. Consequently, the literature has hardly addressed the positive environmental impacts caused by waste prevention, that is, the reduction at source, which constitutes the preferred option of any waste management hierarchy. Therefore, this study proposes a model to simulate the environmental performance of the prevention vs. the non-prevention of construction waste production. The model is applied to an urban system of residential buildings in Spain. The results provide evidence of the environmental benefits achieved with the prevention scenario. The prevention scenario reduces the construction waste generated in the non-prevention scenarios by up to 57%. Furthermore, it allows a potential reduction of up to 4.6 and 171.1 times the impact caused by the disposal scenario; and up to 1.7 and 8.3 times those of the recycling scenario. The model can be implemented in other contexts with other reference buildings, and enables the environmental benefits of reduction strategies to be studied, thereby providing a tool to guide and support decision-making during the building design stage. Moreover, the results obtained can help professionals and policymakers to incorporate effective construction waste prevention measures in waste prevention plans and programs.

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Section: Lca and Psmentioning

confidence: 99%

An LCA-based model for assessing prevention versus non-prevention of construction waste in buildings

et al. 2021

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“…Legislation often refers to the so-called waste hierarchy (prevention, re-use, recycling, other recovery, disposal) but the hierarchy alone is insufficient in providing guidance when considering a combination of recycling and waste treatment technologies in integrated waste management systems (WMS). A comprehensive environmental assessment such as life cycle assessment (LCA) (Finnveden et al, 2005;Gheewala, 2009), as is recommended by the European legislation (EC, 2008), is necessary to provide decision support to minimize the environmental burdens associated with waste. Generally, the first priority of the waste hierarchy (waste reduction) is well accepted as the preferred solution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, if site-specific process models are used, knowledge of the waste composition, which allows for input-dependent modelling of emissions from waste management facilities (e.g. incinerators), is more coherent (Boesch et al, 2014;Gheewala, 2009;Laurent et al, 2014a). The need for regionally specific assessments has led to the development of several tools for WMS LCAs (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modular life cycle assessment of municipal solid waste management

Haupt

Kägi²,

Hellweg

2018

Waste Management

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly applied to examine the environmental performance of waste management systems. The system boundaries are, however, often limited to either one tonne of material or to specific waste treatments and are, therefore, lacking a systems perspective. Here, a framework is proposed to assess complete waste management systems based on actual waste flows, assessed with a detailed material flow analysis (MFA) in a modular MFA/LCA approach. The transformation of the MFA into a product-process-matrix facilitates a direct link between MFA and LCA, therefore allowing for the assessment of variations in flows. To allow for an up-to-date and geographically specific assessment, 190 LCA modules were set up based on primary industrial data and the ecoinvent database. The LCA modules show where there have been improvements in different recycling processes over the past years (e.g. for paper recycling) and highlight that, from an environmental perspective, closed-loop recycling is not always preferable to open-loop recycling. In a case study, the Swiss municipal solid waste management system, of which there is already a detailed MFA, was modeled using the new LCA modules and applying the modular MFA/LCA approach. Five different mass flow distribution scenarios for the Swiss municipal solid waste management system were assessed to show the environmental impact of political measures and to test the sensitivity of the results to key parameters. The results of the case study highlight the importance of the dominant fractions in the overall environmental impacts assessment; while the metal fraction has the highest impact on a per kilogram basis, paper, cardboard, glass and mixed municipal solid waste were found to dominate the environmental impacts of the Swiss waste management systems due to their mass. The scenarios also highlight the importance of the energy efficiency of municipal solid waste incineration plants and the credits from material substitution as key variables. In countries with advanced waste management systems such as Switzerland, there is limited improvement potential with further increases in recycling rates. In these cases, the focus of political measures should be laid on (i) the utilization of secondary materials in applications where they replace high-impact primary production, and (ii) an increased recovery of energy in waste-to-energy plants.

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