Life cycle analysis of management options for organic waste collected in an urban area

Abstract

Different options for managing the organic fraction (OF) of municipal solid waste generated in a given urban area were analyzed by life cycle assessment (LCA) for different source segregation (SS) intensities ranging from 0 to 52%. The best management option for processing the OF remaining in the residual organic fraction (ROF) for the different SS intensities was by incineration. Landfilling and mechanical biological treatment (MBT) of ROF gave higher impacts. Aerobic treatment alone or combined with anaerobic digestion (AD) for processing the source-segregated organic fraction (SSOF) led to relevant environmental impact reduction even if the difference between the two options was quite negligible. The weighted impact showed that scenarios using incineration always gave environmental gains, whereas there was a higher environmental burden with the scenarios using MBT.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Environmental Impact from Recycling the Organic Fraction of Solid Waste: Comparison of Different Treatment Schemes from a Life Cycle Perspective

“…The COMP scenario always showed practically positive values for the impact categories. the ones most affected by the considered scenarios were GWP, HTPc, and FWec ( Figure 5 In other studies concerning the environmental performances of organic waste recycling and treatment, a relevant contribution to avoided impacts was assigned to the replacement of fossil fuels by biogas recovery and mineral fertilizer by organic ones presented in References [22,51]. Khoo et al [26] reported that an integrated treatment of food waste based on AD and post-composting showed lower impacts for global warming, acidification, and eutrophication potentials when compared to exclusive composting treatment.…”

Environmental assessments of biological treatments of biowaste in life cycle perspective: A critical review

“…In this context, the inclusion of thermal treatments in our review would not allow a proper evaluation of process-specific impacts on environmental performance due to substantial technical and environmental differences. Hence, we will not assess thermal treatments, although these treatments are also viable options and often exhibit better environmental performance (Antonopoulos et al, 2013; Di Maria and Micale, 2015). Other consistent reviews comparing the environmental performance of treatment options such as landfilling, composting, AD and incineration are also available, although the performance associated with these treatments is not process-specific, as we will explore in this review (Bernstad and La Cour Jansen, 2012; Schott et al, 2016).…”

A Life Cycle Analysis Approach for the Evaluation of Municipal Solid Waste Management Practices: The Case Study of the Region of Central Macedonia, Greece

“…As far as the composting process is concerned, a substitution ratio equal to 0.4:1 is considered, which means that 1 ton of organic waste yields 0.4 ton of compost. According to the literature [20,40], 1 ton of compost is equivalent to 23 kg of N-fertilizer, 9.5 kg of P-fertilizer, and 9 kg of K-fertilizer. The energy used for the operation of the composting plant is considered, and the model assumes the use of 19.67 kWh of electricity, 0.36l of diesel, and 0.054 m 3 of water per ton of waste treated [17].…”