The incorporation of waste prevention activities into life cycle assessments of municipal solid waste management systems: methodological issues

Abstract

Background, aim, and scope Municipal solid waste (MSW) management organizations commonly address both waste treatment and diversion activities in their management plans, yet the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to MSW rarely incorporates the effects of waste prevention activities (WPAs) in an explicit manner. The primary objective of this paper is to further develop the methodological options for attributional LCAs of MSW to address waste prevention, including product reuse. Main features This article introduces the waste management and prevention (WasteMAP) LCA, a conceptual model that applies system expansion to generate a hybrid of the traditional product and waste LCA. The WasteMAP LCA, unlike the traditional LCA of MSW, can be used to compare functionally equivalent MSW management scenarios incorporating both treatment and prevention. This functional equivalence necessitates that waste prevention takes place through dematerialization. This form of WPA is analogous to waste management techniques such as landfilling in that it does not affect the functional output (product services) of MSW-generating product systems. Results Integral to the WasteMAP LCA is the requirement that the sum of the MSW managed through treatment and prevention, and the level of consumption of product services contributing to MSW generation, are identical for each scenario. A partial abandonment of the zero-burden assumption is also required. Consequently, product life cycles associated with WPAs, excluding the waste treatment stages, comprise the 'upstream' component of the system boundary, while the 'downstream' component encompasses the waste treatment life cycle. WasteMAP also possesses primary and secondary functional units, with the former accounting for the amount of waste managed, and the latter depicting the product services provided by the product systems responsible for the waste targeted for prevention. Discussion The WasteMAP LCA method can be used to identify in the results the burdens and avoided burdens attributed to waste prevention, recycling, biological and thermal treatments, as well as landfilling, within a particular MSW management system. This method also distinguishes itself through its ability to evaluate scenarios that target the prevention of particular waste streams to obtain downstream efficiency gains for the management of all waste materials. Conclusions An attributional LCA of MSW can be applied to a wider array of possible waste management scenarios, including those with waste prevention, by expanding the system boundary, and in the case of waste prevention through dematerialization, by introducing an additional type of functional unit.

Life-cycle greenhouse gas inventory analysis of household waste management and food waste reduction activities in Kyoto, Japan

“…Finally, we analyzed three food waste reduction activities: food loss prevention, water draining, and home composting. Cleary (2010) proposed an approach known as waste management and prevention life-cycle assessment (LCA; (Hirose 1995) WasteMAP LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of recycling as well as waste prevention. Following this approach, we set two functional units: a primary functional unit for waste management and a secondary functional unit for waste prevention.…”

Waste prevention for sustainable resource and waste management

“…However, to quantify the effects of 2R activities, improved conceptual models have been proposed [60][61][62]. Cleary proposed expansion of the system boundary to include the production stages of only the products affected by waste prevention activities [60].…”

Development of a Novel Food Waste Collection Kiosk and Waste-to-Energy Business Model

“…From an economic standpoint, this hydrolysis delay makes anaerobic digestion for food wastes less desirable from a time and cost standpoint. Additionally, low landfill disposal costs in the U.S. also contribute to the low waste-to-energy diversion rates [9]. The development of a user friendly collection kiosk for food waste that provides incentives is a key to successfully overcoming the techno-economic challenges of food waste division.…”