Development of Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment for the Solid Waste Management System

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Engineering
• Sustainability

Background:

• Life-cycle assessments (LCAs) for municipal solid waste management (MSWM) are data-intensive, limiting their use in early planning.
• Streamlining LCAs can facilitate wider adoption and improve decision-making for waste management systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a systematic framework for streamlining LCAs of MSWM systems.
• To identify critical impacts, life-cycle inventory emissions, and inputs that significantly contribute to overall environmental impacts and influence scenario rankings.

Main Methods:

• Developed a streamlined LCA approach to reduce data requirements from a full LCA with 1752 flows and 10 impact categories.
• Analyzed 18 alternative MSWM scenarios involving six treatment processes.
• Identified critical impacts and inventory flows based on their contribution to total impacts and effect on scenario rankings.

Main Results:

• Human health cancer, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, and fossil fuel depletion account for 75-83% of total impacts across all MSWM scenarios.
• A small fraction (3.3%) of inventory flows contribute to over 95% of the overall environmental impact.
• The streamlined LCA approach yielded consistent strategy rankings compared to the full LCA.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework effectively streamlines LCAs for MSWM, reducing data intensity.
• Prioritizing specific impacts and inventory flows is crucial for efficient and accurate early-stage MSWM strategy design.
• The findings support the wider application of LCAs in planning and designing sustainable MSWM systems.