Environmental and economic assessment of waste collection and transportation using LCA: A case study

The present study is aimed to evaluate the environmental and economic burden associated with current waste collection practices in Dhanbad city, Jharkhand, India. In this study various alternatives were suggested to mitigate these impacts by optimizing resource utilization and maximizing material recovery using life cycle approach. The functional unit adapted is the daily collection service provided for 180 tonnes of municipal solid waste generated in the study area. GaBi 10.6.1 software was used for impact assessment and impacts were assessed for five scenarios in terms of five different impact categories. This study assessed the collection services and treatment options jointly. Baseline scenario (S1) representing the current collection system had the highest impacts on all the impact categories and landfilling contributed the highest (67%) to the overall impacts on the environment. Scenario S2 involved the provision of material recovery facility and considered recycling of plastic wastes having sorting efficiency of 75% which reduced the overall impacts significantly (∼971%) compared to the baseline scenario. Scenario S3 considered composting of food waste (80% food waste sent for composting) and offered further overall impacts reduction (∼1052%) compared to the baseline scenario. In scenario S4, use of electric tippers was accounted which did not offer any significant impacts reductions. Scenario S5 considered the future electricity mix at grid (2030) in India which increased the benefits of using electric tippers. S5 had the least environmental impacts providing overall reductions of ∼1063% compared to baseline scenario and provided maximum economic benefits. Sensitivity analysis results found that variation in recycling had significant change in the environmental impacts. Considering the decrease in recycling rate from 100% to 50%, the impacts on abiotic depletion fossil increased by 136%, acidification by 176%, global warming by 11%, human toxicity by 172% and terrestrial ecotoxicity by 56%.