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

Background, aim, and scopeMunicipal 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 featuresThis 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.ResultsIntegral 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.DiscussionThe 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.ConclusionsAn 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.

[1]  Forbes R McDougall,et al.  Integrated Solid Waste Management: A Lifecycle Inventory , 1995 .

[2]  Stefan Salhofer,et al.  Potentials for the prevention of municipal solid waste. , 2008, Waste management.

[3]  Herminio Sastre,et al.  Life cycle analysis of municipal solid waste management possibilities in Asturias, Spain , 2003, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[4]  Julian Cleary,et al.  Life cycle assessments of municipal solid waste management systems: a comparative analysis of selected peer-reviewed literature. , 2009, Environment international.

[5]  D W Pennington,et al.  Life cycle assessment: Part 1: Framework, goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, and applications , 2004 .

[6]  Horst-Christian Langowski,et al.  Life cycle assessment study on resilient floor coverings , 1997 .

[7]  Scott Duncan,et al.  A survey of unresolved problems in life cycle assessment , 2008 .

[8]  E J Wilson.  Life cycle inventory for Municipal Solid Waste management Part 2: MSW management scenarios and modeling , 2002, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[9]  Jane L. Price,et al.  Demand management - a basis for waste policy: a critical review of the applicability of the waste hierarchy in terms of achieving sustainable waste management , 2000 .

[10]  Tomas Ekvall,et al.  System boundaries and input data in consequential life cycle inventory analysis , 2004 .

[11]  Beverley Thorpe,et al.  Advancing Extended Producer Responsibility in Canada , 2006 .

[12]  Hans-Jürgen Dr. Klüppel,et al.  The Revision of ISO Standards 14040-3 - ISO 14040: Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework - ISO 14044: Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines , 2005 .

[13]  Anna Björklund,et al.  What life-cycle assessment does and does not do in assessments of waste management. , 2007, Waste management.

[14]  Bernie Thomas,et al.  International expert group on life cycle assessment for integrated waste management , 2003 .

[15]  A. Washizu,et al.  An Analysis of Sustainable Consumption by the Waste Input‐Output Model , 2005 .

[16]  E. Voet,et al.  Dematerialization: Not Just a Matter of Weight , 2004 .

[17]  John Shenot,et al.  Promoting Source Reduction Behavior , 1993 .

[18]  Mary Ann Curran,et al.  The international workshop on electricity data for life cycle inventories , 2005 .

[19]  P Buttol,et al.  LCA of integrated MSW management systems: case study of the Bologna District. , 2007, Waste management.

[20]  P. Brunner.  Materials Flow Analysis and the Ultimate Sink , 2004 .

[21]  Manuele Margni,et al.  Life cycle assessment of two baby food packaging alternatives: glass jars vs. plastic pots , 2009 .

[22]  Mattias Olofsson.  Improving Model-Based Systems Analysis of Waste Management , 2004 .

[23]  F. McDougall,et al.  Integrated Solid Waste Management , 2001 .

[24]  T. Cooper.  Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans and the “Throwaway Society” , 2005 .

[25]  Rodrigo Diaz,et al.  Modelling greenhouse gas emissions for municipal solid waste management strategies in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada , 2008 .

[26]  Helmut Rechberger,et al.  Quantitative evaluation of waste prevention on the level of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). , 2009, Waste management.

[27]  A. Scott Weber,et al.  Waste Management and Recycling , 2003 .

[28]  E J Wilson,et al.  Life cycle inventory for municipal solid waste management , 2002, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[29]  Joyce Smith Cooper,et al.  Specifying functional units and reference flows for comparable alternatives , 2003 .