Quantifying the effects of general waste reduction on greenhouse-gas emissions at public facilities

Global municipal solid waste (MSW) amounts to approximately 1.3 billion tons per year and is expected to increase to approximately 2.2 billion tons per year by 2025. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from landfills contribute to global climate change. Emissions from this sector contribute around 3% of total net emissions in Australia. Although responsible for a minor portion of Australia’s emissions, the sector provides the opportunity for low-cost sources of abatement. This research study aimed to identify new opportunities for reducing GHG emissions from the landfill waste stream in public facilities in Blacktown City in New South Wales, Australia. For this purpose, two public facilities of different types were selected, a library and an aquatic center. The results of the study show that removing organic food waste from the landfill stream at 10 public facilities of the Council could reduce GHG emissions compared with landfilling the food waste by about 0.805 tCO2e/year. However, separately transporting that waste would emit 7.13 tCO2e/year. Therefore, the separated food waste would need to be processed on-site, for example, through worm farms. Removing coffee cups from the landfill waste stream could reduce the associated landfill GHG emissions by around 0.275 tCO2e/y for the 10 public facilities. The study also recommended separating plastic bags from the landfill waste stream of these facilities to reduce 1.10 tonnes of plastic bags from landfill each year. Implications: Potential opportunities for general waste reduction and GHG emission mitigation in public facilities has been studied in this paper. Removing coffee cups and organics food from the waste stream are the main potential opportunities for reducing general waste with possible GHG emission reduction of 0.275 tCO2e/y and 0.161 tCO2/y respectively for 10 public facilities. Removing plastic bags from the waste stream would offer another solution for waste reduction by jointing with the large program running in Australia and creating a collection point for them with 1.1 tonne/y mitigation in general waste at 10 studied public facilities