Waste Management Planning: Life Cycle Assessment Approach as a Decision Support

The definition of the integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management system for a specific territorial area is a crucial issue from logistic, economical, technological, environmental and not least political point of view. Within this context, criteria must be supplied to the decision makers to make appropriate choices for a specific area. The criteria suggested and illustrated in this chapter are based on purely environmental considerations, approaching the analysis according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool, considered as a suitable instrument for direct and indirect impacts, resource depletion and saving evaluation. Several applications of LCA to different study cases of MSW management planning are presented. The approach always consisted in the definition of several MSW management scenarios, per each study case, focussed mainly on integrated waste treatment systems, made up of different types of plants. Particular attention was given in data gathering and system modelling regarding the considered processes, in order to reproduce reliable scenarios. Collected data and description of used models – for the illustrated study cases - will be given in the chapter. The LCA was carried out according to the steps indicated by ISO14040 series: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment and improvement. Concerning the impact assessment phase, results were reported mainly by means environmental effects of Eco-indicator methods (Eco-indicator’95 and Ecoindicator’99), sometimes using also some additional indicators (water consumption for example) or simplifying the reading of results focussing on some main effects (Greenhouse Effect for example). The common feature of the study cases presented in the chapter is to be energy recovery oriented integrated systems. In general, complex waste management integrated systems were studied, including MSW mechanical sorting, aerobic biostabilisation of separated organic fraction, anaerobic digestion of organic matter, landfilling and waste-to-energy. In some cases integrated management of MSW and wastewater treatment sludge was considered. Particular attention was devoted to the comparison of scenarios based on refuse derived fuel (RDF) production – also considering different level of refining - and combustion with energy recovery with respect to direct waste-to-energy of MSW resulting from a high level separated collection