LCA OF THE MANAGEMENT AND TRANSPORTATION OF MATERIALS PRODUCED WITH THE SEPARATED COLLECTION: THE CASE STUDY OF BARONISSI, ITALY

The main aim of this study was to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of the management and transportation system of materials produced with the separated collection in Baronissi, a town of around 17,000 inhabitants, in the Campania region of Italy. Three scenarios were considered: (1) management scenario 2000-2013; (2) management, internal and external transportation scenario 2013; (3) alternative scenario 2013 (it differs from Scenario 2 for the presence of a composting plant at 10 km far from the town of Baronissi). SimaPro v.8.0.2 was the LCA software tool. The environmental impacts were evaluated in terms of IPCC 2007 GWP 100y, Ecological Footprint and Recipe 2008. For all the impact assessment methods, there was a continuous increasing of avoided impacts from 2000 up to 2013 (Scenario 1). The system boundary of Scenario 2 was extended to the final destination of all the collected materials, considering both internal and external transportation. For all the impact assessment methods, the management phase corresponded to avoided impacts, whilst the transportation phases generated positive impacts. For all the methods, the internal transportation were two times more impacting than the external transportation. For Scenario 3, the proximity of a composting plant would allow saving more than 8 kg of CO2 equivalents per capita in a year