Application of life cycle assessment of system

solution scenarios for municipal solid waste

management in European Union
Afşın Yusuf ÇETİNKAYA (  [email protected] )
Yıldız Technical University
Levent BİLGİLİ
Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University

Research Article

Keywords: life cycle assessment, municipal solid waste management, SimaPro

Posted Date: August 9th, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1921403/v1

License:   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Abstract
The aim of this study is to present the results of a life cycle assessment for several scenarios for
municipal solid waste management in the European Union. After the entry into force of the
European Union Landfill Directive, activities have been taken in succession to establish sustainable MSW
management. A life cycle assessment was conducted to determine the environmental impact of
municipal solid waste. To determine the environmental effect of various disposal and recovery methods,
five different scenarios most commonly used in the European Union were compared: (1) 100% landfill, (2)
100% metals are recycled, remaining waste are sent to incineration, (3) 40% of organic and recyclable
waste are composted and recycled, respectively and the remaining wastes are sent to landfill, (4) 100% of
organic and recyclable waste are composted and recycled, respectively and the other wastes are sent to
landfill, (5) 100% of organic and metal waste are composted and recycled, respectively and the remaining
waste are sent to incineration. In Scenario-1, disposal methods contribute significantly to global warming
and increase the environmental impact of non-carcinogenic substances. In order to reduce the negative
impact on the environment in landfills, the recovery of electricity from methane gas has significantly
reduced the potential impact of global warming. The results showed that Scenario-4 and Scenario-5 are
more environmentally friendly compared to other scenarios.

1. Introduction
Solid wastes cause high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. In the process from the collection of solid
wastes to their disposal, a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions is released into the
atmosphere, and this rate increases even more during the disposal process (Johari et al. 2012; Devadoss
et al. 2021). Municipal solid waste management (MSW) has a heterogeneous structure. MSW consists of
an organic fraction and an inorganic fraction. MSW varies significantly with the level of development and
seasonality of consumption habits and communities (Das et al. 2021; Anshassi et al. 2022).

Owing to the negative environmental effects of landfill gas and the generation of landfill leachate,
compost has recently become one of the alternative methods to landfills [(Dhote et al. 2022). Compost is
the useful end product of the recycling activity of the organic matter produced for reuse. Composting is a
biochemical decomposition process in which decomposable (degradable) organic components (some of
food waste, paper and garden waste) in solid waste are converted into humus or similar product under
controlled conditions (Wang et al. 2022; Zhou et al., 2022). Composted MSW can be widely used as a soil
conditioner in agricultural uses in recent years as a source of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. Whereas,
heavy metals may limit the reuse of compost for agricultural purposes (Chia et al., 2020).

As an alternative MSW treatment method, incineration has recently gained popularity due to its energy
recovery and waste volume reduction properties. Due to, many pollutants are released from the flue gas
of waste incineration plants. Among these compounds, dibenzo-p-dioxin/furan is one of the most
important environmental pollutants in ecological systems. These chemicals have many isomers and

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components and are highly toxic. The US Environmental Protection Agency (2007) has classified these
toxic metals and dioxins as probable carcinogens.

Sanitary landfilling is a disposal facility built with special engineering methods, a permanent
infrastructure is provided, leachate water is collected and treated, wastes are stored in a coordinated
manner, and kept under control during and after operation (Makarichi et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2021).

Recently, it has been widely used in Solid Waste Management (SWM) and 4R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
and Recover). As the development level of countries increases, recycling from waste continues to
increase in parallel (Yu et al. 2021; Thakur et al. 2021). Demographic and socio-economic developments
significantly affect MSW production among EU member states (Giannakitsidou et al. 2020). In order to
reduce the global warming potential (GWP) of MSW management, the European Union (EU) Landfill
Directive (EU Directive 99/31/EC) was introduced in 1999 to decrease the amount of waste sent to
landfill. (European Commission EC, 1999) (Bacchi et al. 2018). EU member states are legally obliged to
create and implement regional policy equipment to achieve these goals. In addition, the EU Waste
Framework Directive (EU Directive 2008/98/EC) established the “waste management hierarchy” to guide
the sustainable waste management practice (Gharfalkar et al. 2015). The Waste Framework Directive
2008/98/EC (EC, 2008) is an important milestone in waste management and provides detailed guidelines
for municipal waste management, containing waste prevention and waste treatment. The European
Commission (2015) has set targets to gradually limit municipal landfills to 10 percent by 2030. The
European Union-28 (EU-28) members produced approximately 0.25 billion tons of municipal waste in
2017, with an average output of 486 kg per capita, according to Eurostat (EU Statistical Office) 2018 data
(Sarra et al. 2017). Energy generation and recycling from waste can reduce the amount of waste sent to
landfills, thereby meeting the European Commission's targets to reduce landfill waste by 10 percent by
2030. In addition to these, the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear
Safety published the "5-Point Plan for Less Plastic and More Recycling" in 2018 to reduce plastic waste,
in order to reduce the plastic waste problem. (BMU, 2017). According to the Implementation of the EC's
2018 Circular Economy Package (EC, 2018), the least environmentally harmful methods are recovery
methods such as recycling and energy recovery (Bourguignon, 2018) Recycling and recovery reduce the
environmental impact associated with waste management and promotes job creation and investment
(Jeswani et al. 2018; Yu et al. 2021). On the contrary, waste disposal processes such as landfill and
incineration are considered as the least desirable options for the environment due to the space
requirement and high cost in terms of pollution (Ghasemi et al. 2016; EC 2017).

The life cycle assessment (LCA) is an efficient program used to appreciate and compare the
environmental aspects of different MSW management strategies (Bilgili et al. 2022). LCA makes an
important contribution to sustainable waste management strategies. Integrated solid waste management
(ISWM) proposes sustainable waste management with a Cradle to the Grave approach. Waste recycling
and disposal is an important part of a product's life cycle and is associated with environmental burdens
like other life cycle stages (Anshassi et al. 2021; Ibáñez-Forés et al. 2021). Additionally calculating the

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environmental impacts and loads related with waste management options, the LCA can also be used to
investigate the improvement.

2. Materials And Methods

The life cycle impact assessment results were calculated for the midpoint categories using the IMPACT
2002 + method. LCA was conducted in accordance with ISO 14040 standards. IMPACT 2002 + is an
internationally accepted method that is widely used, especially in examining the environmental impact of
waste management methods. In addition, the calculations were repeated and evaluated with CML-IA and
ReCiPe 2016 methods within the scope of sensitivity analysis.

According to 2021 data, a total of 14,647,577 tons of waste was produced in EU countries (EC, 2020). The
composition of these wastes according to waste types is presented in Fig. 1:

As one of the main pillars of the LCA approach, a functional unit was created in order to evaluate the total
amount of waste produced, and calculations were made over 1 ton of waste. Accordingly, the distribution
of 1 t of waste was determined as 29.60 kg paper and cardboard, 26.96 kg plastics, 23.61 kg rubber,
0.0078 kg wood, 5.13 kg textiles, 1.35 kg glass, 5.23 kg organic and 908.11 kg metal.

Calculations were performed using the SimaPro package program. Since wastes are products at the end
of their life, first of all, the wastes must be introduced into the system. After this process has been applied
to all wastes and the compost and recycle processes have been defined, the calculation part can be
started. According to the scenarios created in the calculation part, the waste amounts are determined and
entered into the system and the calculations are completed according to the preferred method.

Five scenarios were used in the study:

Scenario-1: All waste is sent to landfill.

Scenario-2: All of the metal wastes are sent for recycling, while all other wastes are sent to landfill.

Scenario-3: 40% of recyclable (paper and cardboard, plastics, glass, and metals) and organic waste is
sent to recycling and compost, respectively. The remainder is sent to landfill with all other waste.

Scenario-4: All recyclable (paper and cardboard, plastics, glass, and metals) and organic waste are sent
to recycling and compost, respectively. The remaining waste is sent to landfill.

Scenario-5: All recyclable (paper and cardboard, plastics, glass, and metals) and organic waste are sent
to recycling and compost, respectively. The remaining waste is sent for incineration.

While determining the scenarios, Scenario-1 was accepted as the base scenario. The worst environmental
performance is expected to occur in this scenario. Scenario-2 assumes that only metal wastes are
recycled as they constitute the largest share in the waste composition, while other wastes are sent to
landfill. In Scenario-3, it is assumed that the EU average of 40% is recycled and other wastes are sent to
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landfill, while Scenario-4 represents an optimistic scenario where all recyclable wastes are recycled and
other wastes are sent to landfill. Scenario-5, on the other hand, is similar to Scenario-4, only the
incineration process takes place instead of landfill.

3. Results And Discussions

3.1 Results
There are two ways to obtain characterization factors, at the midpoint level and at the endpoint level. The
basis of the midpoint level is the characterization factors in the two main pathways located at the point
along the cause-effect pathway, where the environmental mechanism is the same for each environmental
flow typically assigned to this impact category (Bilgili et al. 2022). The obtained results are presented in
Fig. 2 comparatively for all scenarios:

As can be seen clearly in Fig. 2, landfill gives the worst environmental performance in all impact
categories except the freshwater ecotoxicity category. The effect of the landfill method on human toxicity,
eutrophication and land transformation categories is also significant. Apart from these, Scenario-4 and
Scenario-5, where all recyclable waste is recycled and organic waste is processed in the composting
process, gives the best results in general. The main difference between these two scenarios is that waste,
which cannot be recycled and processed in the compost process, is sent to landfill and incineration,
respectively. Although these two disposal methods stand out positively in different impact categories, the
values are close to each other. The negative values in the figure show the gain obtained and it is clearly
seen how recycling and compost processes reduce the environmental burden.

These results were repeated with the CML-IA and ReCiPe 2016 methods, and a sensitivity analysis was
performed. Comparative results obtained according to these methods are presented in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4:

When the results in Fig. 2, Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 are interpreted holistically, it is seen that the landfill method
has the worst performance, especially in the eutrophication and toxicity categories. Based on these data,
the impact of the advantages of recycling and compost processes to have a larger share in waste
management can be clearly interpreted.
3.2 Discussions
Although the evaluation of domestic solid wastes from the life cycle perspective is not a new practice,
changes in waste compositions and waste disposal methods require updating LCA practices. As the
changing and developing technological applications enable the development of new disposal methods,
the results may also change up to date. In addition, since the components of the waste composition,
transportation method, and distance, and disposal process of each country or even city can be very
different, comparing the studies with each other is only important in terms of giving an idea and cannot
actually provide a real assessment. In the following paragraph, the results of the current study are
compared and interpreted with the previous studies carried out in different regions.

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In a study conducted in Sakarya, Turkey, five different scenarios including landfill, incineration, recycle,
and compost processes were created and the results were evaluated according to the LCA approach. Bu It
is seen that mainly organic wastes are present in the waste composition obtained in the study. The
results were interpreted according to the CML-IA method. Since organic wastes constitute 42% of the
wastes, compost has been suggested as the best disposal method. It is stated that the scenario in which
recycling and incineration is added to the compost is the most environmentally friendly scenario (Yay,
2015). A similar study was carried out for the Italian city of Naples. According to the findings, while
recycling provides a significant environmental benefit, it is considered inconvenient to rely on recycling
only because of energy consumption and emission generation (Ripa et al. 2017). In a recent study
conducted for the city of Moscow, Russia, it was stated that the landfill method is still the most
dangerous method, especially for the climate change category, and it was evaluated that incineration,
plastic recycling and avoided landfilling methods came to the fore from an environmental point of view
(Ripa et al. 2017). In another recent study comparing different waste management systems, it was
emphasized that separation at the source enables recycling to be much more efficient (Liu et al. 2018). A
similar result was obtained for Delhi, India, and it was predicted that the establishment of recycling
stations would reduce emissions during transportation by 70% (Mandpe et al. 2022). In a study
conducted for India in which four waste management scenarios were compared with the CML method, it
was observed that the integrated system in which the landfill, recycling, and compost processes were
carried out together gave the best results (Khandelwal et al. 2019). In a recent review article, it was stated
that the integrated operation of waste disposal methods has significant positive reducing contributions
especially to the global climate change category (Zhang et al. 2021).

Woon and Lo (2016) evaluated a landfill and an advanced incinerator in Hong Kong with a life cycle
analysis. The results show that with the inclusion private and external costs, the life cycle cost of the
incinerator is slightly lower. However, if only private costs are considered, the result is reversed and the
landfill life cycle cost is lower. The combination of recycling and thermal recovery was determined by a
life cycle analysis (LCA) to be the best option for MSW management (Cherubini et al. 2009).

When the results are compared, it is seen that it is very difficult to reach similar findings due to the
differences between waste compositions and other processes, but recycling and compost processes are
generally recommended. Despite this, it is obvious that these processes should work in integration with
other methods.

4. Conclusions
The research results will greatly assist policy makers in the EU to provide useful and scientific
information in their decision making regarding the construction of MSW treatment plants. According to
the results obtained, Scenario-1 and Scenario-3 had the most adverse environmental impacts in general.
The values of the different scenarios showed that scenario Scenario-1 was the worst-case scenario
among the analysed scenarios.

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Findings confirm that recycling and compost methods should be suggested as the best solution when
compared with previous results. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that each disposal method
has its own advantages as well as disadvantages, and it is necessary to accelerate the development of
integrated systems. Besides, the importance of recycling is increasing due to the fact that the EU waste
composition consists of metal to a significant extent. In this context, and given the wide differences in
performance found in the EU, further harmonized legislation for integration of waste management
procedures is urgently needed to improve performance.

Declarations
Funding-The authors thank Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University for supporting to buy licensed version of
SimaPro 9.3.0.2 software.

Competing Interest-The authors have no relevant or non-financial interests to disclose.

Author Contributions-All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation,
data collection and analysis were performed by Afşin Yusuf Çetinkaya and Levent Bilgili. All authors read
and approved the final manuscript.

Ethical Approval-Not applicable.

Consent to Participate-Not applicable

Consent to Publish-Not applicable

Availability of Data and Materials-The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current
study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Figures

Figure 1

EU waste composition

Figure 2

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Comparison of scenarios in midpoint categories

Figure 3

Comparison of scenarios in midpoint categories with CML-IA method

Figure 4

Comparison of scenarios in midpoint categories with ReCiPe 2016 method

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