Environmental sustainability assessment of municipal solid waste management through carbon footprint

Abstract

One of the most challenging issues for building sustainable cities is the improvement of municipal solid waste management (MSWM), which requires a substantial effort to reduce its production and improve its different stages: collection (or pre-collection/containerization), transport and treatment. Each of these stages has environmental impacts stemming from the use of bags to hold the waste generated by residents in their homes, from the containers placed in public roads for drop-off, from the use of lorries or systems to transport waste to the processing plants, and from the construction and operation of plants to treat each waste fraction. In Europe, the Waste Framework Directive specifies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a necessary policy-making tool, ensuring that impacts are assessed from cradle to grave, and avoiding ?hiding? impacts by moving them to other countries or stages of production/consumption. One of the environmental impacts evaluated is climate change (CC), in which greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the whole life cycle are calculated: carbon footprint (CF). This poster shows a methodology, based on LCA standards (ISO 14040 / 14044 / 14067), to calculate CF of MSWM. This methodology was applied to Madrid City.