Review of LCA studies of solid waste management systems – Part I: Lessons learned and perspectives

•We perform a critical review of 222 LCA studies of solid waste management systems.•Studies mainly concentrated in Europe with little application in developing countries.•Assessments of relevant waste types apart from household waste have been overlooked.•Local specificities of systems prevent a mea...

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Vydané v:Waste management (Elmsford) Ročník 34; číslo 3; s. 573 - 588
Hlavní autori: Laurent, Alexis, Bakas, Ioannis, Clavreul, Julie, Bernstad, Anna, Niero, Monia, Gentil, Emmanuel, Hauschild, Michael Z., Christensen, Thomas H.
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2014
Elsevier
Predmet:
Applied sciences
Chemical Engineering
Contextual analysis
Decision- and policy-making
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
energy
ENERGY POLICY
Engineering and Technology
environmental impact
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
environmental models
Europe
Exact sciences and technology
General treatment and storage processes
geographical distribution
Kemiteknik
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
management systems
Mapping
Other wastes and particular components of wastes
Pollution
Refuse Disposal - standards
Result interpretation
SOLID WASTES
stakeholders
Teknik
Urban and domestic wastes
Waste hierarchy
WASTE MANAGEMENT
Waste Management - standards
Wastes
Europe
Life cycle assessment
Result interpretation
Mapping
Contextual analysis
Decision- and policy-making
Waste hierarchy
Waste management
Demolition waste
Life cycle (environment)
Geographic distribution
Environment impact
Solid waste
Domestic refuse
Sustainable development
Modeling
ISSN:0956-053X, 1879-2456, 1879-2456
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Popis
Shrnutí:•We perform a critical review of 222 LCA studies of solid waste management systems.•Studies mainly concentrated in Europe with little application in developing countries.•Assessments of relevant waste types apart from household waste have been overlooked.•Local specificities of systems prevent a meaningful generalisation of the LCA results.•LCA should support recommendations representative of the local conditions. The continuously increasing solid waste generation worldwide calls for management strategies that integrate concerns for environmental sustainability. By quantifying environmental impacts of systems, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool, which can contribute to answer that call. But how, where and to which extent has it been applied to solid waste management systems (SWMSs) until now, and which lessons can be learnt from the findings of these LCA applications? To address these questions, we performed a critical review of 222 published LCA studies of SWMS. We first analysed the geographic distribution and found that the published studies have primarily been concentrated in Europe with little application in developing countries. In terms of technological coverage, they have largely overlooked application of LCA to waste prevention activities and to relevant waste types apart from household waste, e.g. construction and demolition waste. Waste management practitioners are thus encouraged to abridge these gaps in future applications of LCA. In addition to this contextual analysis, we also evaluated the findings of selected studies of good quality and found that there is little agreement in the conclusions among them. The strong dependence of each SWMS on local conditions, such as waste composition or energy system, prevents a meaningful generalisation of the LCA results as we find it in the waste hierarchy. We therefore recommend stakeholders in solid waste management to regard LCA as a tool, which, by its ability of capturing the local specific conditions in the modelling of environmental impacts and benefits of a SWMS, allows identifying critical problems and proposing improvement options adapted to the local specificities.
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ISSN:0956-053X
1879-2456
1879-2456
DOI:10.1016/j.wasman.2013.10.045