Towards increased recycling of household waste: Documenting cascading effects and material efficiency of commingled recyclables and biowaste collection
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management remains a challenge, even in Europe where several countries now possess capacity to treat all arising MSW, while others still rely on unsustainable disposal pathways. In the former, strategies to reach higher recycling levels are affecting existing waste-to-ene...
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| Published in: | Journal of environmental management Vol. 157; pp. 69 - 83 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
England
Elsevier Ltd
01-07-2015
Academic Press Ltd |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Municipal solid waste (MSW) management remains a challenge, even in Europe where several countries now possess capacity to treat all arising MSW, while others still rely on unsustainable disposal pathways. In the former, strategies to reach higher recycling levels are affecting existing waste-to-energy (WtE) treatment infrastructure, by inducing additional overcapacity and this in turn rebounds as pressure on the waste and recyclable materials markets. This study addresses such situations by documenting the effects, in terms of resource recovery, global warming potential (GWP) and cumulative energy demand (CED), of a transition from a self-sufficient waste management system based on minimal separate collection and efficient WtE, towards a system with extended separate collection of recyclable materials and biowaste. In doing so, it tackles key questions: (1) whether recycling and biological treatment are environmentally better compared to highly efficient WtE, and (2) what are the implications of overcapacity-related cascading effects, namely waste import, when included in the comparison of alternative waste management systems. System changes, such as the implementation of kerbside separate collection of recyclable materials were found to significantly increase material recovery, besides leading to substantial GWP and CED savings in comparison to the WtE-based system. Bio-waste separate collection contributed with additional savings when co-digested with manure, and even more significantly when considering future renewable energy background systems reflecting the benefits induced by the flexible use of biogas. Given the current liberalization of trade in combustible waste in Europe, waste landfilling was identified as a short-to-medium-term European-wide waste management marginal reacting to overcapacity effects induced by the implementation of increased recycling strategies. When waste import and, consequently, avoided landfilling were included in the system boundary, additional savings of up to 700 kg CO2 eq. and 16 GJ eq. of primary energy per tonne of imported waste were established. Conditions, such as energy recovery efficiency, and thresholds beyond which import-related savings potentially turn into GWP burdens were also determined.
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•We study effects of a full-scale system transition towards a recycling-based MSWMS.•Cascading effects due to induced WtE overcapacity are modelled for the first time.•Increased recycling contributes to large GWP savings, but rather small CED savings.•Filling free WtE capacity with imported waste brings substantial GWP and CED benefits.•Import benefits are dependent on energy recovery efficiency and type of avoided disposal. |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0301-4797 1095-8630 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.04.008 |