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ISSN:2325-6192 (print)
ISSN:2325-6206 (online)
Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management
António Mendes Lopes (editor), Jiazhong Zhang(editor)
António Mendes Lopes (editor)

University of Porto, Portugal

Email: aml@fe.up.pt

Jiazhong Zhang (editor)

School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710049, China

Fax: +86 29 82668723 Email: jzzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

A Life Cycle Assessment of Landfilled Municipal Solid Waste in Argentina The Influence of Waste Composition on Greenhouse Gases Emissions and Other Impacts

Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management 2(2) (2014) 145--162 | DOI:10.5890/JEAM.2014.06.005

María Daniela Caprile$^{1}$; Maddalena Ripa$^{2}$

$^{1}$ Ecology Area, National University of General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Juan María Gutiérrez 1150, 1613, Argentina

$^{2}$ Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Napoli, Napoli, Centro Direzionale - Isola C4, 80143, Italy

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Abstract

Landfills are still among the most common patterns of waste disposal in the world, in spite of the spreading awareness of their environmental impacts. Besides being one of the main sources of greenhouse gases emission (GHG) in the waste management sector, they are also responsible for human and ecosystem toxicity, eutrophication, photochemical oxydation, not to talk of landscape visual degradation, competition for land use and bad smell. In this paper, an empirical model is used to estimate CO2and other gaseous and liquid emissions from landfilling of mixed MSW. By means of an LCA framework, the business-as-usual scenario (landfilling) of San Miguel city (Buenos Aires) is analyzed as a benchmark case and compared to alternative waste management scenarios (40% waste reduction and 50% pre-sorting). Impact potentials are estimated with reference to 1 kg of wet mixed MSW disposed off in a sanitary landfill with bottom liner, leachate collection and treatment, and gas collection. A Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of the landfill was performed based on emissions released over a 100 years time interval after disposal. A special focus was placed on Global Warming Potential of landfilled waste (GWP, kg CO2eq), in order to shed light on the different impacts resulting from inclusion or subtraction of biogenic CO2, most often assumed as global warming neutral in published studies. Our results show that: (1) waste composition plays a critical role on waste LCIA; (2) the default exclusion of biogenic CO2emissions can lead to an underestimate of the environmental load of the landfill as far as climate change impact is concerned; (3) global warming, eutrophication, human toxicity and photochemical oxidation are the main impacts of landfilling practices; (4) alternative, waste-prevention and pre-sorting scenarios are likely to decrease such impacts by 20-30% compared to business-as-usual, depending on the investigatedimpact category.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the Parthenope University of Naples (EU Project LIFE11 ENV/DE/343, MARSS “Material Advanced Recovery Sustainable Systems”, LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance), the University of General Sarmiento and the National Agency of Science and Technology of Argentina. The authors are also grateful to Jaquelina Tapia for the map of the Big Buenos Aires Region (RGBA) and Salvatore Mellino for the fruitful debate and advices.

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