Environmental Assessment of Municipal solid waste management by using Life Cycle Analysis a case study of Pune City

Abstract

The present research assesses the environmental sustainability of waste treatment technologies to accelerate the transition toward integrated waste management systems in Pune Cities. The study was conducted in three stages. First, a comprehensive waste characterization data was collected from Pune Municipal Corporation to develop a dataset for municipal solid waste (MSW) based on source. Second, environmental impacts of various waste treatment scenarios for both MSW were evaluated using life cycle assessment (ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006), leveraging the waste characterization database. Third, an economic evaluation using life cycle costing (IS-13174:1994) and the present worth method was conducted to assess the financial feasibility of the treatment systems. Finally, evidence-based policy recommendations were developed to facilitate the transition toward integrated waste management for Pune City. The characterization studies reveal that organic waste constitutes a significant portion (41%) of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Pune. Consequently, adopting anaerobic digestion emerges as an optimal treatment option. The importance of source segregation in improving the efficiency of anaerobic digestion plants is emphasized. newlineEnvironmental impacts were assessed using EASETECH software and the ReCiPE Midpoint (Heuristic) World method. Five MSW treatment scenarios were evaluated: open dumping (S1), landfill without gas recovery (S2), landfill with gas recovery (S3), anaerobic digestion + LFWGR (S4), and incineration + LFWGR (S5). The baseline scenario (S1) exhibits the highest global warming potential, totaling 1093 kg CO2 eq. Comparatively, scenarios S2, S3, S4, and S5 demonstrate reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 67.7%, 81.3%, 97.2%, and 90.2%, respectively, compared to S1. newlineThe economic analysis of MSW treatment indicated that the combination of anaerobic digestion and engineered landfill had the highest benefit-cost ratio.