TY - JOUR
T1 - Review of LCA studies of solid waste management systems - Part I
T2 - Lessons learned and perspectives
AU - Laurent, Alexis
AU - Bakas, Ioannis
AU - Clavreul, Julie
AU - Bernstad, Anna
AU - Niero, Monia
AU - Gentil, Emmanuel
AU - Hauschild, Michael Z.
AU - Christensen, Thomas H.
PY - 2014/3/1
Y1 - 2014/3/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Contextual analysis
KW - Decision- and policy-making
KW - Life cycle assessment
KW - Mapping
KW - Result interpretation
KW - Waste hierarchy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893770129&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.wasman.2013.10.045
DO - 10.1016/j.wasman.2013.10.045
M3 - Review article
C2 - 24369845
AN - SCOPUS:84893770129
SN - 0956-053X
VL - 34
SP - 573
EP - 588
JO - Waste Management
JF - Waste Management
IS - 3
ER -