Researchers from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) have developed diverse methodologies to estimate the carbon print associated with each stage of the management of urban waste: collection, transport, and final treatment.
What is the impact on climate change of the treatment of urban waste management? A new methodology, developed by researchers from the group of Environmental Technologies and Industrial Resources (TARIndustrial) at UPM, will allow us to calculate such impact. The city of Madrid (Spain) was used as a case study to prove the validity and usefulness of the proposed methodology.
The obtained results can be useful to determine if the implemented treatments are aligned with the goals to reduce the carbon print. This methodology seems to work in Madrid.
The European Commission has set out different priority actions to optimize Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management (MSWM) in Europe, which are expected to bring environmental benefits as well as financial savings and social advantages. The 2008/98/CE directive on waste urges the European states to develop waste management policies that protect the environment and health, ensuring sustainable use of the resources.
This Directive establishes a legally binding, five-step hierarchy, setting out an order of priorities, starting with ‘waste prevention’ as the preferred option, followed by ‘preparing waste for reuse’, ‘recycling’ and ‘other recovery’, with ‘ final disposal’ being the last choice.
The management of urban waste includes the stages of collecting, transport, and final treatment. The methodology developed by researchers from the group of School of Industrial Engineering at UPM is focused on the treatment stage and has studied both the direct emissions (greenhouse emissions emitted by landfills, composting and incineration) and indirect emission (emissions associated with the electrical energy production). They also assessed the avoided emissions as a consequence of the recovery of materials or energy.
Its application in the city of Madrid allowed researchers to conclude that the treatment stage presents the highest contribution to the total impact (88.7% of the treatment stage and 11.3% of the collection and transport).
According to the study, the carbon print resulting from the treatment stage is 88% lower than the worst situation, in which urban waste is landfilled with no biogas recovery.
Javier Pérez, a researcher involved in this study says “the recovery of recyclable materials (plastics, steel, aluminum, glass, paper, and cardboard, etc.) and the implementation of biological treatments allowed us to benefit from the “waste-to-energy” process which is in line with the concept of the circular economy.
The principles of the European Union require us to reduce the urban waste, and when to work to recover the reusable fractions when generated.
Pérez, J., de Andrés, J.M., Lumbreras, J., Rodríguez, E., 2018. Evaluating carbon footprint of municipal solid waste treatment: Methodological proposal and application to a case study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 419-431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.103
Pérez, J.; Lumbreras, J.; de la Paz, D.; Rodríguez, E., 2017a. Methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of urban solid waste containerization system: A case study. Journal of Cleaner Production 150: 197-213, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.003
Pérez, J.; Lumbreras, J.; Rodríguez, E.; Vedrenne, M., 2017b. A methodology for estimating the carbon footprint of waste collection vehicles under different scenarios: Application to Madrid. Transportation Research Part D 52: 156–171, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2017.03.007
