LIFE CYCLE IMPACT ASSESSMENT A CASE STUDY OF SOLID WASTE COLLECTION

System impact comparisons are made at all levels of society. At the individual level: should I buy a small economical car and rent a bigger one when I need to transport bigger items, or shall I buy a bigger car? At the industrial level when facing escalating labor costs: should my enterprise invest in a new production unit in a Low-Income Country (LIC), or should I robotize my existing enterprise in the High-Income Country (HIC)? Often we tend to make these impact comparisons or parts thereof rather intuitive and equally often our impact comparisons turn out to cover only those aspects of the system which are relatively easy to compare. It goes without saying that this way we may miss out on elements which are of importance.

Solid waste collection is in many countries still a largely manual issue, the waste collected in simple carts which are being pushed to a transfer point from where trucks transport the waste to disposal sites. For reasons of modernization, improving traffic flow, etc., there is a tendency to do away with the simple push carts + trucks and to change over to dedicated waste collection trucks functioning with standardized waste bins. The main reason justifying such a change is financial, i.e. labor costs. However, finances are only part of the picture. With increasing pressure on the environment, environmental system comparisons have received significant attention in the last few decades. Environmental Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is the common tool for these environmental comparisons. As such many Environmental Life Cycle Impact Studies have been carried out in both the industrial as well as the sanitary engineering context. Because of the systematic approach encountered in Environmental LCIA, also financial comparisons are being shaped in a similar fashion called Financial LCIA. Although a good step in the right direction, knowledge on environmental and financial impact provides still part of the picture needed for comparing system alternatives. The objective of this paper is to propose, in line with the domains of sustainability, an approach to quantify the social domain. This third domain is of specific importance in countries with a weak formal social network. A case study from the field of solid waste collection illustrates the approach.



Copyright: © IWWG International Waste Working Group
Quelle: Specialized Session F (Oktober 2007)
Seiten: 13
Preis: € 13,00
Autor: Maarten Siebel
Chiung-Ting Chang
H.J. Gijzen
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Vera Susanne Rotter
 
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