Life cycle assessment for waste management

Standard methods for assessing the environmental impact of waste management systems are needed to underpin the development and implementation of sustainable waste management practices. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an emerging tool for ensuring such assessment is comprehensive and covers the full “cradle to grave” impacts associated with providing a product or service. This paper discusses aspects of a recent study commissioned by the U.K. Department of the Environment to assess how LCA methodology could be developed and applied to assist decision makers in waste management. It focuses on a method developed by the research contractors for identifying the environmental burdens that occur during the collection, treatment and disposal of non-hazardous waste. The method requires waste management activities to be defined as generic unit operations which are independent of the specific characteristics of the waste processed. These unit operations are used to flowsheet the specific system under study and burdens that are independent of the waste are identified. Waste-dependent burdens are identified separately by considering the interaction of unit operations and the specific characteristics exhibited by the waste under study. For identification purposes a restricted list of 10 characteristics is considered sufficient to highlight those burdens for which inventory data may be required. Comment is made on the potential to develop the identification method to provide quantified data for the burden inventory.