engleski

Sustainability analysis of MSW management system through energy consumption and return approach

Inappropriate waste management, especially because of poor resource efficiency, is one of the biggest problems in the European Union. To solve this problem EU has adopted Landfill Directive 99/31/EC and Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC. With these directives, EU is trying to increase recycling and reuse and reduce waste disposal by 2020. Continuation of this path, in the years beyond 2020, is confirmed by EU package for the circular economy which includes revised legislative proposals on waste. In order to meet set goals, new EU member states, together with some old ones must quickly change national legislature and implement appropriate solutions. There are many strategies claiming that can solve this problem which comprises different technologies. In the circumstances of strong EU resource and energy dependence, it is necessary to analyse which of the considered waste management systems leads to higher overall benefits ie. which is more sustainable. The main problem in this kind of analysis is the difference in inputs and outputs of each technology as well as wide range of steps and procedures that can be a part of each waste management system. To evaluate the sustainability of these systems single-score assessment is conducted, using primary energy used to produce materials and energy vectors as a common measure by which different technologies are compared. Materials and energy carriers, which different systems consume and produce, are converted to primary energy by its cumulative energy demands and then aggregated resulting in single-score results which can be compared. This methodology can be used in system planning to rank considered solutions and in this paper is applied on the case of the City of Zagreb in order to compare the sustainability of different waste management scenarios.

Municipal solid waste ; waste management ; sustainability analysis ; primary energy ; cumulative energy demand

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