EVALUACIÓN AMBIENTAL DE ALTERNATIVAS DE GESTIÓN DE RESIDUOS SÓLIDOS MEDIANTE LA HERRAMIENTA LCA-GIS-WASTE. IDENTIFICACIÓN DE VARIABLES CLAVE

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most suitable technique for evaluating the environmental performance of a municipal solid waste management system (MSWMS). However, a MSWMS has different aspects which are site-dependent (transport of waste or land use in landfill) that cannot be evaluated by the current commercial LCA software, but can be taken into account by applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS). With this purpose, a new tool that combines LCA and GIS (LCA-GIS-WASTE) has been developed and applied with the aim of identifying the key aspects in terms of contribution to the total environmental impact of a MSWMS. As a baseline scenario, the current MSW management system implemented in a Spanish municipality has been defined, including primary and secondary inventory data for the stages of pre-collection, collection, transport, treatment and final disposal. Alternative scenarios have been defined by modifying aspects such as biowaste selective collection quantities, efficiency of sorting plants, landfill location, etc. After the application of the LCA-GIS-WASTE tool to all of the scenarios, the strengths and improvable aspects of the current waste management system have been pointed out. Besides, the key variables in a MSWMS system has been identified, from an environmental viewpoint.