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Application of Life Cycle Assessment for Solid Waste Management

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Chemical and Molecular Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2019) | Viewed by 6185

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, University of Gavle, S-801 76 Gävle, Sweden
Interests: sustainability; built environment; green building; circular economy; sustainable; development; environmental impact assessment; environment; environmental analysis; environmental management; climate change
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Waste generation rates are high and increasing. Reuse and recycling are making progress, but still most waste is subject to landfill disposal with poor resource recovery, causing the emission of climate gases and hazardous substances. For a long time, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely used to evaluate the environmental impact of waste management. Even if LCA in waste management is well described in books and occasionally as part of LCA case studies, rather few scientific publications can be found which are dedicated to reviewing, discussing, and developing the LCA method as such. As concepts such as remanufacturing, cradle-to-cradle, and circular economy evolve along with improved technology, it is relevant and vital that LCA methodology be further developed so that it can be used to evaluate the environmental benefits of increased circularity of materials.

Papers within the whole field of life cycle assessment of solid waste management are welcome. Of special interest are papers on (1) methodology development and (2) combined assessment of waste management systems and other systems such as transport systems, energy systems, agricultural systems etc. investigating how waste can be turned from a problem to a renewable resource, thereby offsetting environmental impact from conventional production methods. Other topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, LCA used in:

  • circular economy concepts;
  • scenarios and future studies;
  • technology development;
  • combination with cost benefit analysis and social LCA;
  • policy making;
  • planning and implementation;
  • education and training.

Assoc. Prof. Ola Eriksson
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • solid waste
  • waste treatment
  • LCA
  • policy making

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2209 KiB  
Article
The Life-Cycle Environmental Impact of Recycling of Restaurant Food Waste in Lanzhou, China
by Zilong Zhang, Wenyan Han, Xingpeng Chen, Na Yang, Chenyu Lu and Yueju Wang
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(17), 3608; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9173608 - 2 Sep 2019
Cited by 29 | Viewed by 5753
Abstract
The recycling of restaurant food waste can bring environmental benefits and improve food safety for urban residents. We here assessed the entire life cycle of the anaerobic digestion–aerobic composting technique of restaurant food waste recycling using Lanzhou as a case study. We used [...] Read more.
The recycling of restaurant food waste can bring environmental benefits and improve food safety for urban residents. We here assessed the entire life cycle of the anaerobic digestion–aerobic composting technique of restaurant food waste recycling using Lanzhou as a case study. We used the CML2001 method provided with the Gabi software and compared the results to those produced using the traditional treatment techniques (landfill and incineration). This work includes a sensitivity analysis of the results. It is here concluded that the anaerobic digestion–aerobic composting technique had the smallest environmental impact of the methods here examined. The life cycle of anaerobic digestion–aerobic composting primarily consumes water, clay, coal, crude oil, and natural gas. The pre-processing phase consumes the most resources, and anaerobic digestion showed the greatest environmental impact. Specific environmental impacts in order from the highest to lowest potential to exacerbate global warming were found to be photochemical ozone production, acidification, eutrophication, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. The main factors associated with different environmental impacts and the environmental impacts themselves were found to differ across different phases. Some environmental impacts were shown to be sensitive to electricity, and the eutrophication potential and photochemical ozone creation potential showed the least sensitivity to all variables. To reduce the environmental impact of the anaerobic digestion–aerobic composting treatment technique, the energy structure and consumption of electricity, water, and diesel need to be optimized. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Life Cycle Assessment for Solid Waste Management)
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