Environmental modelling of use of treated organic waste on agricultural land: a comparison of existing models for life cycle assessment of waste systems

Abstract

Modelling of environmental impacts from the application of treated organic municipal solid waste (MSW) in agriculture differs widely between different models for environmental assessment of waste systems. In this comparative study five models were examined concerning quantification and impact assessment of environmental effects from land application of treated organic MSW: DST (Decision Support Tool, USA), IWM (Integrated Waste Management, U.K.), THE IFEU PROJECT (Germany), ORWARE (ORganic WAste REsearch, Sweden) and EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies, Denmark). DST and IWM are life cycle inventory (LCI) models, thus not performing actual impact assessment. The DST model includes only one water emission (biological oxygen demand) from compost leaching in the results and IWM considers only air emissions from avoided production of commercial fertilizers. THE IFEU PROJECT, ORWARE and EASEWASTE are life cycle assessment (LCA) models containing more detailed land application modules. A case study estimating the environmental impacts from land application of 1 ton of composted source sorted organic household waste was performed to compare the results from the different models and investigate the origin of any difference in type or magnitude of the results. The contributions from the LCI models were limited and did not depend on waste composition or local agricultural conditions. The three LCA models use the same overall approach for quantifying the impacts of the system. However, due to slightly different assumptions, quantification methods and environmental impact assessment, the obtained results varied clearly between the models. Furthermore, local conditions (e.g. soil type, farm type, climate and legal regulation) and waste composition strongly influenced the results of the environmental assessment.

Assessment of tomato Mediterranean production in open-field and standard multi-tunnel greenhouse, with compost or mineral fertilizers, from an agricultural and environmental standpoint

“…It has been considered that the carbon which remains in the soil 100 years after compost application is 8% (Hansen et al, 2006;Smith et al, 2001). It was accounted for as a negative contribution to the total greenhouse gas emissions.…”

“…Some studies have compared the agronomical (Elherradi et al, 2005;Ghorbani et al, 2008;Hargreaves et al, 2008;Odlare et al, 2008;Poudel et al, 2001) and the environmental (Blengini, 2008;Hansen et al, 2006;Lundie and Peters, 2005;Martínez-Blanco et al, 2009;Meisterling et al, 2009;Ruggieri et al, 2009;Tidåker et al, 2007) performances of organic and mineral fertilizing solutions. Others have compared the environmental and agronomical performances of different production systems (such as greenhouse, shadow house and open-field) in a Mediterranean climate (Antón, 2004;Antón et al, 2005a;Muñoz et al, 2008b;Romero-Gámez et al, 2009).…”

Brazilian Lignocellulosic Wastes for Bioenergy Production: Characterization and Comparison with Fossil Fuels

“…The next step is the quanti-fication of the contribution from each biomass to the impact category (global warming). The reference substance for global warming is CO 2 (Hansen et al 2006).…”

EASEWASTE—life cycle modeling capabilities for waste management technologies

“…Due to the large number of different inputs and outputs needed for the LCA of a waste management process, this is quite an expensive approach, but there is no other way to support the required level of sophistication than to collect this kind of data. Most of these modules have been published and discussed in some detail in earlier papers (Hansen et al 2006;Kirkeby et al 2006aKirkeby et al , b, 2007Riber et al 2008;Manfredi et al 2009a, b;Zhao et al 2009;Niskanen et al 2009). The focus of this paper is to demonstrate the EASEWASTE model in full including its structure, functionalities, and integrated LCA modeling capabilities.…”