Input‐Output Analysis of Waste Management

Abstract

Summary A new scheme of hybrid life‐cycle assessment (LCA) termed the waste input‐output (WIO) model is presented that ex‐plicitly takes into account the interdependence between the flow of goods and waste. The WIO model has two distin‐guishing features. First, it expands the Leontief environmental input‐output (EIO) model with respect to waste flows. It turns out that the EIO model is a special case of the WIO model in which there is a strict one‐to‐one correspondence between waste types and treatment methods. By relaxing this condition, the WIO model provides a general framework for LCA of waste management. Second, the WIO model takes into account the “dynamics of waste treatment”, which refers to the fact that the input‐output relationships of waste treatment are significantly affected by the level and composition of waste feedstock, by incorporating an engineering process model of waste treatment. Because waste treatment is expected to accept whatever waste is generated by industry and households, a proper consideration of this feature is vital for LCA of waste management. We estimated a WIO table for Japan and applied it to evaluating effects of alternative waste management poli‐cies with regard to regional concentration of incineration and the sorting of waste with regard to flammability. We found that concentrating treatment in a small number of large incin‐erators combined with an increased degree of sorting could decrease both landfill consumption and the emission of carbon dioxide.

A network approach for assembling and linking input–output models

“…In supply-use systems it may happen that a given product category is generated by multiple industries (UN, 1999) Trade and transport margins Information about the total volume of domestic or international trade and transport margins paid by a particular industry but lack of discrimination as to which margin provider actually delivered the service (Streicher and Stehrer, 2014) Closed and hybrid models A monetary description of the production side of the economy is combined with either the consumption side (Miyazawa, 1968) or a non-monetary description of production, such as process-based life-cycle inventories (Joshi, 1999) or a physical description of the energy (Guevara and Rodrigues, 2016) or waste sector (Nakamura and Kondo, 2002) Extensions classification mismatch In an extended IO model the level of detail of available industry information in an IO table may differ from that of the environmental extensions (Su et al, 2010;Lenzen, 2011) …”

Responsibility for Regional Waste Generation: A Single-Region Extended Input–Output Analysis for Wales

“…For example, NAKAMURA and KONDO (2009) detail a waste input-output (WIO) framework, which first appears in NAKAMURA (1999) and is applied to the Japanese economy and waste cycles. This WIO framework forms the basis for many different types of analyses: see NAKAMURA and KONDO (2002) for an analysis of different waste management methods and strategies; TAKASE et al (2005) and KONDO and TAKASE (2007) for analyses related to sustainable consumption; and TSUKUI (2007) for an analysis of waste emissions. There have also been numerous contributions linking the WIO model to other modelling frameworks in attempts to capture additional waste-economyenvironment relationships: see KONDO and NAKAMURA (2005) Where the WIO framework and its extensions aim to incorporate waste and waste management into the input-output framework, our paper adopts a different approach, closer in similarity to a satellite-accounts approach.…”

A comment on “Functions, commodities and environmental impacts in an ecological–economic model”

“…A criticism of the approach by Joshi (2000) is the handling of use and disposal phases of the life cycle , however there is no reason why the use and disposal phases can not be further disaggregated into the IOA framework as is shown in Table 2 and essentially performed by Suh (in fact, Nakamura and Kondo (2002) explicitly model endof-life). In fairness, the disposal phase in any LCA has many of the same weaknesses as the approach by Joshi (2000), particularly for products with a long life cycle; technological change may drastically change the method of disposal.…”

“…Another study which expanded an IO table to perform an LCA is the Waste InputOutput (WIO) model (Nakamura and Kondo, 2002). In the WIO model, Nakamura and Kondo (2002) expanded the Japanese IO table to include waste and waste treatment sectors.…”

“…In the WIO model, Nakamura and Kondo (2002) expanded the Japanese IO table to include waste and waste treatment sectors. The primary objective of the study was to compare different waste treatment policies.…”