Life cycle assessment of potential municipal solid waste management strategies for Mumbai, India

Abstract

Dumping of municipal solid waste into uncontrolled dumpsites is the most common method of waste disposal in most cities of India. These dumpsites are posing a serious challenge to environmental quality and sustainable development. Mumbai, which generates over 9000 t of municipal solid waste daily, also disposes of most of its waste in open dumps. It is important to analyse the impact of municipal solid waste disposal today and what would be the impact under integrated waste management schemes. In this study, life cycle assessment methodology was used to determine the impact of municipal solid waste management under different scenarios. Six different scenarios were developed as alternatives to the current practice of open dumping and partially bioreactor landfilling. The scenarios include landfill with biogas collection, incineration and different combinations of recycling, landfill, composting, anaerobic digestion and incineration. Global warming, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicity were assessed as environmental impact categories. The sensitivity analysis shows that if the recycling rate is increased from 10% to 90%, the environmental impacts as compared with present scenario would reduce from 998.43 kg CO eq t of municipal solid waste, 0.124 kg SO eq t, 0.46 kg PO eq t, 0.44 kg 1,4-DB eq t to 892.34 kg CO eq t, 0.121 kg SO eq t, 0.36 kg PO eq t, 0.40 kg 1,4-DB eq t, respectively. An integrated municipal solid waste management approach with a mix of recycling, composting, anaerobic digestion and landfill had the lowest overall environmental impact. The technologies, such as incineration, would reduce the global warming emission because of the highest avoided emissions, however, human toxicity would increase.

Determination of the Least Impactful Municipal Solid Waste Management Option in Harare, Zimbabwe

“…Overall, MSWM option A5 emerges as the best option for managing MSW in Harare as shown in Table 6. This is confirmed from findings by Sharma and Chandel [111] that MSWM systems that combines incineration, anaerobic digestion, composting and materials recovery have the least environmental impacts. The recovery of landfill gas for combined heat and power (CHP) generation under the current study is attributed to the reduction of impact potentials across all the impact categories under consideration, except for A4 under acidification, in the MSWM options that incorporated landfilling because energy recovery from waste bring significant environmental benefits [95,110,[112][113][114][115][116].…”

“…Overall, MSW management option A5 emerges the best option for managing MSW in Harare as shown in Table 6. This is confirmed from findings by Sharma and Chandel [111] that MSW management that combines incineration, anaerobic digestion, composting and materials recovery has the least environmental impacts. Therefore, the LCA results from this study will inform the design and development of future integrated MSWM systems with reduced environmental and human health impacts.…”

Predictors Of Efficiency In Municipal Solid Waste Management In Moses Kotane Municipality In The North-West Province Of South Africa

“…Support should also be provided to research initiatives conducted by academic and research institutions in areas that are related to waste management, environmental sanitation, and personal hygiene by funding them partially or fully. The study conducted by Sharma and Chandel (2017) in M umbai, India has shown that…”

Economic analysis and life cycle impact assessment of municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal: A case study of Mumbai, India

“…In the Indian context, Sharma and Chandel (2017) compared six different scenarios for MSW management strategies for Mumbai city, India using the LCA approach. The scenarios included landfill with biogas collection, incineration and different combinations of recycling, landfill, composting, anaerobic digestion and incineration.…”

“…The economic assessment is performed using methods proposed for process engineering economics (Peters et al, 2003). LCA is a useful method for environmental and human health impact assessment (Finkbeiner et al 2006; Finnveden et al 2009; ISO, 2006a, 2006b) and has been applied for MSW management (Chaya and Gheewala, 2007; Cherubini et al, 2009; Damgaard et al, 2011; De Feo and Malvano, 2009; Khoo, 2009; Manfredi and Christensen, 2009; Sharma and Chandel, 2017; Tan et al, 2015). Therefore, this work uses LCA for environmental and human health impact assessment.…”