Abstract Description: The burgeoning waste crisis in developing countries necessitates robust and efficient solid waste management (SWM) to mitigate environmental and public health threats. Despite the availability of decision-support tools for SWM process selection, their effectiveness in developing countries is hampered by reliance on default values and underlying assumptions. This research addresses this critical gap by proposing the development of a geographically-specific, data-driven decision-support tool tailored to the unique challenges and resource constraints of developing nations.
A decision support tool’s Processing (Compost, Landfilling, regional landfilling, and open dumping process modules) were developed using a lifecycle approach to estimate the cost, diesel consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) associated with municipal solid waste processing, which is the second most fuel-intensive, heavily neglected and often a high budgetary item for municipalities for sustainable SWM. The module divides processing technology service areas into single and multi-family residential, and commercial sectors with sector-specific, user-defined characteristics, including population, waste generation rate, and waste composition. The data for the process module were collected from the State of Gujarat in western India.
Two case studies of urban cities with populations of 300-400 thousand, Vapi Municipality (VM) and 5.5-6.5 Million, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC)) were developed that represent the first applications of an assessment tool using life-cycle assessment for SWM. The results serve as a potent demonstration of the transformative potential of such customized approaches within developing contexts.
The total capital and operating costs per ton for AMC were 6.4% and 5% lower than VM, respectively, as expected due to economies of scale. Processing of waste in AMC consumes 19 % of the total diesel used for overall solid waste management and 65 % in VM.
The optimization results indicated that diverting waste from open dumping to a regional landfill reduced GHG emissions (by 51% for AMC, in conjunction with diversion to vermi-composting), and diverting waste from vermi-compost facilities and open dumping to a regional landfill reduced GHG emissions by 44% for VM; diverting waste from vermi-compost facilities and regional landfill to open dumps reduced costs (by 29% for AMC), and diverting waste from vermi-compost facilities to regional landfill and open dumps reduced costs by 18% for VM, when compared with the current scenario, based on primary data collected from municipalities. Sensitivity analysis illustrated the relative impact of changing individual parameters (waste tonnage, % diversion to different facilitates; vermicomposting, regional landfill, etc.) on the cost, diesel consumption, and GHG emissions.
