Life-Cycle-Based Greenhouse Gas, Energy, and Economic Analysis of Municipal Solid Waste Management Using System Dynamics Model

Duan Lu, Asad Iqbal, Feixiang Zan, Xiaoming Liu and Guanghao Chen
Additional contact information
Duan Lu: School of Economics and Management, Huzhou Vocational & Technical College, Huzhou 313000, China
Asad Iqbal: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution (Hong Kong Branch) and Water Technology Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
Feixiang Zan: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution (Hong Kong Branch) and Water Technology Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
Xiaoming Liu: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution (Hong Kong Branch) and Water Technology Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
Guanghao Chen: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution (Hong Kong Branch) and Water Technology Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Sustainable municipal solid waste (MSW) management is a critical issue that requires planning in accordance with population growth, urbanization, and living standards. An evaluation that integrates system dynamics (SD) is newly built for identifying the interactions between social activities to predict future MSW generation. In this study, SD-based greenhouse gas (GHG), energy, and economic evaluations were conducted for MSW management in the Southern Tai Lake Watershed (STWL) area in China. The considered SD factors include the gross domestic product (GDP) growth, total population, population growth, MSW generation per capita, and MSW generation charges. The results indicate that the current MSW strategy (S1) does not perform well in GHG, energy, and cost evaluation, and the current landfill capacity will be depleted in 2022. Co-processing the landfilled waste with fresh MSW in incineration plants (S7) is the most favorable strategy, which indicates the current landfill capacity will be sufficient for the ash generated from incineration over the next decade. S7 also emits 1.5–3 times less GHG, recovers 2–3.2 times more energy, and obtains 1.3–2.0 times more economic benefits than S1 during 2020–2030. This study offers valuable insights regarding the dynamics of MSW generation and an approach to determine an optimal MSW management strategy for the future.

Keywords: municipal solid waste management; life cycle assessment; system dynamics; environmental analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1641/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1641/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1641-:d:492730

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().