Environmental Impact Evaluation of University Integrated Waste Management System in India Using Life Cycle Analysis

Amit Kumar Jaglan, Venkata Ravi Sankar Cheela, Mansi Vinaik and Brajesh Dubey
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Amit Kumar Jaglan: Amity School of Architecture & Planning, Amity University, Noida 201313, India
Venkata Ravi Sankar Cheela: Department of Civil Engineering, MVGR College of Engineering (A), Vizianagaram 535005, India
Mansi Vinaik: School of Management and Liberal Studies, The NorthCap University, Gurugram 122017, India
Brajesh Dubey: Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-18

Abstract: Decarbonization of university campuses by integrating scientific waste approaches and circular economy principles is the need-of-the-hour. Universities, the maximum energetic corporations and places for clinical studies and social activities, have a duty to assemble low-carbon campuses and play a vital function in lowering CO 2 emissions. An environmental life cycle assessment was conducted to compare proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment systems with the existing system in the residential university campus (RUC) in Kharagpur, West Bengal (India). The results show the existing MSW disposal practice in RUC (baseline scenario has the highest GWP (1388 kg CO 2 eq), which can potentially be reduced by adopting integrated waste management system with source segregation as represented in futuristic scenarios (S2—50% sorting) and (S3—90% sorting)). Compared to S1, GHG emission was reduced by 50.9% in S2 and by 86.5% in S3. Adopting anaerobic digestion and engineered landfill without energy recovery offsets the environmental emissions and contributes to significant environmental benefits in terms of ecological footprints. Capital goods play a pivotal role in mitigation the environmental emissions. The shift towards S2 and S3 requires infrastructure for waste collection and sorting will contribute to reduction of associated environmental costs in the long-term.

Keywords: municipal solid waste; life cycle assessment; global warming potential; anaerobic digestion; landfill (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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