The Landfilling of Municipal Solid Waste and the Sustainability of the Related Transportation Activities

Laura Cirrincione, Maria La Gennusa, Giorgia Peri, Gianfranco Rizzo and Gianluca Scaccianoce
Additional contact information
Laura Cirrincione: Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Maria La Gennusa: Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Giorgia Peri: Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Gianfranco Rizzo: Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Gianluca Scaccianoce: Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: The management of municipal solid waste is a crucial issue to address as we move toward the decarbonization of urban contexts. Not by chance, this sector plays a relevant role in the Covenant of Mayors program, whereby municipalities are called to design their own Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SECAPs). However, despite new regulations strongly pushing the recycling and reuse of materials contained in municipal waste, many cities still use large landfills. As part of the overall environmental pressure exerted by these urban systems, the transport of waste from collection points to landfills or treatment facilities must be considered in order to correctly assess the full environmental burden of waste management. To this aim, in this paper, the Ecological Footprint method is applied to the municipal solid waste management system of the city of Palermo (Sicily). The results show that the impacts produced by the means of transport used, both in the status quo and in the assumed enhanced scenario (with less municipal waste disposed to landfills in favor of recycling), are significant compared to those caused by the other segments of the waste management system. The concept of a “saved footprint” is also introduced here, in order to properly compare the two scenarios.

Keywords: municipal solid waste; environmental sustainability; transportation vehicles; sustainable transportation; ecological footprint; landfill (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/5272/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/5272/ (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:14:y:2022:i:9:p:5272-:d:803471

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 ().