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SUSTAINABILITY AND ITS IMPACT ON SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
Citation:
Thorneloe, S. SUSTAINABILITY AND ITS IMPACT ON SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT. To be Presented at 14th International Waste Management and Landfill Symposium, Cagliari, ITALY, September 30 - October 04, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
To present research from the U.S. EPA in release and application of a decision support tool for materials and discards management.
Description:
The MSW DST was initially developed in the 1990s and has evolved over the years to better account for changes in waste management practices, waste composition, and improvements in decision support tool design and functionality. The most recent version of the tool is publicly available and has an improved interface with embedded tutorials to guide the user. The tool incorporates an optimization routine to identify least cost or least emissions strategies. The tool can be downloaded to a PC and is considered to be a major advancement that is expected to lead to more sustainable solid waste management plans for local, state, and regional communities. The website address for downloading the software is: https://mswdst.rti.org/. More than 100 studies have been conducted using the tool since its initial development to evaluate strategies of interest to the community and think more broadly in terms of both global and local impacts. The MSW DST has up to eight sectors that can be used to represent urban, rural, suburban, and commercial sectors. For each sector, the waste composition and quantity, facility design and operation, transportation fuels and distances, population densities and other factors can be specified to account for variations among sectors. The ultimate goal is to use the pilot study to help illustrate how the tool can be used to identify more sustainable solutions that consider the three pillars of sustainability.