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Optimizing Resource and Energy Recovery for Municipal Solid Waste Management
Citation:
Thorneloe, S. Optimizing Resource and Energy Recovery for Municipal Solid Waste Management. Presented at Life Cycle Assessment and other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource optimization, Cetararo, ITALY, June 05 - 10, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
To present on "Optimizing Municipal Solid Waste as a Resource" as an invited speaker to a weeklong research conference on life-cycle assessment for waste management and resource optimization. The author is on the international scientific advisory committee and her participation reflects her standing in the international research community building tools for sustainable materials management.
Description:
Significant reductions of carbon emissions and air quality impacts can be achieved by optimizing municipal solid waste (MSW) as a resource. Materials and discards management were found to contribute ~40% of overall U.S. GHG emissions as a result of materials extraction, transport, collection, processing, recycling, composting, combustion, and landfilling. Decisions affecting materials management today are generally either fiscally based or on the presumption of favorable outcomes without an understanding of the environmental tradeoffs. However, there is a growing demand to better understand and quantify the net environmental and energy trade-offs in setting waste management goals and priorities at a state and local level. This presentation will describe a 2nd generation tool being developed through the ACE RAP for SEM 1.2