Life cycle assessment of BMT based integrated municipal solid waste management: Case study in Pudong, China

Biological and mechanical treatment (BMT) is a newly developed integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management pretreatment process. Based on recommended BMT-based integrated MSW management system, life cycle assessment is employed to compare the environmental impact potential (EIP) of three BMT based waste treatment strategies (BMT-compost, BMT incineration and BMT landfill) with traditional landfill and incineration in Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The results show that the incineration process of MSW presents the highest acidification potential, and landfill presents both the highest global warming potential and eutrophication potential. Meanwhile, EIP of BMT-compost, BMT-incineration and BMT landfill are all decreased greatly when BMT technology is introduced into municipal solid waste management. The total environmental impact potential (TEIP) of landfill is 1.5 times larger than that of BMT-landfill. And the TEIP of incineration is also 1.5 times larger than that of BMT incineration while the TEIP of BMT compost is the lowest. The result verifies that BMT-based MSW management model would be environmentally reasonable and helpful to develop integrated MSW management system in Pudong. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.