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The aim of this article is to examine how Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) contributes to the development of Waste Management Plans (WMPs). The case of Italy has been deeply investigated. The article first analyses whether and how the LCT methodologies were applied to the 21 regional WMPs; then, it draws indications for using LCT in the preparation of a WMP. Moreover, it outlines why the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology could be used as a powerful tool for regional planning in the waste field, analysing the indications for preparing a WMP that already exist at the European level and in the Italian National WM Programme. Results reveal that only four of the 21 regional WMPs include comprehensive and site-specific LCA studies. Building on these case study results, insights into the opportunities and benefits associated with incorporating LCT methodologies into WMP development and implementation are provided. This study underscores the critical importance of LCT and LCA in promoting sustainable waste management practices, ensuring compliance with European directives, and offering a foundation for more informed regional planning strategies., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Effective and efficient urban waste management systems (WMSs) are a cornerstone for a sustainable society. Life cycle costing (LCC) provides a useful framework for the joint analysis of economic and environmental impacts of a WMS, by considering both financial and external costs. The present study applies the methodology of societal LCC to the WMS of the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna to provide a case study on how the available information on waste flows and budget costs of a real WMS can be used to obtain an estimate of the total cost of waste management, including externalities. The results evidence that the main source of negative externality in the analyzed WMS is the transportation of waste, with only a minor role of external burdens due to incinerators and landfills. However, the positive externality resulting from recycling more than compensates those impacts, leading to a net external benefit associated to the WMS. The contribution of both uncertain unit external costs and environmental benefits imputable to recycled materials to the overall uncertainty of the result is systematically investigated by parametric uncertainty analysis. The most critical parameters in determining the sensitivity of the result are the monetary values attributed to primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions, together with assumptions on energy savings related to recycling. Eventually, it is shown how the developed LCC model can be used as decision-support tool to preliminarily investigate the implications of alternative management options on the financial and external costs of the WMS., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This article focuses on quantitative prevention of municipal solid waste among the 28 member countries of the European Union. A strict definition of waste prevention is used, including waste avoidance, waste reduction at source or in process, and product reuse, while recycling is outside the scope of this article. In order to provide a solid overview of the European situation, the study selected six countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain). Several selection requirements have been considered, such as geographic location or municipal solid waste per capita production trends from 1995 to 2017. A review of prevention programmes and other national strategic documents has been conducted. Extended producer responsibility, Pay-As-You-Throw schemes, Deposit-Refund Systems and Environmental Taxes implementation among the selected countries have been studied in order to understand how these market-based instruments can be used for the sake of waste prevention. Each market-based instrument has been further analysed using the Drivers Pressures State Impact Response model. Based on the results of this study, the effectiveness of market-based instruments implementation is strictly related to the context they are enforced in. It is particularly important to tailor the market-based instruments based on the implementation area. Nevertheless, market-based instruments, which are now mostly meant to boost the recycling sector of the considered Member States, should be designed to improve waste prevention performances, ensuring the achievement of the highest level of waste hierarchy promoted by the European Union.