Life Cycle Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Management in Tehran

Due to increasing solid waste generation and their significant impacts on human health, environmental assessment of the management and disposal methods become more and more important. There are various disposal methods which are the combinations that originate from a wide range of solid waste management systems. In this study, municipal waste of Tehran (which totals to 7507.5 tons/day) is assessed according to five suggested scenarios. Life cycle assessment method was applied to compare the selected scenarios to select the most efficient solid waste management scenario in Tehran. Hence, the Eco-indicator 99 is utilized as the impact assessment method. The effects are evaluated in three categories including; effects on human health (organic substances, inorganic substances, climate change, ionizing radiation and ozone layer depletion), ecosystem quality (ecotoxic emissions, the combination of acidification & eutrophication and double coating) and resources (extraction of minerals and the fossil fuels). According to the results, scenario one leads to the most damage to the environment especially on the human health, whereas scenario four has the most positive impacts compared to the others. However, scenarios two and three are unsuitable due to their negative effects on human health. Although, scenario five shows positive results on the resources but again it has negative impacts on human health and ecosystem quality. Moreover, the most appropriate strategy in terms of land usage and energy consumption, again is scenario four (landfilling plus recycling and composting) is chosen as the most proper strategy.