The role of the transportation phase for a green management of municipal solid waste

Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) constitutes a high challenging issue to cope with to move towards sustainability of the urban policies. Despite new standards call for recycling and reusing materials contained in the city waste, several municipalities still use extensive landfills. Other than the environmental pressure exerted by these plants, the waste transportation from the recovery points of towns to landfills needs consideration to correctly assess the whole burden of the waste management. In this paper, the Ecological Footprint indicator is applied to the MSWM of the town of Palermo (Sicily). Results show that the effects produced by the involved transportation vehicles, both in the status-quo and in the hypothesized enhanced scenario (characterized by a reduced amount of urban waste landfilled), are relevant compared to those caused by the other segments of the waste management system. The concept of “saved footprint” is further introduced, to suitably compare the two scenarios.