Page 74 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life cycle assessment and waste management

Figure 6.8 Environmental costs and benefits of kerbside recycling by impact category (A$ per 61
household per year – population weighted national average). Savings are represented as positive
values and impacts as negative values. GWP = global warming potential.

used packaging materials was compared against the baseline of all waste being sent to landfill.
The systems were:
s paper and plastic collection at kerbside for recycling and energy recovery
s paper and glass collection at kerbside for recycling without energy recovery
s a shift in packaging from glass to PET
s mechanical biological treatment of domestic waste
s waste-to-energy treatment for all domestic waste.

The Integrated Solid Waste Management Model, a commercial software tool, was used to
model 50 substances (resource inputs and pollutant outputs for each collection and recycling
system, including the avoided product life cycle). The inventory data was aggregated into envi-
ronmental impact categories and then valued through cost-benefit analysis as described above.
With variations based on waste technology and location in Australia, the national average
net environmental benefit of kerbside collections and recycling systems was shown to be $68
per household per year (ranging from $41 to $119 for a collection system costing $3 per house-
hold per year). This equated to a total national environmental benefit of kerbside recycling of
$424 million per year. As Figure 6.8 shows, most savings through recycling derive from the
avoidance of air pollution associated with the avoided manufacture of virgin materials.
A general consensus among stakeholders, as reported by the authors, was that landfill
savings are the driving force and motivation behind the recycling of materials. However, the
above results, based on the value of emissions, show that landfill savings are low compared
with other savings.

6.2.3 Case study 3: four waste fractions and 15 waste treatment configurations
With inventory data and impact assessment results in hand for the recycling of common pack-
aging materials and old newspapers (as presented in Section 6.2.1), EcoRecycle Victoria com-
missioned a second waste study in 2002, which was completed the following year (Grant et al.

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