Abstract
The novelty of this paper is the focus solely on municipal solid waste collection/transport in mid-sized metropolitan regions of developing countries, using biomethane (which can be supplied by the municipal solid waste management system) an alternative fuel and different waste collection methods. The eight proposed scenarios, compared to the baseline scenario, combine diesel and biowaste, door-to-door and bring collection methods, as well as two different levels of source-separated collection. The results have shown if the collection vehicles use biomethane, the impacts will always be significantly lower than using diesel (between 68–98%, depending on the impact category and scenario), even accounting with the uncertainty of the results. In this particular case-study, increasing source-separated collection also reduced the transport impacts in 40–50%, as the transfer stations are closer to the recycling facilities than the landfills. This is because the fuel consumption of transport is a function of distance, so is the impact. Therefore, this study recommends: using biomethane produced from anaerobic digestion of organic waste instead of diesel to expand circular municipal solid waste management; establishing transfer stations for the municipalities located more than 25 km away from waste management facilities; expanding the collection coverage to 100%; increasing source-separated collection and recycling.
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Abbreviations
- C&T:
-
Collection and transport of municipal solid waste
- CNG:
-
Compressed natural gas
- DtD:
-
Door-to-door
- EM:
-
Eutrophication marine
- ET:
-
Eutrophication terrestrial
- GVMR:
-
Great Vitória Metropolitan Region
- GWP100:
-
Global warming power—climate change in 100 years
- H2S:
-
Hydrogen sulfide
- HD:
-
High diversions scenario
- IPCC:
-
International Panel on Climate Change
- ISO:
-
International Standard Organization
- LCA:
-
Life cycle assessment
- LD:
-
Low diversions scenario
- MRF:
-
Materials recovery facilities
- MSW:
-
Municipal solid waste
- PLANARES:
-
National plan for solid waste management (Plano Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos)
- PM:
-
Particulate matter
- POF:
-
Photochemical ozone formation
- SM:
-
Supplementary material
- SSC:
-
Source-separated collection
- TA:
-
Terrestrial acidification
- TS:
-
Transfer station
- WCV:
-
Waste collection vehicle
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Acknowledgements
This study was partly financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (College and Graduate Education Improvement Coordination), Brazil (CAPES), Finance Code 001. The authors also acknowledge the financial support given by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Espírito Santo (Espírito Santo Research and Innovation Support Foundation—FAPES) project 107/2019.
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Ramalho, J.C.M., Calmon, J.L., Colvero, D.A. et al. Environmental assessment of municipal solid waste collection/transport using biomethane in mid-sized metropolitan areas of developing countries. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 9991–10006 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03837-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03837-7