Co-Benefits of Household Waste Recycling for Local Community's Sustainable Waste Management in Thailand

The study aimed to evaluate co-benefits in term of GHG reduction, and avoided landfill costs by implementing a community-based management (CBM) program for municipal solid waste (MSW). Two towns of peri-urban settlement in Thailand were investigated in case studies to compare eco-performance between the towns with and without implementation of the CBM program. MSW mass flows together with MSW utilization records were analyzed based on data in year 2013. Climate co-benefits from waste utilization activities were examined. Results from the study indicated that waste banks in the CBM program can effectively divert most of recyclables from entering landfills. The performance of "waste bank-recyclable recovery program" recycling rate from the case study with CBM is 172.20 kg per member per year, which is about 926% higher than average CBMs with MSW recycling in Thailand, and the success of CBM can be attributed to its curbside pickup service and fair-pricing of recyclables. The study also found that if the town decided to divert wastes from landfilling, carbon intensity of the MSW system would be 0.47 tons of CO2-eq per ton of collected MSW. The landfilling cost would be approximately 7.41 USD per ton of MSW as landfilling cost. With CBM programs, current MSW reutilization rate has achieved 9.68% of generated waste, and 16.80% of GHG emission has been avoided, along with a reduction in landfill costs of 11.57%. Two scenarios of waste utilization in Thailand were explored and compared, in terms of which scenarios yielded the highest co-benefits. The study demonstrates that by allowing local mechanism and community involvement programs to develop with operational waste banks, the efficiency of collecting recycling wastes increased. A similar system can be applied to other communities in other countries.