The effect of geological and meteorological conditions on municipal waste management systems: a life cycle assessment approach

This study applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate six municipal solid waste (MSW) scenarios for an arid environment, in this case Kuwait. The six scenarios were built on local MSW composition, while incorporating the influence of two factors: meteorological conditions and geological formations (MCGF) for more realistic regionalized results. The results show that the lack of incorporating MCGF has underestimated the actual effect of abiotic resource depletion by almost 25%, and deflated photochemical oxidation and human toxicity by almost 9%. Hypothesis tests using paired t test method with 95% confidence level indicate that the difference in abiotic depletion results is of a statistical significance. Overall, the normalized LCIA values while considering local waste composition and MCGF favoured MSW scenario six. Scenario 6 combines composting of organic waste (49.6%), recycling of glass (4.3%), plastic (4.8%), paper (10.5%) and metals (2.8%), while incinerating other waste types (18.4%). Only residuals are landfilled. The results were presented in accordance with ISO 14040 guidelines.