Health and safety have been the major concerns in waste management. Waste
must be managed in a way that minimizes risk to human health. Environmental
concerns over the management and disposal of waste can be divided into two
major areas: conservation of resources and pollution of the environment.
Integrated Waste Management (IWM) systems combine waste streams, waste
collection, treatment and disposal methods, with the objective of achieving
environmental benefits, economic optimization and societal acceptability.
Integrated waste management using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) attempts to
offer the most benign options for waste management. LCA is a compilation and
evaluation of the inputs, the outputs and the potential environmental impacts
of a product system throughout its life cycle. It can be successfully applied
to municipal solid waste management systems to identify the overall
environmental burdens and to assess the potential environmental impacts. This
paper deals with the LCA of the two waste management options for final
disposal of municipal waste, landfilling (landfill without landfill gas
collection or leachate collection) and sanitary landfilling (landfill with
landfill gas collection and recovery and leachate collection and treatments)
analyzed for town Sombor, Serbia. The research is conducted with the use of
the Software Package IWM-2. The indicators which are used in the assessment
are air and water emissions of toxic compounds. The results indicated that
waste disposal practice has a significant effect on the emission of the toxic
components and environmental burdens. Sanitary landfilling of municipal solid
waste significantly reduces toxic emission and negative influence on the
environment.
The environmental impacts of municipal solid waste landfills in Europe: A life cycle assessment of proper reference cases to support decision making
