Current state and possible developments of municipal solid waste management system in the Leningrad region and Saint Petersburg : a life cycle assessment

Abstract

Waste management in Saint Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region is based on landfilling nowadays. Municipal solid waste is normally collected by a one-bin system. Around 10-20% of collected waste is sorted at the sorting stations to recover recyclable materials. Additionally, at some stations, composting of a screening reject is applied to produce a landfill cover material. Such a system results in a vast amount of waste degrading in the landfills instead of being used as a resource. Also, this way of handling waste is greenhouse gas-intensive. These concerns, coupled with the growing amount of generated waste, led to the reformation of the waste management system in the area which is currently underway. To help the reformation succeed, this thesis provides the evaluation of the environmental performance of the municipal solid waste management system in the area through a life cycle assessment. The evaluation is conducted for several scenarios, including the current state of the system and the state that should be reached by 2024 aided by the reformation. Furthermore, the effects of proposed improvements are evaluated in separate scenarios. The impact is assessed in terms of climate change, acidification, eutrophication, and resource depletion (fossil fuels).

The overall reduction of the environmental impact is seen as the system develops, and it is mostly reached via avoided production. Given relatively high capture rates of recyclables, the separate collection shows the largest effect. Among waste fractions, it is the recycling of paper and organic waste treated in anaerobic conditions that reduce the impact the most.