Life Cycle Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste: A Case Study in a Spanish Landfill

Although reuse and incineration of the waste are gaining importance, municipal solid waste landfills are still important alternatives for solid waste in large parts of Europe. In this work, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) concepts and methods are applied to evaluate the potential environmental impact associated to landfill technology. The most-common management of a landfill corresponding to a prototype community (about 300,000 inhabitants) was comprehensively studied. The system analysed involves leachate treatment and a landfill gas collection system for energy recovery, with a total generation of 8,723,530 kWh of electricity and 1.26·107 MJ for heating purposes in a 6,000 m2 tomato greenhouse. The avoided emissions associated to the energy recovery resulted in negative values for several impact categories. Damage to Ecosystem Quality (EQ), the most relevant damage identified, was mainly caused by the water emissions from the landfill.