Towards circular economy in developing cities: an integrated approach for planning international cooperation projects

Solid waste management (SWM) issues are an environmental and social burden, which affect mainly the population of low-middle income countries worldwide, as well as the global environment. The application of the circular economy (CE) principles (reuse of waste materials) is considered the main solution spreading the economy of the waste and therefore reducing environmental impacts. This research is focused on the analysis and application of integrated approaches for planning sustainable SWM systems in developing big cities, demonstrating the importance of the inclusion of the informal recycling and drafting international cooperation projects for introducing new appropriate technologies and awareness campaigns. The case study of this research is La Paz (Bolivia), low-middle income city where international support is required for the sustainable development. The results allow suggesting that the inclusion of informal recyclers can be considered the most useful option in terms of technical and financial issues, exploiting a CE system just in place. Moreover, the cooperation with local and international stakeholders allows writing and submitting two international cooperation projects. The research demonstrates that the cooperation among various international and local actors, such as Universities, non-governmental organizations and local Government, in parallel with the use of technical knowledge and methodologies can support the sustainable development in low-middle countries, driving low-middle income cities towards the CE

Towards circular economy in developing cities: an integrated approach for planning international cooperation projects

Solid waste management (SWM) issues are an environmental and social burden, which affect mainly the population of low-middle income countries worldwide, as well as the global environment. The application of the circular economy (CE) principles (reuse of waste materials) is considered the main solution spreading the economy of the waste and therefore reducing environmental impacts. This research is focused on the analysis and application of integrated approaches for planning sustainable SWM systems in developing big cities, demonstrating the importance of the inclusion of the informal recycling and drafting international cooperation projects for introducing new appropriate technologies and awareness campaigns. The case study of this research is La Paz (Bolivia), low-middle income city where international support is required for the sustainable development. The results allow suggesting that the inclusion of informal recyclers can be considered the most useful option in terms of technical and financial issues, exploiting a CE system just in place. Moreover, the cooperation with local and international stakeholders allows writing and submitting two international cooperation projects. The research demonstrates that the cooperation among various international and local actors, such as Universities, non-governmental organizations and local Government, in parallel with the use of technical knowledge and methodologies can support the sustainable development in low-middle countries, driving low-middle income cities towards the CE

Municipal solid waste management system: decision support through systems analysis

Thesis submitted to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental EngineeringThe present study intends to show the development of systems analysis model applied to solid waste management system, applied into AMARSUL, a solid waste management system responsible for the management of municipal solid waste produced in Setúbal peninsula, Portugal. The model developed intended to promote sustainable decision making, covering the four columns: technical, environmental, economic and social aspects. To develop the model an intensive literature review have been conducted. To simplify the discussion, the spectrum of these systems engineering models and system assessment tools was divided into two broadly-based domains associated with fourteen categories although some of them may be intertwined with each other. The first domain comprises systems engineering models including cost-benefit analysis, forecasting analysis, simulation analysis, optimization analysis, and integrated modeling system whereas the second domain introduces system assessment tools including management information systems, scenario development, material flow analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA), risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, socio-economic assessment, and sustainable assessment. The literature performed have indicated that sustainable assessment models have been one of the most applied into solid waste management, being methods like LCA and optimization modeling (including multicriteria decision making(MCDM)) also important systems analysis methods. These were the methods (LCA and MCDM) applied to compose the system analysis model for solid waste. The life cycle assessment have been conducted based on ISO 14040 family of norms; for multicriteria decision making there is no procedure neither guidelines, being applied analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based Fuzzy Interval technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). Multicriteria decision making have included several data from life cycle assessment to construct environmental, social and technical attributes, plus economic criteria obtained from collected data from stakeholders involved in the study. The results have shown that solutions including anaerobic digestion in mechanical biological treatment plant plus anaerobic digestion of biodegradable municipal waste from source separation, with energetic recovery of refuse derived fuel (RDF) and promoting pays-as-you-throw instrument to promote recycling targets compliance would be the best solutions to implement in AMARSUL system. The direct burning of high calorific fraction instead of RDF has not been advantageous considering all criteria, however, during LCA, the results were the reversal. Also it refers that aerobic mechanical biological treatment should be closed.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - SFRH/BD/27402/200

Multi-objective sustainable location-districting for the collection of municipal solid waste : two case studies

This paper presents a multi-objective location-districting optimization model for sustainable collection of municipal solid waste, motivated by strategic waste management decisions in Iran. The model aims to design an efficient system for providing municipal services by integrating the decisions regarding urban area districting and the location of waste collection centers. Three objectives are minimized, given as 1) the cost of establishing collection centers and collecting waste, 2) a measure of destructive environmental consequences, and 3) a measure of social dissatisfaction. Constraints are formulated to enforce an exclusive assignment of urban areas to districts and that the created districts are contiguous. In addition, constraints make sure that districts are compact and that they are balanced in terms of the amount of waste collected. A multi-objective local search heuristic using the farthest-candidate method is implemented to solve medium and large-scale numerical instances, while small instances can be solved directly by commercial software. A set of randomly generated test instances is used to test the effectiveness of the heuristic. The model and the heuristic are then applied to two case studies from Iran. The obtained results indicate that waste collection costs can be reduced by an estimated 20-30 %, while significantly improving the performance with respect to environmental and social criteria. Thus, the provided approach can provide important decision support for making strategic choices in municipal solid waste management. Keywords: multi-objective optimization, local search, best-worst methodpublishedVersio

Validating full scale metland solutions for decentralized sustainable wastewater treatment: techno-environmental and geospatial analysis

In recent decades increasing pressures on natural resources has drastically altered demographic dynamics and climate change. Currently, different lines of action are being pursued for the sustainable management and conservation of global water resources. In the field of wastewater treatment, the problem lies in small population centers where the scarcity of technical and economic resources compromises the effectiveness of conventional treatment methods. METland® technology emerges from the integration of Microbial Electrochemical Technologies (METs) into constructed wetlands. Integration improves treatment efficiency by replacing an inert material (gravel) with a biocompatible and electro-conductive material (ec-biochar or coke). Such designs maximize the transfer of electrons between ec-materials and electroactive bacteria. This makes full-scale METlands® a valid, sustainable, efficient, and robust wastewater treatment solution, with low operation and maintenance costs, for small and remote population centers. In this thesis, new strategies have been explored to improve the design and operation of full-scale METland® systems. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) was performed, evaluating the impacts of different operational modes on each environmental category. To explore the geospatial application of METlands, a process to evaluate optimal locations for their implementation was developed. The proposed methodology can be used to help decision-makers employ METland® worldwide using multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) techniques applied to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with a final sensitivity analysis (SA) to optimize and validate the model

Investigation of landfill suitability based on semi quantitative risk matrix and GIS

Open dumping is the most widely practiced method in Sri Lanka to dispose municipal solid waste (MSW) because it is the cheapest and easiest method compared to other methods available to manage MSW.Currently, there are no guidelines available for a proper selection of landfill dump site which may minimize the environmental, social and economic problems in the country. Site selection for landfill sites is an important aspect from both environmental conservation and social/economical point of view. Data was collected from the Udapalatha area for analyzing. Considering priority of all criteria in comparison with others, a specific risk rate was decided to each criterion according to their total influence on the whole process of decision making. Suitable landfill site was analyzed by using the Geographic Information System (GIS) together with risk assessment. To identify appropriate landfill areas in the study area, five input map layers including surface water bodies, distance from transportation routes, distance from urban areas, land use/land cover, and elevation were used in the mapping. Based on these data a risk assessment wascarried out with a semi-quantitative matrix. The findings obtained from this study could be used for preliminary information to develop criteria for new landfill site selection. Finally, suitable low-risk regions in the area have been proposed for solid waste landfill disposal

Assessment of hybrid model for sustainable sanitary landfill siting using geospatial and geotechnical techniques

One of the major challenges in waste management is the issue of selecting an appropriate site for sustainable sanitary landfilling for the disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) due to the complexity of various factors that must be considered such as environmental, economic, and social. Therefore, this research developed an innovative hybrid model based on the integration of geographic information systems (GIS), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and geotechnical technique following landfill siting guidelines and regulations. Therefore, in order to have a sustainable sanitary landfill site selection model, there is a need to evaluate geospatial and geotechnical properties of the area where the potential landfill is to be constructed. The research included identification criteria of siting sanitary landfill such as water bodies, geology, soils, elevation, slope, residential areas, archeological sites, airports, population, roads, railways, infrastructures, and land use. Due to the large volume of spatial data, GIS was used to manage, evaluate, and process these data. In addition, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to solve decision making problems where multiple alternatives and competing objectives are involved. Criteria maps obtained for this research were prepared in the GIS environment followed by the criteria weights obtained from AHP pairwise comparison matrix and normalization. Next, the weighted criteria were evaluated and overlaid through GIS software ArcGIS 10.3. Then, map production of the most suitable sites for sanitary landfill was carried out using QGIS. Finally, a hybrid model was developed by integrating geospatial and geotechnical techniques. The results from the GIS and AHP revealed the three most suitable sites for sustainable sanitary landfill site selection. This was further examined using geotechnical criteria, namely permeability, volumetric shrinkage and shear strength to obtain the best site. Additionally, computer modeling through digital image technique (using Surfer and Matlab software) was used to validate the model. The model developed from the results of this research can be used as a guide for sustainable sanitary landfilling in developed and developing countries

Integrated Waste Management

This book reports research on policy and legal issues, anaerobic digestion of solid waste under processing aspects, industrial waste, application of GIS and LCA in waste management, and a couple of research papers relating to leachate and odour management