Succeeding in involving decision-makers in solid waste management planning by setting appropriate goals and providing a structured planning method.

Even though the relevance of solid waste management goals for our societies becomes more and more acknowledged around the globe, one of the major challenges is to get the level of attention needed from those who are responsible for making the decisions. Waste management is one issue among others of the issues policy-makers do have to take care of, but many times other issues seem to have a higher priority. This prioritization often is also based on the aim of achieving short term effects and does not take into account infrastructural synergies that may be realized when tackling waste management issues as well as middle and long-term effects of addressing or neglecting waste management challenges, even though when basic waste management needs are addressed there are interfaces between the waste sector and the producing sectors that need to be handled in a reasonable way in order to allow for securing that pollutants and harmful substances are being concentrated in the waste management sphere and a portion of secondary materials as high as possible is being recycled.

Waste flow analysis and life cycle assessment of integrated waste management systems as planning tools: Application to optimise the system of the City of Bologna.

The results of this case study are used to argue that waste management planning should follow a detailed process, adequately confronting the complexity of the waste management problems and the specificity of each urban area and of regional/national situations. To support the development or completion of integrated waste management systems, this article proposes a planning method based on: (1) the detailed analysis of waste flows and (2) the application of a life cycle assessment to compare alternative scenarios and optimise solutions. The evolution of the City of Bologna waste management system is used to show how this approach can be applied to assess which elements improve environmental performance.

LCA of local strategies for energy recovery from waste in England, applied to a large municipal flow.

An intense waste management (WM) planning activity is currently undergoing in England to build the infrastructure necessary to treat residual wastes, increase recycling levels and the recovery of energy from waste. From the analyses of local WM strategic and planning documents we have identified the emerging of three different energy recovery strategies: established combustion of residual waste; pre-treatment of residual waste and energy recovery from Solid Recovered Fuel in a dedicated plant, usually assumed to be a gasifier; pre-treatment of residual waste and reliance on the market to accept the 'fuel from waste' so produced. Each energy recovery strategy will result in a different solution in terms of the technology selected; moreover, on the basis of the favoured solution, the total number, scale and location of thermal treatment plants built in England will dramatically change.