A comprehensive study of the environmental and economic benefits of resource recovery from global waste management systems

Abstract

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyses the municipal solid waste management system of 172 countries from all over the globe with a population of 3.37 billion. This study indicates that we generate around 1.47 billion tonnes (436 kg/cap/year) of municipal solid waste each year and waste generation is increasing over time. This study also found that there is a positive correlation (r = 0.539, p < 0.05) between per capita income gross domestic product(GDP/capita/year) and per capita waste generation (kg/capita/year) and a similar correlation is also observed (r = 0.653, p < 0.05) between per capita income (GDP/year) and per capita resource recovery (kg/year). The findings of this study show that globally, about 84% of the waste is collected and only 15% of the waste is recycled and most of the global waste was still managed by landfills. This study tries to measure the environmental benefits of global waste management systems by applying a tool called the Zero Waste Index (ZWI). The ZWI measures the waste management performance by accounting for the potential amount of virgin material that can be offset by recovering resources from waste. In addition, the ZWI tool also considers the energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) and water savings by offsetting virgin materials and recovering energy from waste. The ZWI of the world in this study is measured to be 0.12, which means that the current waste management system potentially offsets only 12% of the total virgin material substitution potential from waste. Annually, an average person saves around 219 kWh of energy, emits about 48 kg of GHG and saves around 38 l of water. The global municipal solid waste management systems potentially contributed around $201.5 billion or around $60 per person of economic benefits annually.