Economic efficiency of resource recovery-analysis of time-dependent changes on sustainability perception of waste management scenarios

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: Tihomir Tomić
• Author: Irma Kremer
• Author: Daniel Rolph Schneider
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture; (Department of Energy, Power and Environmental Engineering); (Power Engineering and Energy Management Chair)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: TECHNICAL SCIENCES; Mechanical Engineering

Abstract (english)

Waste management systems are modelled to provide a public waste management service and need to be able to meet environmental sustainability requirements at a cost that is acceptable to system users/citizens. Overall environmental, economic, and/or socio-economic sustainability of waste management in previous publications is done through independent analyses and comparisons of obtained results or through multicriterial ranking of diferent alternatives where fnal results do not have a meaningful physical signifcance and cannot be interpreted independently. At the same time, those analysis either neglect time dependant changes by focusing on moment in time, or take into account changes in some timeframe changes but report only ranking focused single-score results, thus, results neglect time-dependent developments. All of these approaches are lacking some information needed for informed decision-making and/or are difcult to understand by wider groups of people. Thus, in this study, link between economic and environmental sustainability is analysed through newly defned single-score Economic Efciency of Resource Recovery (EERR) index that shows the specifc system cost for achieving identifed resource recovery, while legislation based time dependent changes are taken into account through successive analyses for legislative most important years. This approach can be used for benchmarking the overall (environmental and economic) sustainability trends, while its graphical representation enables easier presentation of sustainability results and can be used for easier comparison of possible solutions and decision-making. The results show that the quality decision-making process needs to take into account the impact of expected changes on overall sustainability and evaluate how they will afect the actual perception of used technologies. In this context, it is shown that overall changes in sustainability, in comparison to the existing perception, can signifcantly change, depending on which technologies the system is based on.

• Keywords (english): Resource recovery; Economic sustainability analysis; Waste management policies and legislation; Decision making; Environmental assessment; System planning
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review - international
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy
• Numbering: vol. 24, pp. 543-562
• p-ISSN: 1618-954X
• e-ISSN: 1618-9558
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02165-1
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:235:736059
• Publication: 2021
• Project: Number: IP-2018-01-3200; Title (croatian): Napredni nositelji energije u oporabi plastičnog otpada; Acronym: NEOPLAST; Leader: Daniel Rolph Schneider; Jurisdiction: Croatia; Funding stream: Research Projects
• Document URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10098-021-02165-1
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2024-05-26 13:12:23