Multiobjective Decision-Making for Solid Waste Management in a Carbon-Regulated Environment

Both short-term and long-term planning of solid waste management (SWM) requires the inclusion of multiscale sustainability criteria such as cost-benefit-risk consideration, recycling effect, and global-warming potential (GWP). This chapter demonstrates a holistic integration of these criteria to optimize system planning in a typical SWM system using comparative multiobjective decision analyses. The GaBi software package was used to estimate the possible greenhouse gas emissions throughout the scenario-based design process. The chapter examines the GWP impact in a real-world SWM system to demonstrate that the traditional cost-effectiveness principle and cost-benefit analysis cannot permit sustainable development related to SWM. Thus, the case study in the chapter is designed to explore the potential impact to an SWM system under a global-scale, carbon-regulated environment with local-scale material/energy recycling considerations. To achieve the study goals, five management scenarios were configured and compared to demonstrate the importance of sustainability concerns in an SWM system.