Life cycle assessment in solid waste management: Facts and artefacts

摘要

Life cycle assessment or analysis (LCA) has been an area of extensive research in solid waste management (SWM) during the past two decades. The interest in the application of LCA in solid waste management, since 2000, can be viewed in the following graph. As is evident from the graph, the interest on SWM research with LCA increased steadily after 2000 and particularly after 2006. In the last four years, a peak in the number of pertinent publications was observed. In addition, it appears that the preferred term used in publications (articles and reviews) is life cycle assessment rather than life cycle analysis. In addition, the term life cycle inventory, which by definition is one component of a LCA, has gradually reduced in use. Fig. 1 also reveals that between 50% and 60% of the LCA publications in the solid waste field are dedicated to municipal solid waste.