Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) of municipal waste management strategies in Mahdasht city

In this paper production of greenhouse gases (CO2-CH4) in different waste management options in Mahdasht city by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) application had been studid using IWM3 software. Waste production is inevitable in any society and waste management is one of the main needs of society. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate different waste management scenarios. In solid waste management system, according to the amount and composition of waste, there are several options in addition to economic costs, the burden on the environment are different. Decision supports are needed in order to selecting the most appropriate tools for waste management. Life Cycle Assessment as a decision support tools is one of the recently introduced and has been used in several cases. the present study estimates production and greenhouse gas emissions (CO2-CH4) in the waste management system in Mahdasht city. To this end, two scenarios include scenario 1 direct and complete transfer of waste to the landfill, scenario 2 transfer of waste to landfill by 76% (20% recycled, compostable and 4%) were considered. The life cycle assessment Construction over the preparation and completion of the questionnaires were collected by the staff, and convention of field work. The life cycle inventory cataloging was done using the IWM-1 model environmental point of view, the results of this study showed that composting and recycling operations, have an important role in reducing the burden of pollutants and energy consumption of a waste management system.In this study, the data entered into the software, and the results provided by the software IWM approach to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) had been studied and were compared with each other. Given the amount of greenhouse gases in the second scenario (combination of recycling, composting and landfill) produce about 6,801 tons compared to the first scenario (only landfill) to produce about 9218 tons, which shows significant reduction. It is concluded that if the combined method (scenario 2) is used, it can lead to reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 26 percent.