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Waste Reduction, Recycling and Climate Change
The use of the Life Cycle Analysis tool WRATE
Dr Peter Olsen Scottish Environment Protection Agency
UCCCfS: Climate Change Action Plans – Planning & Implementation Dundee College
Dundee 11th May 2009
Life Cycle Assessment
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the potential environmental impacts of a product or service across its entire life cycle, or cradle to grave
It’s
Life Cycle Assessment
LCA
Using LCA has many advantages:
Often its an ‘eye opener’, providing an insight into systems and their alternatives
It can confirm expected environmental impacts and reveal completely unexpected impact
LCA
However, the results of LCA should not be used in isolation to decide on one option over another
LCA is one of many decision-support tools.
LCA
It is also necessary to consider economic and social factors, as well as those environmental factors that cannot be quantified using LCA
WRATE
The software SEPA use to undertake the LCA of waste management options is called WRATE (Waste and Resource Assessment Tool for the Environment). WRATE was developed for the Environment Agency to replace the tool used to assess the Area Waste Plans when they were first developed, WISARD
WRATE
LCA of waste management systems is different from a product LCA, in that the cradle-to-grave approach is applied only to the waste management infrastructure.
WRATE
Extraction of Raw Materials
Transport
Manufacturing
Use
End of Life
Extraction of Raw Materials
Transport
Manufacturing
Use
End of Life
Extraction of Raw Materials
Transport
Manufacturing
Use
End of Life
Extraction of Raw Materials
Transport
Manufacturing
Use
End of Life
Extraction of Raw Materials
Transport
Manufacturing
Use
End of Life
Product A Product A Product B Product C Product D
System Boundary for a
ProductSystem Boundary for Waste Management
WRATE
Wrate does not include the life cycle of the products that are now being treated as waste, they are only included in the system once they become waste
WRATE
Designed to model household waste but can be adapted for single waste streams.
WRATE models: Non renewable resource Depletion Freshwater Ecotoxicity Acidification Eutrophication Global warming Human toxicity Land use
WRATE
WRATE When a waste management process
generates a useable output, such as recycling or energy from waste, there are environmental impacts from the treatment of those materials, emissions etc.
There is also avoided impacts, i.e. where the requirement for the production of energy from more conventional sources is avoided.
This is accounted for by subtracting impacts of e.g. generating energy from waste from the impact of generating energy from coal or gas
WRATE A key aspect of interpreting the results
from WRATE is to understand the concept of avoided impacts
negative numbers mean that the burden of waste management system is effectively avoided
Typical WRATE analysis of different waste management options
Scenario comparisons
A College collects the following: 100 tonnes of paper 1000 tonnes of food waste 100 tonnes of drink cans 500 tonnes of glass 100 tonnes of plastic
Which treatment will have the biggest impact in terms of global warming
Landfill it all ? Burn it all in an energy from waste plant? Recycle it all?
All to landfill
All to Energy from Waste
Full recycling
Equivalencies WRAT can report impacts in two ways CO2 equivalents
This takes into account the Global Warming impact of different elements and display them as kgs of Carbon Dioxide
EUr person equivalents converts the impact to the amount of CO2
an average European person would emit
Global Warming Potential
Where are the burdens?
Where are the burdens?
Landfill, collection, treatment and transportation have direct impacts whereas recycling see’s the biggest avoided impact
Where are the burdens in the landfill?
Landfill burdens
around 250 tonnes CO2 eq, is associated with construction and operation of the landfill
Where are the burdens in the landfill collection?
202 tonnes from the production of large skips
Where are the avoided burdens in Recycling?
Aluminium
Aluminium
Almost 800 tonnes of fossil CO2 (or 62 Eur. Persons) is avoided by recycling 75 tonnes of aluminium
Waste Reduction, Recycling and Climate Change
The use of the Life Cycle Analysis tool WRATE
Dr Peter Olsen Scottish Environment Protection Agency
UCCCfS: Climate Change Action Plans – Planning & Implementation Dundee College
Dundee 11th May 2009
