Life cycle assessment of municipal solid waste management in Samsun, Turkey: different scenarios with emphasis on energy and material recovery

This study presents the first life cycle assessment for the municipal solid waste management system of Samsun, the largest city in the Black Sea region in Turkey (about 1 million people). Its importance is that it proposes to identify the environmental impacts and improvements for the waste management system planned to be implemented by 2023 and the separate collection at source system to be adopted in the future, within the scope of the zero waste policy. Six scenarios were compared using LCA to highlight the potential impacts from transportation. Data were collected from Samsun landfill, Ecoinvent 3 database, regional data collected with the industrial partner and literatures from scientific articles. Life cycle impact analysis was evaluated with the environmental footprint (EF) 3.0 method. In this study, it is reported that environmental impacts are sensitive to transport emissions and the recycling rate of virgin materials. According to the results, the Scenario S3 without the material recovery facility system was approved as the worst final disposal alternative. In contrast, the Scenario S5, which supports the separation of recyclable and organic wastes at the source, showed the most environmentally friendly performance. This research contributes to improving Samsun’s current municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system and policies for sustainable development.