Assessment of Energy Recovery from Municipal Waste Management Systems Using Circular Economy Quality Indicators

Abstract

A complex method developed to assess quality within a proposed framework and at a certain scope of measurement for circular economy (CE) quality indicators is presented. This was used to compare three different scenarios for municipal waste management systems: 1—incineration; 2—recycling and reuse of separated municipal waste and the transformation of the organic fraction into biodiesel and bio-coal; and 3—an upgraded Scenario 2 including decreased recycling of waste streams and the bioprocessing of paper/cardboard and processing the non-recycled fraction into bio-diesel, bio-coal, and second-generation biofuel. For the evaluation of the CE quality indicator, a set of technical, environmental, economic, and social elements was selected by a panel of experts, who also assigned them a qualitative assessment and weighting on the basis of the factors identified. The calculated Relative Increase in the CE indicator for the scenarios analyzed showed that Scenarios 3 and 2 are much more beneficial than Scenario 1 in technical, environmental, economic and social terms.