Prediction of greenhouse gas emission from municipal solid waste for South Korea

Abstract

This study is proposing a System Dynamics Model for estimating Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission from treating Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in South Korea for years 2000 to 2030. The government of country decided to decrease the total GHG emission from waste sector in 2030 as per Business-as-usual level. In context, four scenarios are generated to predict GHG emission from treating the MSW with three processes i.e., landfill, incineration and recycling. For prior step, MSW generation rate is projected for present and future case using population and waste generation per capita data. It is found that population and total MSW are directly correlated. The total population will increase to 56.27 million and total MSW will be 21.59 million tons in 2030. The methods for estimating GHG emission from landfill, incineration and recycling are adopted from IPCC, 2006 guidelines. The study indicates that Scenario 2 is best to adopt for decreasing the total GHG emission in future where recycling waste is increased to 75% and landfill waste is decreased to 7.6%. Lastly, it is concluded that choosing proper method for treating the MSW in country can result into savings of GHG emission.