Scenario Analysis of Municipal Solid Waste Management System in Shanghai
盧克宇 （ロコクウ）Lu Keyu, University of TSUKUBA

Instructor: 水野谷
Keyword：剛; 徐峰; Helmut YABAR; 氷鉋揚四郎;

Municipal Solid Waste，Scenario，Weighting，RDF，Bio-Treatment,Incineration,

Landfill

ABSTRACTWith the rapid development of its economy and population, Shanghai also experienced an increase in Municipal SolidWaste (MSW). The reported generation of MSW in 2007 was 7 million ton, and its treatment and disposal had become animperative problem. This thesis was wrote under the ISO1400 framework through life-cycle assessment and calculated byIWM-II software, raised shanghai municipal solid waste management system as a research case, proposed 4 scenarios
focused on current situation, thermal treatment, Bio-treatment and recycling separately and calculated environmental impact
load including four aspects: global warming potential; acidification potential; eutrophication and human toxicity. This paper
proposes four scenarios through a Waste Management Assessment Model that focuses on RDF and thermal incineration,
bio-treatment, and recycling to analyze the environmental impact. The latter includes global warming and acidification
potentials, eutrophication, and human toxicity. Calculation of the impact weighting provided the environmental impact load,and after comparisons, Scenario III was found to provide the best way forward for MSW management evaluation in
Shanghai.

options in Shanghai, and suggests an evolution of that system side
by side with sustainable development and environmentally friendly
solutions, through analyzing four scenarios generated by life cycle
assessment (LCA).

1.Introduction
1.1 Background
Municipal solid waste (MSW) consists of two parts: one part isgenerated by the citizens as they live and work in the city (likegarbage, waste paper, waste plastic, old furniture, discarded
appliances, cans, and bottles). The second part is generated by theservice sector (such as restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and shops)[1].
MSW does not include industrial waste, agricultural waste, andsewage sludge. The treatment of MSW is an important issue that
affects the city’s sustainable development. The history of its
treatment worldwide reveals four mature approaches: incineration(including RDF), bio-treatment (gasification and composting),
recycling, and landfill. There are advantages and limitations toevery treatment option, so to realize the goal of ‘reduce, reuse,recycle’ it is necessary to take into account the conditions within
the city in order to improve its integrated MSW treatment system.

1.4 Method of the study
In this study, I obtained data on the MSW system of Shanghai, andtreatment options, from the literature. I built models using LCA,
and devised four scenarios for analysis (including environmental
and economic aspects), and proposed the most suitable scenario forShanghai.

2. Modeling by LCA
2.1 Goal & Scope
In this study I assumed that the LCA scope for the environmental
assessment comprised the MSW generated, and all stages
throughout waste collection, transfer, treatment, and final disposal
in Shanghai in 2007. This was compared and analyzed with otherscenarios. The goal of my LCA study is to analyze and compare theenvironmental impact and cost of every scenario.

1.2 Shanghai
Shanghai is located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China,and sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River in the middle portion ofthe Chinese coast. The municipality borders Jiangsu and Zhejiang
provinces to the west, and is bounded to the east by the East China
Sea.

2.2 Waste generation
Table 2.1 shows waste generation from 2003 to 2007. Although therate of increase in 2005 was a little less than that in 2004, theamount of waste in Shanghai continued to increase until 2007,
when it reached the huge amount of 7,019,524 tons.

1.3 Objective of the study
This paper discusses the current MSW system and treatment13.1 Scenario I

Table 2-1 Waste generation from 2003 to 2007 of shanghai

Generation2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

5.85

6.10

6.22

6.52

7.02/

4.27

1.96

5.78

6.68

(million ton)
Increasing
Rate (%)

Source: city hall[2]Fig 3-1 Waste flow and energy recovery of scenario IS

Scenario I (Fig. 3-1) is the current situation; waste is collected at
the curbside and moved to a transfer point for pre-treatment andbrief separation, then delivered to treatment facilities. In theincineration facility, a portion of the materials can be recycled after
pre-treatment, with the remaining combustibles being incinerated
and producing electricity. The ash will be moved to landfill.

In 2007, waste was classified as 42.22% combustible, 21.12%
organic, 11.82% paper, 9.98% plastics, 5.36% glass, 0.98% metal,
3.11% garden wastes, and 3.21% textiles (Fig. 2-1).

3.2 Scenario II

Fig 2-1 Waste proportion in 2007

Source: city hall[2]Fig 3-2 Waste flow and energy recovery of scenario II

2.3 Final disposal in 2007

Scenario II (Fig. 3-2) uses the same type of collection as Scenario I
but focuses on different features: RDF and thermal treatment. As
we know, the Shanghai government is increasing the number ofthermal facilities to five from 2015, so I assumed that 20% of thewaste (mainly plastic, paper, and a portion of the combustible waste)
will become RDF fuel. The amount of bio-treatment and recyclingis the same as in the present situation, but unsanitary landfill would
be cut to zero in the following scenarios.

In 2007, there were still some problems with waste treatment, themajor one being unsanitary landfill; 19% of the waste (1,333,713tons) were treated in this way. However, all of the treatment
facilities were overloaded. In addition, 2.5% recycling wasinadequate (Table 2-2).
Table 2-2 Final treatment conditions in 2007
Rate
Sanitary landfill

50%+Amount

Capacity

3,809,652

3,650,000

3.3 Scenario III

residue
Unsanitary landfill

19%

1,333,713/

Incineration

18.3%

1,287,282

1,095,000

Bio-treatment

10.2%

713,472

547,500

Recycling

2.5%

176,138/

Fig 3-3 Waste flow and energy recovery of scenario III
Scenario III (Fig. 3-3) focuses on bio-treatment, dealing with 30%of the waste. It is assumed that gasification and composting are themain treatments for the MSW (which contains organic waste, paper
and plastic, and garden waste). The recycling rate is the same as in
Scenario I, and the remaining waste is sent for thermal treatment.

Source: city hall[2]3. Scenarios

2Finally, the residue is removed to landfill.

(26,310 tons) goes to landfill. Only 175,138 tons (2.5%) of
recyclable waste are recycled by social communities, of which
53,106 tons are moved to an incineration facility after recycling;
5,901 tons of recycling residues are moved to landfill. Combustible
waste of 1,287,282 tons (18.3%) is delivered to an incineration
facility, of which 120,836 tons go to landfill and 5,768 tons go forrecycling after pre-treatment; 1,160,678 tons will be incinerated,
and finally the bottom ash (121,378 tons) will go to landfill.

3.4 scenario IV

Fig 3-4 waste flow and energy recovery of scenario IV
Scenario IV (Fig. 3-4) focuses on materials recycling, mainly metal,paper, plastic, and appliances. A sorted collection has been assumed
for recyclable materials, and curbside collection for the remaining
waste. The bio-treatment rate remains the same as Scenario I.
Finally, all the residue and bottom ash from incineration are moved
to a sanitary landfill.
3.5 Characterization
Fig 4-1 Boundary of scenario I
Through characterization, we can transform the result to same unit
and combine with results to one digital indicator. There are many
ways of conducting a characterization, however, and researchers
utilize different equivalency factors to express environmental
impacts.

This section discusses the final results of environmental impact
including GWP, acidification potential, eutrophication, and human
toxicity for every scenario proposed in this research. The total
environmental impact amount (for every 1 kg) was 0.0354, 0.0285,0.0230, and 0.0232 for Scenarios I, II, III, and IV, respectively.
From these digital indicators we can immediately see that Scenario
III was the best performer. Because of its GWP, Scenario IV was insecond place, just behind Scenario III. Scenario II, which focuseson thermal treatment, lost out because of the GWP. And Scenario I,
the current situation, had the highest environmental impact becauseof unsanitary landfill (Table 4-1).

The equivalency factor varies, depending upon the different typesof effect. Generally, a reference substance is used to calculate therelative amount of other factors. For instance, factors which could
affect global warming include CO2, CO, and CH4. Usually, CO2 isproposed as a target value to express global warming potential. For
acidification, it would be SOx. Table 3-5 show four types ofenvironmental impact factors.

Table 4-1 Environmental impact

4. Results & Analysis®

This chapter describes results and analysis from IWM-II including
waste flow, final disposal amount, gas emission, human toxicity,
and waste emission.
The waste flow of each scenario formed the basic data for analysis;
the research parameters of every scenario could be carried out inthis part, based on the waste flow.

Environmental

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

Scenario

impact typeIIIIIIIV

1.63E-02

5.94E-03

3.57E-03

3.97E-03

1.53E-02

1.81E-02

1.55E-02

1.56E-02

Potential

3.81E-03

4.40E-03

3.89E-03

3.75E-03

Eutrophication

2.63E-08

2.49E-08

2.73E-08

4.39E-08

Total

3.54E-02

2.85E-02

2.30E-02

2.32E-02

environmental(0.0354)(0.0285)(0.0230)(0.0232)

GlobalWarming
Potential
Acidification

In Scenario I (Fig. 4-1), a total of 7,019,524 tons of waste isgenerated. Of this, 19% (1,333,713 tons) unfortunately goesstraight to unsanitary landfills; the rest (5,685,811 tons of waste) is
moved to transfer points for pre-treatment and brief separation.
Next, 356,736 tons of waste (5.1%) are moved to a bio-treatmentfacility for gasification, and 26,309 tons of residue are taken tolandfill sites after treatment. Bio-treatment facilities receive
356,736 tons of waste (5.1%) for composting, and the residue

Human toxicity

impact3

5. Conclusion

government must take action to deal with it. The landfill use of
Scenario II was found to be the best; government could adopt thisscenario to meet the land shortage. Discovering that the EIL ofrecycling was a little higher than bio-treatment was an unexpected
finding; Scenario IV also could be a good solution if the recyclingtechnology could be upgraded. The present situation in Shanghai isthat space for landfill is limited, so from a local governmental
viewpoint, Scenario IV could be the best MSW solution if attention
is paid to landfill use.
.

This thesis was written under the ISO1400 framework through
LCA and calculated by IWM-II software, using the Shanghai MSW
management system as a research case. It proposed four scenarios
focusing on the current situation, thermal treatment, bio-treatment,and recycling, separately. The calculated EIL included four aspects:
GWP; acidification potential; eutrophication; and human toxicity.
Additionally, this thesis expressed the application of LCA methods
for MSW management systems. The conclusions were as follows:

There are certainly many limitations in using the LCA method toanalyze MSW. First, the EIL—which was the only indicator to bequantized—is not the only base point from which to examine theMSW system. It should be based on other indicators—social,technological, and economic—as well. On the other hand, detailed
data for the MSW were incomplete, thus many data adopted in thisresearch were acquired from some developed countries; the result
could be more accurate if detailed data for Shanghai were available.

(1)
There are many ways of evaluating an MSW
management system. It could be broadly grouped into threemethods according to different theories: cost benefit analysis(CBA), multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), and life cycle
assessment (LCA). These three methods focus on different points inthe analysis of a waste problem, and the LCA method was the mostsuitable for this thesis because it focuses on analyzing therelationship between the material and its environmental impact,consistent with the goal of MSW management.

It was different from developed countries that built LCA models for
MSW management with the use of software such as IWM, IWM-II,and WISARD. In general, much research in China focuses onliterature reviews alone. I suggest that China should standardize theLCA model of MSW management and build a detailed database forit, to enable researchers to obtain data more easily and work out
more accurate research results for China, with the aim ofestablishing a sustainable society.

(2)
The current MSW situation in Shanghai was so poorthat its citizens were concerned about it. The major problem wasopen dumping (unsanitary landfill), caused by limited waste
treatment capacity and lack of participation (illegal dumping) bycitizens.
(3)
Four scenarios (including the current situation) wereproposed in this thesis. They focus separately on thermal and RDF
burning, bio-treatment, and recycling. The EILs (per 1 kg) were:
Scenario I: 0.0354; Scenario II: 0.0285; Scenario III: 0.0230; andScenario IV: 0.0232. When considering environmental impact,bio-treatment is seen to be the best means of addressing the MSW
situation in Shanghai in order to meet national objectives, on paper
at least. The current situation was found to be the worst, soReferences[1] Department of Environmental Protection of the People's
Republic of China "Law of The Peoples Republic of China on
Prevention of Environmental Pollution Caused by Solid Waste",2004 revision.p.37-39.
[2] Date collected by an interview at Shanghai city
hall.September.2011.

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