DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2017.221
title: Life cycle assessment of solid waste management in Paro District, Bhutan

description: In numerous studies, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool has been utilized for effective municipal waste management in various countries to assess waste treatment technologies and strategies. Eventually, the waste is utilized as a resource that could promote sustainable societies in most of the developed countries. However, research on environment impact assessment of current solid waste management in developing countries is inadequate. Paro district is one of the most famous destinations for tourist in Bhutan, the least developed country where solid waste management issue has turned out to be extreme, driven by an increase in population, changes in utilization style, increase in tourism, and growth in GDP. Accessibility of reliable data on solid waste, and study on environmental impact assessment of present solid waste management system in the Paro district is very little. The essential target of this thesis is to identify the current situation of solid waste management practices in Paro district of Bhutan. Characterization and analysis of solid waste composite were carried out to identify the waste composition and generation in household and hotel sectors.  Contrast situations or scenarios were developed to discover the suitable techniques and to take care of environmental burden of current solid waste management system in the study area. Basically, in the current solid waste management situation, there is no waste segregation at source due to lack of awareness and open dumping/open landfilling without any waste treatment after collection due to lack of infrastructure, budget, policy and feasible framework.LCA SimaPro8.3 software and CML2 Baseline 2000 impact assessment methodology was used for the interpretation and comparison of alternative scenarios detailed with reference to some significant categories of environmental effect like Global Warming Potential (GWP), Ozone Layer Depletion Potential (ODP), Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), Photochemical Oxidation (PO), Acidification Potential (AP) and Eutrophication Potential (EUP) and Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP). The alternative waste treatment scenarios consist of Scenario-0 (100% landfill), Scenario-1 (composting 50% of food waste), Scenario-2 (recycling 50% of recyclable waste), Scenario-3 (recycling 25% of recyclable waste and composting 25% of food waste), and Scenario-4 (recycling 50% of recyclable waste and composting 50% of food waste).Scenario-4 (recycling 50% of recyclable waste and composting 50% of food waste) was recommended as the most environmentally effective waste management option where most of the environmental impact categories are relatively low. The results also demonstrated that the most environmentally efficient way to manage municipal solid waste is the combination of recycling and composting scenarios. Even more particularly, Paro district would be vastly improved served establishing a composting plant for organic waste and expanding recycling activities. Further achievement of the successful result of selecting above scenario will be fulfilled by developing various waste management programs with the end goal to reduce the environmental impact, to minimize the waste in the landfill and to increase the economic growth of the country.