DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2014.624
title: Climate co-benefits from improved municipal solid waste management in selected cities in Cambodia

description: In developing countries, solid waste management (SWM) has raised to concern on environmental problems from waste sector due to improper solid waste management system. Poor collection service, transportation as well as waste treatment technologies present the weak point of SWM system in each country. As the result, it displays many problems such as air pollution, water pollution, and global warming which is one factor to cause climate change. Similarly, the municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in Cambodia is also one major concern due to complicated problems arise from waste sector. Until now, because of poor MSWM, solid wastes have produced high pollution, like methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and carbon dioxide (CO2), which are known as greenhouse gases that affect to climate condition. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis is to propose as improvement to improve current solid waste management system by studying the existing situation of SWM system, and identify general problems from waste sector. Moreover, this study was also undertaken to estimate and compare the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from municipal solid waste in different cities namely; Phnom Penh, Battambang, and Sihanoukville of Cambodia. GHG emission was calculated by using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculator 2006 based on secondary data of 2009 and 2013. In order to reduce the GHG emission, three scenarios were proposed with different waste treatment technologies such as composting, anaerobic digestion, landfill gas recovery, and waste reduction at landfill by separating waste for recycling before disposal off in landfill, and landfill with gas recovery as well. While, GHG emission was reduced by these proposed scenarios, co-benefits can be obtained including climate, environment, and proper solid waste management as well. The results show that composting technology does not help to reduce much GHG emission because it decreases GHG emission only 10.15%, 2.63%, and 0.66% in Phnom Penh, Battambang, and Sihanoukville respectively even though this method was promoted to increase the use of organic waste. However, composting is still being recommended in Cambodia because it provides climate co-benefit such as food security for agriculture sector as well as protects the environment by reducing pollution compound from industrial. If concerning GHG reduction and compost production, anaerobic digestion is a good option to implement in such condition.  Besides bio-gas produced from anaerobic digestion, the sediment after process can be used to produce compost as well. Moreover, landfill gas recovery was recommended to be used in Phnom Penh in order to handle large amount of waste generation and to generate electricity.In conclusion, this study revealed that the implementation of the proposed scenarios provides tremendous benefits. It can reduce the volume of waste entering landfill site, reduce GHG emission, improve recycle waste materials, and minimize health problem as well. In addition, the results that were found in this study could be the basic information which could be used to as decision making tools for policy makers in the future.