Carbon accounting system from integrated municipal waste management in Thailand : case study Sakhonnakhon province

Abstract

Initiatives to minimize solid waste generation in local communities are a key to manage the wastes at source. Providing incentive is important to encourage people to actively participate in their municipal waste management especially recycling activity. Community waste bank is a mechanism to give incentives and become a foundation to support recycling activity in the communities. Moreover, benefits from GHG mitigation of waste sector will provide added incentive by implementation of carbon bank, carbon finance, and voluntary financial support for the mitigation efforts. This study aims to develop a decision-making tool and strategies to help the local community improving efficiency of managing their municipal waste and inherently reducing GHG emission. Phangkhon Municipal District in Sakhonnakhon was chosen to investigate the mechanism in setting up a community waste bank and carbon bank system to alter citizens’ consumption-disposal behavior and incentives to efficiently manage municipal solid waste. Based on activities of the case study, the research evaluates amounts of 1-year GHG emission reduction from the waste bank by using (a) the Integrated Waste Management for Municipalities: IWM, (b) the Waste Reduction Model: WARM, and developing (c) a new model by adopting emission factors from existing research (EF-DB). The study developed a carbon account based on evaluation of GHG emission reduction from the recycling activity, and did surveys the citizens’ opinions living in the district to finally provide recommended strategies to help other communities increasing efficiency of waste recycling. In summary, the research found that (1) the recycling activity has increasing potential to reduce GHG emission and to gain benefits from carbon finance, (2) the carbon accounting system can be used for evaluating and recording individual GHG emission reduction from the recycling activity, (3) the survey found that citizen awareness and financial benefits are major incentives to reduce wastes at source, (4) being a member of the waste bank brings people more interested in carbon bank and helps reducing GHG emission, and (5) public education, revenues and quality of waste collection service are major factors for improving efficiency of waste recycling. Therefore, governments have to provide more public education, financial incentive, and service for citizens to widely implement waste bank and carbon bank in local community. Eventually, communities will not only get benefits from solving waste management but also help reducing GHG emission.