Life cycle impact assessment of municipal solid waste management system in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Abstract

This study aims to improve the current municipal solid waste management system in Phnom Penh, Cambodia using life cycle assessment (LCA) and behavioral analysis. LCA is used to assess the environmental impact, particularly focusing on GHG emission, on the current MSWM system. The analysis compares various different scenarios that reflect alternative MSWM strategies in many countries around the world. Due to its high fraction of food waste composition, composting and material recovery system is the most favorable waste strategy that should be implemented in the short-term perspective. But for the long-term run, installing the landfill gas collection in the landfill is the most environmental-friendly system that the government should take into consideration. Those systems introduce above are not only beneficial to the environment, but also to the economy as well, from selling compost and generating electricity from landfill gas collection system. In addition to LCA, behavioral study is proceeded to investigate the people behavior toward the improving of the current MSWM system. Questionnaire survey is deployed in this step. More than 300 samples are distributed to many places in city of Phnom Penh. The result of the survey shows that the majority of people do not separate wastes before disposal. But satisfyingly, 82% of the people doing the survey are willing to do the at-source separation if there is an instruction from the government. Around 94% of people are willing to pay more financial fee to improve the system. The average amount of money they are willing to pay more is 3-4 USD (USDollar) per month.