title: Review of LCA studies of solid waste management systems--part II: methodological guidance for a better practice.
abstract: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used in waste management to identify strategies that prevent or minimise negative impacts on ecosystems, human health or natural resources. However, the quality of the provided support to decision- and policy-makers is strongly dependent on a proper conduct of the LCA. How has LCA been applied until now? Are there any inconsistencies in the past practice? To answer these questions, we draw on a critical review of 222 published LCA studies of solid waste management systems. We analyse the past practice against the ISO standard requirements and the ILCD Handbook guidelines for each major step within the goal definition, scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation phases of the methodology. Results show that malpractices exist in several aspects of the LCA with large differences across studies. Examples are a frequent neglect of the goal definition, a frequent lack of transparency and precision in the definition of the scope of the study, e.g. an unclear delimitation of the system boundaries, a truncated impact coverage, difficulties in capturing influential local specificities such as representative waste compositions into the inventory, and a frequent lack of essential sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. Many of these aspects are important for the reliability of the results. For each of them, we therefore provide detailed recommendations to practitioners of waste management LCAs.
authors.affiliation: Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark. Electronic address: alau@dtu.dk.
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Laurent
authors.affiliation: Residual Resources Engineering, Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Clavreul
authors.affiliation: Water and Environmental Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bernstad
authors.affiliation: Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bakas
authors.affiliation: Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark; ECO - Ecosystems and Environmental Sustainability, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
authors.forename: Monia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Niero
authors.affiliation: Copenhagen Resource Institute, 1215 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gentil
authors.affiliation: Residual Resources Engineering, Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
authors.forename: Thomas H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.affiliation: Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.
authors.forename: Michael Z
authors.initials: MZ
authors.lastname: Hauschild
mesh_terms: D005060:Europe; D012037:Refuse Disposal / Q000592:standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018505:Waste Management / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Case studies; Critical review; Environmental impact assessment; Goal and scope definition; Inventory modelling; Life cycle assessment