Study of Environmental Impact from Municipal Solid Waste Management: A Case Study of Bang Chalong Housing, Samut Prakan

Abstract

Solid waste is one of the major environmental management issues affecting the quality of human life
throughout the world including Thailand. Therefore, this research aims to study the environmental impact of
municipal solid waste management using material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA)
focusing on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and (2) polyethylene (PE) waste in the study area. The MFA
results revealed that in the current situation (S0), the community had the recycling proportion of PET and PE
recycling of 15.81 and 2.54% respectively, and the landfill proportion of PET and PE of 84.19 and 97.46%
respectively. Moreover, additional MFA analysis scenarios were set up: 100% recycled (S1), 100% landfill
(S2) and 100% incineration (S3), and the S4 scenario which waste sorting plants were set up. Thus, the S4
scenario had the recycling proportion of PET and PE were 83.08 and 80.49%, respectively, and the rest was
be handled by landfill. The LCA study found that S1 had the lowest overall environmental impact. When
comparing S0 and S4, S4 could reduce the overall environmental impact of S0. In particular, the global
warming potential (GWP100a) is reduced by 1.4 times of S0. However, the operation of a solid waste sorting
plant requires a high budget, solid waste separation in household is important.