ENVIRONMENTAL EVALUATION OF AN ON-SITE COMPOSTING SYSTEM FOR FOOD WASTE IN HOUSING COMPLEXES

Abstract

 In the current situation, municipal household waste, which accounts for 55% of total food waste, is mainly incinerated. In this study, we attempted to estimate life-cycle environmental loads of a food waste recycling system which implements regional circulation through on-site food waste treatment facilities. The objective of this study is to evaluate the advances of this system compared with the current combustible waste disposal system. Kitakyushu City was taken as the case study area. LCA for each stage of transportation, incineration and primary fermentation was carried out. It was assumed that this recycling system spread to housing complexes throughout the city, and the analysis was based on the experimental data from a certain specific apartment house. Results showed that when the scale of the urban becomes small in cluster housing of Kitakyushu City, there would be a reduction of 2.73 t-CO₂ of greenhouse gases per month.