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(82-13) Using LCA for policy making: the Dutch waste management plan. van Ewijk, Harry*,1, Saft, Robert Jan1, 1 IVAM Environmental Research/University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 18180, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ABSTRACT- This year the Environmental Impact Assessement report for the Dutch National Waste Management Plan (EIA-NWMP) was finished. The National Waste Management Plan is the Dutch policy document of the Ministry of Environment for waste management until the year 2011. Goals of the EIA-NWMP are the establishment of minimum (environmental) standards for the removal and processing of waste and looking ahead at capacity decisions for incineration and landfill. The minimum standard in the NWMP is determined by using life cycle analysis (LCA). The LCA is applied for some 25 different waste streams (e.g. organic household waste, waste oils, construction waste, incineration waste, sludge from waste water treatment plants) and leads to a total of 130-140 LCA's. The normalised effectscores from the LCA are converted into one environmental score with several weighting sets. The defined functional unit was the processing of 1 tonne of waste as collected at industrial sites. The choice of system boundaries proved to be important. In fact the environmental impact of waste was fully allocated to future systems and not to the waste producing systems. This assumption leads to an overestimation of environmental burden of secondary material use compared to primary material flows. The Dutch governments however opts for increasing use of secondary material flows. In addition it proved that the allocation choices (method and choice of avoided processes) was very often dominant for the outcome of environmental profiles. The choice for avoided environmental impacts due to waste processing in cement kilns for instance turned out favourable compared to modern incineration facilities with a high standard of abatement techniques. One of the conclusions of this study is that environmental management on governmental level can lead to contradictions when system boundaries and allocation choices differ. Key words: life cycle assessment, waste management, policy making, system boundaries |
