PARENT SESSION

(04-08) Waste input-output quantity and price model as an integrated LCA tool.

Nakamura, Shinichiro^*,1, Kondo, Yasushi², ¹ Waseda university, Tokyo, Japan² Toyama university, Toyama, Japan

ABSTRACT- Any production and consumption activity emits waste, a proper treatment of which is the task of waste treatment. While IOA is an excellent means of LCA for evaluating environmental effects associated with goods production, it is not readily applicable to issues involving waste management because it does not take account of the interdependence between goods producing- and waste treatment sectors through the inter-sectoral flow of goods and wastes. In order to solve for this point, we developed Waste IO (WIO) model and the associated accounting system that explicitly takes account of the interdependence, and actually complied and quantified it for the Japanese economy. The WIO model is a hybrid of economic IOA and engineering model of waste treatment. The current version of it is composed of 80 goods producing sectors, 30 waste types, and about 10 waste treatment processes. Using the WIO, we can evaluate, among others, effects of a particular waste recycling process on landfill consumption, carbon dioxide emission, and employment. Exploiting the dual relationship between cost and production of the IO system, we also derived the WIO cost and price model that is capable of computing costs of treatment and prices of goods associated with alternative waste management scenarios. A waste management policy or strategy, which is found environmentally sound based on LCA, often faces difficulty when it comes to real social application because it is not economically sound under given economic and institutional conditions. Using the WIO price model we can evaluate economic feasibility of alternative policy scenarios under alternative institutional and economic conditions. Application to issues of regional disposal indicated that a regional concentration of incinerators reduces carbon dioxide emission and landfilling but increases incineration costs per unit. Applications to alternative life-cycle strategies of electronic appliances will also be reported.

Key words: input-output analysis, LCA, economic feasibility, waste management