A Holistic Sustainability Framework for Waste Management in European Cities: Concept Development
1
Department of Sustainable Organic Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium
2
Circular Economy and Industrial Leadership Unit, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, 41092 Seville, Spain
3
Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture, Technical University Delft, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2018, 10(7), 2184; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072184
Received: 22 May 2018 / Revised: 14 June 2018 / Accepted: 14 June 2018 / Published: 26 June 2018
(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
Waste management represents a challenge for public authorities due to many reasons such as increased waste generation following urban population growth, economic burdens imposed on the municipal budget, and nuisances inevitably caused to the environment and local inhabitants. To optimize the system from a sustainability perspective, moving the transition towards a more circular economy, a better understanding of the different stages of waste management is necessary. A review of recently developed sustainability frameworks for waste management showed that no single framework captures all the instruments needed to ultimately provide a solid basis for comprehensive analyses of the potential burdens associated with urban waste management. Bearing this limitation in mind, the objective of this research is to propose a conceptual and comprehensive sustainability framework to support decision-making in waste management of European cities. The framework comprises a combination of methods capable of identifying future strategies and scenarios, to assess different types of impacts based on a life cycle perspective, and considers the value of waste streams, the actors involved, and possible constraints of implementing scenarios. The social, economic, environmental, technical and political domains are covered, and special attention is paid to impacts affecting foremost the local population.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Taelman, S.E.; Tonini, D.; Wandl, A.; Dewulf, J. A Holistic Sustainability Framework for Waste Management in European Cities: Concept Development. Sustainability 2018, 10, 2184. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072184
AMA Style
Taelman SE, Tonini D, Wandl A, Dewulf J. A Holistic Sustainability Framework for Waste Management in European Cities: Concept Development. Sustainability. 2018; 10(7):2184. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072184
Chicago/Turabian StyleTaelman, Sue E., Davide Tonini, Alexander Wandl, and Jo Dewulf. 2018. "A Holistic Sustainability Framework for Waste Management in European Cities: Concept Development" Sustainability 10, no. 7: 2184. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072184
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