Sustainability Indicators to MSW Treatment Assessment: The Rio de Janeiro Case Study

The Brazilian Policy foresees the waste management hierarchy, according to which energy reuse from waste is preferred to final disposal. However, less than 0.2% of the country’s waste goes to energy production. This paper proposes sustainability indicators to support the decision to choose the best process to treat municipal solid waste (MSW) through bioenergy generation technologies. Then, we conduct a case study for Rio de Janeiro. Incineration and gasification were not economically feasible—despite TRL 9 and 8. However, the projects presented a null net present value by increasing the gate fee to 94.69 and 255.39 USD/ton of MSW, respectively. The social indicators (job creation, salary increase with the absorption of waste pickers, population served, reduction in MSW sent to landfill) did not indicate the best technology. The results of the environmental indicators for incineration and gasification were, respectively, 0.45 and 0.37 t CO_2eq/t_MSW for GWP, 1.49 and 1.23 MWh/t_MSW for energy intensity, 1.24 and 6.14 m³/t_MSW for water intensity, 39.3 and 27.9 m²/t_MSW for land use and 0.135 and 0.088 t SO_2eq/t_MSW for acidification. Gasification presented better results on 60% of the environmental indicators. However, incineration scored better in the important ones, water and energy intensities, in addition to the technical–economic aspect.