Summary

In this chapter, we evaluate the damage costs of landfill and incineration of municipal solid waste in Europe and North America, with due account for transport and for energy and materials recovery. Whilst air pollution provides some of the most significant externalities of waste management, the comparison of landfill and incineration also needs to consider potential impacts on drinking water due to leachates from landfill. A full impact pathway analysis of leachate is not possible here given that such impacts are extremely site specific. This is not to say that it could not be done for a specific site, though even this is far from straightforward given the complexity of the environmental pathways and the long time horizon of persistent pollutants. As an alternative we consider an extreme scenario, based on impact pathway thinking, to show that they are not worth worrying about if a landfill is built and managed according to regulations such as those of the EU. The damage costs due to the construction of the waste treatment facility are negligible, and so are the damage costs of waste transport, illustrated with an arbitrary choice of a 100 km round trip by a 16 tonne truck. The benefits of materials recovery make a relatively small contribution to the total damage cost. The only significant contributions come from direct emissions (from the landfill or incinerator) and from avoided emissions due to energy recovery (from an incinerator). Damage costs for incineration range from about 1.5 to 21 €/twaste, extremely dependent on the assumed scenario for energy recovery. For landfill the cost ranges from about 11 to 14 €/twaste; it is dominated by greenhouse gas emissions because only a fraction of the CH4 can be captured (here assumed to be 70%). Amenity costs (odor, visual impact, noise) are highly site-specific and we only cite results from a literature survey which indicate that such costs could make a significant contribution, on the order of 1 €/twaste.