ABSTRACT                                                                     -> Italian Site

The purpose of this study is the environmental analysis of the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the Commune of Milano (Italy).
This work has been done in collaboration with ENEA (National Research Institute for Energy and Environment) and AMSA spa, waste management company in Milano.
To achieve the objective of the study the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology was employed, supported at the first stage, by GIS (Geographic Information System). The methodology of LCA revealed itself to be very efficient, because it allows the consideration of all the phases involved in waste management; from the waste collecting to the final treatment. LCA enables a comparison between different scenarios of the integrated management and an evaluation of the best strategy for the organisation of collecting, recycling, incineration and landfilling of wastes. It allows the maximisation of the socio-environmental benefits.

The procedure is performed according to the standards specified in the norm UNI-EN ISO 14040. The goal is the analysis of the environmental profile of the waste management done in the Commune of Milano. The part of the life cycle of the products used by the citizens of Milan, which has been analysed in the work, goes from their collecting till the end of their life (recycling, incineration, landfilling). The functional unit is 1 ton of urban solid waste. The production of the goods, which become wastes is beyond the system boundary (hypothesis "zero burden"). The used data are referenced to the statistics of the AMSA´s company of the year 2000; this data are embedded in the actual scenario.

The programme "SimaPro5", which allows the processing of the data was used for the drafting of the inventory. The evaluation of impacts of the considered processes is done with the help of computer software "Eco-indicator 99", included in "SimaPro5". Three final waste treatment ways of the integrated waste management system have been kept separate: the recycling, the incineration and the landfilling. They were created as three sub-LCA in the global LCA called "LCA integrated management". The results clearly demonstrated that the integrated management of waste brings a global benefit to the environment. By analysing the results it can be noticed that the benefit is principally due to the recycling process. However, the work shows that some materials are more convenient to recycle then the others. This is due to the nature of the material and also to the way it is managed.

The energy recovery of the incinerator and the process of collecting of wastes have an important weight in the environmental balance. A specific analysis has been done to evaluate whether the sorting out of the wastes in every house-hold is more efficient than in the collecting points and in relevant companies. The sensitivity analysis has been conducted on the evaluation programme "Eco-indicator 99", on the recycling processes in the database "Buwal" and on the process of waste incineration. Additionally, another sensitivity analysis was carried out for the two critical variables of energy recovery of the incinerator and for the consumption of the fuel by the collecting trucks. Finally, the effectiveness of the pre-treatment process before the landfilling has been compared to the scenario without this process.

The improvement proposals suggest a higher exploitation of the incinerator and a more sophisticated development of the waste sorting out in the underground of Milano.