(659f) Life Cycle Assessment Lca of Waste Management Systems - Lca Oriented Solid Waste Management Model - Easewaste

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the solid waste management model's functionality and validity. Model functionality is demonstrated by using a case study and model validity is tested through using verification and validation testing methods. The waste management system has gone through a history of shifting problems, demands, and strategies over the years and now waste is viewed as a problem ranging from local to global concern. Society's increasing complexity and the resulting increased complexity of waste combined with a general development of environmental consciousness and shifting from a local focus on point sources to a more regional or global focus on issues of a more complex nature. The aim of the EASEWASTE model is to provide an understanding of the ecological (environmental) issues involved in waste management systems, and the capacity of Life Cycle Assessment techniques to address these issues through a PC-based model. The objective of the model is to evaluate the environmental performance of the various elements of existing or proposed solid waste management systems (residential, bulky and garden waste). Life Cycle Assessment is applied to quantify and qualify the resource and energy consumption /production, and the emissions released from a waste management system. The model calculates environmental impact potentials and resource consumptions for any user-defined waste treatment system, and allows the user to track them to their source in a waste treatment processes or to a specific waste material fraction. The model also supports individual technology/process calculation of environmental impact potential for the user-defined waste system. In order to enhance the development of sustainable solid waste management systems and to guide waste experts to adopt eco-efficiency and a life-cycle thinking into waste management systems, the EASEWASTE model is found to be good model. In order to build a confidence in calculated results, the EASEWASTE model validity is more crucial. Generally it is not feasible to test a software product with all possible inputs, nor is it viable to test all possible data processing paths that can occur during program execution. Software often contains errors, even though the compiler accepts the program as well-formed. Most of the errors and inconveniences in programs are discovered only by accident when the program is being used. However, there are more systematic and affective ways to find errors than by random experimentation. This paper introduces different practices that have emerged to test the different parts and functions of the software tool, and demonstrates their use to curb the errors from the EASEWASTE software tool in a systematic way. A list of software testing requirements is prepared. Best practices are applied in a way that they should meet the testing requirements. The practices are divided into four main activities: model review, model validation (spreadsheet test), scenario-based test and beta test (internal test). Finally, a checking sheet is prepared as a questionnaire for each part of the models (each module has different testing requirements) and each question is answered applying the different relevant testing approaches. The model is designed to be flexible, transparent, user-friendly and well documented in order to ensure widespread use by local and regional waste planners, as well as by authorities setting guidelines and regulations. The model is already being applied in actual cases in Denmark, and results obtained with the model have confirmed the importance of applying a systems perspective, and of taking into account site specific differences in analysis and planning of waste management, rather than relying on overly simplified solutions.