Use of carbon footprinting to explore alternative household waste policy scenarios in an Irish city-region

The purpose of this paper is to apply the carbon footprint indicator to measure the environmental impact of production, domestic disposal, recycling and exports of waste produced by the residents of an Irish city-region and to analyse the likely impact of policy scenarios relating to waste reduction, increased recycling, thermal treatment and disposal by landfill. It was found that the total footprint of waste disposal and recycling, excluding emissions associated with export of waste, fell from 0.078 global hectares (GHa) per capita in 1998 to 0.072 GHa per capita in 2004.The total footprint in 2004, inclusive of waste exports, was calculated to be 0.0723 GHa per capita, with emissions associated with exports accounting for less than 1% of the total. This suggests that environmental impacts associated with energy consumption and emissions are predominantly domestic and result from municipal processing. Scenario analysis was also undertaken using key policy targets from national and regional waste management policy reports and it was found that Scenario 3, that is reducing disposal of landfill to 14% by 2010, has the lowest per capita footprint. This suggests that achievement of the regional target is the optimal policy, of those considered, for waste management in the case study over the period to 2010.