Developing an Integrated Environmental Assessment Model for Waste Management System

The paradigm of waste management shifts toward more integrated management, hence a more integrated environment assessment method is emerging to support the strategy formulation. As a systematic and comprehensive environmental management tool, life cycle assessment (LCA) can serve as a keystone of integrated environmental assessment method. But three issues needs improvement: credibility on inventory analysis, limitation of waste stream projection and scenario analysis, and omission of site-dependent information of impact assessment. This study aims at incorporating material flows analysis (MFA) and health risk assessment (HRA) to develop an integrated environmental assessment model for waste management. A model called TWMIEA are developed based on incorporating MFA into scenario analysis and inventory, while the HRA serves as a tool to assess the human toxicity impact. Then the TWMIEA model is applied to evaluation the midterm waste management policy for Taoyuan County. The result reveals the waste hierarchy can be reexamined by the approach established on integrated waste management.