Life Cycle Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Management in Tripoli, Lebanon: From Open Dumping to Integrated Resource Recovery

Abstract

Municipal solid waste management remains a critical environmental and public-health challenge in Lebanon. This study evaluates the management of 1 tonne of incoming municipal solid waste from the Tripoli/Al-Fayhaa system using a SimaPro 8 model with IMPACT 2002+. Five scenarios were compared: open dumping (S0), incineration with residue landfilling (S1), glass and metal recovery followed by incineration (S2), controlled landfilling (S3), and pyrolysis-gasification (S4). Local characterization showed 48.28% organics and 23.86% plastics. Open dumping produced the highest aggregated impact of municipal solid waste (5.63 Pt t−1), whereas S3 (0.82 Pt t−1) and S4 (0.86 Pt t−1) were the lowest-scoring modeled alternatives. The corrected climate-change midpoint result for S1 was 128.33 kg CO2 eq t−1 versus 485.1 kg CO2 eq t−1 municipal solid waste for S0, corresponding to a 73.5% reduction. Because the available model records incompletely document background inventory, landfill methane management, and energy-recovery credits, controlled-technology rankings are interpreted as model-specific. A prospective S5 pathway combining source separation, material recovery, anaerobic digestion, digestate post-composting, energy recovery, and controlled residual disposal is proposed for future harmonized modeling. The most robust recommendation is to phase out uncontrolled dumping and quantitatively evaluate integrated biological recovery of organics.