MULTICRITERIA EVALUATION OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT SCENARIOS: CASE STUDY IASI, ROMANIA

Abstract

Solid  waste  management  is  of  great  interest  as  a  topical  issue  discussed  and  reviewed internationally.  Interdisciplinary  studies  have  been  conducted  worldwide  to  assess  sustainable  solid waste management. The  main objectives of a sustainable waste management should be: preservation of natural resources and energy, minimizing pollution and environmental impacts, establishing a high quality  performance  of  the  environment.  Due  to  its  complexity  and  the uniqueness,  each  waste management  system  is  designed  to  satisfy  particular  objectives,  such  as  waste  policies  and  specific environmental  targets  (restricted  to  site  specific constraints  such  as:  waste  composition,  generation rates, geographical origin, installed treatment capacity, waste management technologies, stakeholders preferences). Sustainable management of waste can be accomplished using different types of models, which are in fact decision support models such as multicriteria evaluation models. The multicriteria evaluation  can  rank  different  waste  management  systems  considering  various  evaluation  criteria  in order  to  choose  the  most  suitable  system.  In  this  purpose  we  have proposed  different  scenarios  as alternatives  to  the  municipal  solid  waste  management  system  existent  in  Iasi  in  2009.  Multicriteria decision  making  approach  was emphasized  and  applied  for  the  evaluation  of  waste management
scenarios,  since  it  enables  a  complex,  integrated  and  logical  framework.  This  way  we  are  able  to
identify   and   characterize   the   interactions   and   interdependence   among   factors,   structured
hierarchically or like a network to deal with dependence and feedback.