Description
This report, prepared by Ecobalance Inc. for EREF in partnership with NSWMA (now NWRA), the U.S. EPA, and leading academic researchers, established the first comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI) model designed specifically for modern MSW landfills. Prior to this work, available environmental models addressed only fragments of a landfill’s impact — greenhouse gases, for instance — and couldn’t support the kind of cross-media analysis that LCI requires. Landfill decomposition unfolds over decades, and that complexity had no adequate modeling framework.
The project filled that gap. Researchers developed a multimedia decomposition model covering air emissions, water effluents, and residual waste across the full landfill lifecycle — construction, operation, closure, post-closure care, and leachate and gas management. A companion software tool was built to allow operators and planners to model existing sites or evaluate new facility designs under different scenarios.
For the solid waste industry, this work provided something it hadn’t had before: a scientifically defensible, end-to-end picture of landfill environmental performance. That foundation supported more credible benchmarking, stronger engagement with regulators, and a clearer basis for evaluating design and management alternatives.
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