Authors : Shazwin Binti Mat Taib and Nobukazu Nakagoshi
Abstract: Excessive emission of methane (CH4) released by waste sector accounts for 3-4% of the total annual anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) emission. Malaysia’s GHGs inventory in 1994 has shown that waste sector had emitted 1, 043 Gigagrams (Gg) of CH4 from landfills and was expected to increase driven by excessive waste generation. There is a need to determine GHGs emission from waste sector in order to determine the importance and involvement in climate change mitigation. In this study, the potential emission trends for four inventory years from the disposal of Biodegradable Municipal Solid Waste (BMSW) in disposal sites were estimated. To determine emission at city level, the urban city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was chosen. It was observed that BMSW generated in 1985 had potential to emit 0.22 MtCO2 eq year-1 of GHGs emission and in 2000 it was projected to emit at a rate 0.31 MtCO2 eq year-1, throughout the whole decay process of the fraction. To reduce the amount of BMSW transferred to landfill, resource recovery action was proposed. Findings had shown that if 20% of degradable solid waste generated in 2000 were recovered as resource through composting and anaerobic digestion, GHGs emission rate for each treatment would be 584.6 and 146.1 tCO2 eq year-1, respectively.
Shazwin Binti Mat Taib and Nobukazu Nakagoshi, 2012. Climate Benefit of Recovering Biodegradable Municipal Solid Waste: A Case Study in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Environmental Research Journal, 6: 32-38.