One common life cycle assessment (LCA) focus is to understand whether landfill or municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) treatment is more environmentally favorable. Past studies have focused on evaluating which disposal treatment method had the least greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint and in most cases MSWI treatment was more favorable. Surprisingly, several studies reported contrasting results where landfilling was more GHG emissions favorable than MSWI. Here, we compiled numerous peer-reviewed papers and identified which key LCA assumptions resulted in a paper reporting landfill or MSWI treatment to be more favorable. The assumptions related to landfill gas management, specifically, a high gas collection (>75%) and landfill gas-to-energy recovery efficiency (>90%) were reported as crucial for landfilling to be more favorable. The MSWI treatment assumptions of including energy recovery offsets from when energy is produced from incinerated waste and used to replace fossil fuel-based energy sources was key for MSWI to be more favorable. The review findings provided a general insight on key assumptions, however we aimed to understand which specific assumptions had the greatest influence on results. To do so, we used the review findings to tailor an LCA analysis where we assessed whether landfilling or MSWI was more GHG emissions favorable based on changing waste stream composition, landfill gas management, and energy grid. An aggressive gas collection management (collecting gas early and long with gas-to-energy), a waste stream with more plastic (>40%), and a more fossil-based energy grid (>50%) favored landfilling.

一种常见的生命周期评估 (LCA) 重点是了解垃圾填埋或城市固体废物焚烧 (MSWI) 处理是否更环保。过去的研究侧重于评估哪种处置处理方法的温室气体 (GHG) 排放足迹最少，并且在大多数情况下，MSWI 处理更有利。令人惊讶的是，一些研究报告了对比结果，其中垃圾填埋比 MSWI 更有利于温室气体排放。在这里，我们汇编了大量同行评审的论文，并确定了哪些关键的 LCA 假设导致论文报告垃圾填埋场或 MSWI 处理更有利。与垃圾填埋气管理相关的假设，特别是高气体收集 (>75%) 和垃圾填埋气能量回收效率 (>90%)，据报道对于更有利的垃圾填埋至关重要。MSWI 处理假设包括从焚烧废物产生能量并用于替代基于化石燃料的能源时的能量回收抵消，这是使 MSWI 更有利的关键。审查结果提供了对关键假设的一般见解，但我们旨在了解哪些特定假设对结果的影响最大。为此，我们使用审查结果来定制 LCA 分析，根据不断变化的废物流组成、垃圾填埋气体管理和能源网络，我们评估了垃圾填埋或 MSWI 是否更有利于温室气体排放。积极的气体收集管理（通过气体转化为能源早期和长期收集气体）、含有更多塑料的废物流 (>40%) 和更多基于化石的能源网络 (>50%) 有利于垃圾填埋。