Towards a Zero Waste city- an analysis from the perspective of energy recovery and landfill reduction in Beijing

Waste management has been one of the urgent environmental issues due to the rapid urbanization in China. There is a huge potential to improve the energy recovery efficiency of the current waste treatment system. This study aims to propose an efficient waste management system to reduce the landfill amount and improve the energy recovery rate (ERE) of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) treatment by considering environment, energy, economic, and policy effects. This study selects Beijing as a case study city and proposes four different MSW treatment scenarios. The landfill reduction amount, energy recovery efficiency, life cycle costs and benefits, and the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are evaluated. Furthermore, the impact of waste separation policy on the landfill amount, and the proposed internal rate of return (IRR) index are also quantified. The results show that the proposed scenarios can significantly reduce the amount of landfill. Scenario 4 (MBT system) ranks the highest, with a value of 92.69%. From the energy recovery and GHG emissions reduction perspectives, scenario 4 can achieve the highest energy recovery efficiency (65.33%) and the highest GHG emissions reduction (2.09 × 10⁶ tons CO₂e). From the economic perspective, scenario 3 can achieve the highest benefit with a value of 6.00 × 10⁹ CNY. Such benefits are highly affected by the factors of the treatment capacity, the tipping fee and the power generation efficiency. With the continuous implementation of waste separation policy and waste-to-energy option in China, it is critical to assess the related environmental and economic benefits so that an efficient waste management system can be established.