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The quantity of Municipal Solid Waste is increasing dramatically due to urbanization and population expansion. In our country, the Urban Local Bodies(Ulbs) are not able to manage such humongous volume of municipal solid waste because of poor infrastructure, ineffective management strategies, inadequate resources and financial crisis. Door to door collection and segregation at household level, processing of waste at the plants and final disposal at the scientific landfills, if not done appropriately the waste gets mixed and finally those are dumped at open landfills. This process deteriorates the environmental quality because unplanned dumping at the landfill sites releases huge amount of ghg gases mainly methane. In this study, to calculate the methane emission from landfill, IPCC Default Method (DM) has been used. Comparative analysis of two products (coffee cup lid and pet bottles) have been done using Life Cycle Assessment tool to estimate the waste generated at each stage from production and disposal followed by impact assessment, carbon footprint and sustainability of the products. It has been found that pet bottle has less carbon footprint compared to coffe cup lids made out of polylactic acid which is considered eco-friendly product. The Government of India has taken serious steps in upgrading the picture of waste sector. MSWM Rules 2000 has been upgraded to Solid Waste Management Rules 2015, but there still lacks implantation at the ground level. The mitigation efforts of the Government is notable, to mitigate the climate change impact. Various policies and technological innovations have been introduced to generate energy from waste which will reduce the adverse impact and sustainability of solid waste management will be promoted.
Keywords- LCA, ghg emissions, landfill, climate policies, sustainability.
