1.
DEVELOPMENTOFAPPROPRIATE SUSTAINABILE DECISION SUPPORT TOOLSFOR
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONSIN SOLID WASTE TECHNOLOGIES
Prepared by: Mark Hudgins, rGreen Landfill, Inc., 2016
Abstract
Incorporating "green infrastructure" practices within large urban areas can effectively and
affordably complement traditional infrastructure. Whether through the application of
conventional or new approaches, these practices give municipal managers the ability to create
integrated solutions across various departments. Further, there are strong societal expectations
from the public for sustainable development, transparency and accountability as they have
evolved with increasingly stringent legislation, growing pressures on the environment from
pollution, inefficient use of resources, improper waste management, climate change, degradation
of ecosystems, and loss of biodiversity.
As a result, moving from subjective discussions about green benefits to quantitative business
cases that monetize social and environmental impacts offers a new way of thinking about
infrastructure development in order to leverage natural systems and create a more resilient
infrastructure, especially as part of today’s integrated solid waste management (ISWM)
planning. Over the past few years, communities have begun using various decision support tools
(DSTs), models, standards, and programs to develop sustainable ISWM plans. These include
life-cycle analysis (LCA), goal-oriented assessments, ENVISION, ISO 14001, and capacity,
management, operations, and maintenance programs (CMOMs) as used for various utilities, such
as water and wastewater treatment facilities.
Yet, while many DST assessment methods for waste management systems are quite advanced
and sophisticated, ISWM planning becomes more difficult when accepted hierarchies and
assumptions within the solid waste industry are challenged by new technologies and approaches,
some of which may cause either significant market or paradigm shifts (known as “disruptive
innovations”). As result, both infrastructure development and sustainability plans can be bereft of
such influences and benefits. To address this, DST’s should accommodate state-of-the-art
analytics and “value stream” thinking, appropriate metrics, as well as based on practical
approaches.
To best develop a DST to allow for disruptive innovations, presented herein is a review of
several DSTs that have been used for conventional ISWM planning, some of which could be
modified. In addition, a holistic view of planning a DST for disruptive innovations within ISWM
is offered and an example case for a large municipality in Florida.
Introduction
According to the National League of Cities, incorporating "green infrastructure" practices can
“effectively and affordably complement traditional infrastructure,” giving municipal managers
the ability to create integrated solutions across different departments, especially in the face of a
shrinking budgets and limited resources. Sustainable development as a goal is achieved by
balancing the three pillars of sustainability. (economic, social and environmental). Moreover,
societal expectations for sustainable development, transparency and accountability have evolved
with increasingly stringent legislation, growing pressures on the environment from pollution,

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inefficient use of resources, improper waste management, climate change, degradation of
ecosystems and loss of biodiversity.
With respect to integrated solid waste management (ISWM) planning, many large cities perform
sustainability assessments using a variety of decision-support tools (DSTs). However, many of
these DSTs are based on established hierarchies and assumptions which limit the opportunities
for new technologies to be introduced. For example, it is assumed that landfills will always
produce methane and toxic leachate (liquids) and thus remain as threats to the environment.
Also, the landfill’s airspace capacity is generally permitted to be a fixed volume. Lastly, most
waste is either landfill, recycled, or used for energy purposes.
However, as presented herein, few DSTs, therefore ISWM plans, accommodate across-the-board
impacts and “value streams” (multiple municipal departments, for example) and/or do not
account for if the challenging of ISWM assumptions. Further, many DSTs are single-output
based, focusing only on environmental outcomes such as climate change, for example, while
others are only cost-based. In these cases, DSTs may not give attention to value streams that can
flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments. Lastly, while debates still exist
between landfill and recycling proponents, few realize there are new “disruptive innovations” in
solid waste management where not only can both approaches co-exist and thrive, but where a
significant paradigm shift in the solid waste industry could occur. The impact of these
hierarchies and assumptions, current DSTs, and conventional perspectives, can limit the number
of ISWM options available to communities.
Landfills versus Recycling Assumptions
Take for example landfilling and waste recycling. Guided mainly by US Environmental
Protection Agency (US EPA’s) solid waste hierarchy, as illustrated below in Figure 1, landfills
are the least desired management option due their perceived hazards. Here, business are
encouraged to generate less waste in their manufacturing process, while communities are asked
to reduce the amount of waste they generate. More challenging for communities are aggressive
recycling goals (e.g. 75%). Without other new approaches on the horizon, US EPA states that
this current hierarchy best protects the environment, reduces Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,
and creates jobs that are focused on the use of recycled materials.
Figure 1: US EPA’s Waste Management Hierarchy

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On the other hand, many in the solid waste industry and landfilling proponents support the
position that landfilling is economical and it will always be needed in some manner. Yet, zero-
waste proponents point out that landfilling costs do not include the life-cycle costs of likely site
remediation down the road. Their basis is that while modern landfills are designed with highly-
engineered protection systems, such as HDPE liners, even the US EPA, views landfills as
temporary protection solutions, for “even the best liner and leachate collection system will
ultimately fail due to natural deterioration”1
.
This has made ISWM planning challenging for over a decade, as exampled by the Environmental
Defense Fund’s2
1996 debate of certain waste management “myths” and “facts” about recycling
and landfills, as presented in Table 1.
Table 1: Recycling versus Landfilling
Landfill Proponents Recycling Proponents
Recycling responds to a false landfill-space
“crisis” created by the media and
environmentalists.
Concentrating on landfill space misses the point. Most of recycling’s
environmental benefits lie in reduced energy use and natural resource damage
and pollution from extracting virgin raw materials and from manufacturing—
benefits documented in every recent study that has examined virgin and
recycled products over their full life cycle. As just one example, recycling at
current levels saves enough energy to supply 9 million U.S. households.
Landfill space is cheap and abundant. Landfill space is a commodity, priced according to supply and demand. The
major growth in recycling has occurred where landfills are expensive or
recyclable materials command higher than average prices. Curbside recycling
in these areas is a rational response to economic costs and opportunities.
Recycling should pay for itself. Recycling, landfills, incinerators are not expected to pay for themselves.
Recycling proponents instead focus on what recycling’s net costs over the
long term as compared with those of the alternatives. As they support that
“snapshot” accounting of recycling costs early in the life of a program is
misleading. Lastly, substantial efficiencies occur (and improve) as these
programs innovate and mature, making well run recycling programs cost-
competitive.
There are no markets for recyclable
materials.
Recycling is the foundation for large, robust manufacturing industries that are
an important part of our economy. The volume of the major scrap materials
sold in domestic and global markets is growing steadily. As with all
commodities, prices fluctuate over time, yet recycling is often the lowest-cost
option for manufacturers.
Strict regulations ensure that the
environmental costs of making and using
products are included in their prices.
Many of the environmental costs of virgin materials extraction,
manufacturing, consumption, and disposal are not included in products’
prices. An entire sub-discipline of environmental economics has developed to
address these market “externalities,” which occur even in the most regulated
industries.
Recycling is nearing its maximum
potential.
There remains enormous room for growth in recycling. We still throw away
about 35 million tons of highly recyclable materials each year—including
half of all newspapers and almost three-quarters of magazines and glass
containers.
Recycling is a time-consuming burden on
the American public
Convenient, well-designed recycling programs allow Americans to take
action in their daily lives to reduce the environmental impact of the products
they consume. Informing citizens of the costs of their own consumption and
1
US EPA Federal Register, Aug 30, 1988, Vol.53, No.168
2
EDF Letter VOL. XXVII, NO.5, 1996

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disposal activities through “pay as you throw” user fees makes economic and
environmental sense—but only alongside viable recycling programs.
From this debate, it appears that recycling and landfills are mutually exclusive- that communities
must decide either waste is to be recycled (or used for energy) or landfilled.
Recycling Debate Illustrates the Need to Examine Values Streams
However, amongst this dialogue, there is a clear illustration regarding the important of value
streams. Recycling proponents point out that both the energy sector and manufacturing are
comparative factors that are interrelated with recycling. This points out that the ISWM decision-
making process should ensure that other municipal departments or “value streams”- energy and
material usage- are included whenever recycling is presented as an ISWM alternative. Extending
this further, ISWM plans should recognize other value streams such as carbon credits, if they
apply. Lastly, such plans should flexible to accommodate possible challenges to the status quo,
for example, economic factors where a particular approach or technology has the ability to avoid
costs, increase the value of an asset (landfill air space), or create new revenues. By its own
illustration, the recycling industry has nevertheless recognized that all decisions regarding ISWM
planning are instead not mutually exclusive.
Assumptions on Landfilling
With the exception of reducing the amount of degradable wastes to the landfill, landfills are less
interesting from an ISWM perspective as there are fewer interrelationships, sensitivities, or
impacts within the waste hierarchy. The introduction of new technologies and improvements in
this sector has historically had little impact across other value streams or other departments. For
example, increasing waste compaction in the landfill, improvements in landfill gas (LFG)
collection, or advances in leachate pre-treatment, such as more efficient reverse osmosis (RO)
units, are viewed more as improvements. This is supported by the fact that such improvements
do not “shift” landfilling up to the next hierarchy level.
Added to this is that many view landfills, as discussed, as bane on climate change, as it is
assumed that a MSW landfill will always produce LFG, containing approximately 55% (v/v)
carbon dioxide and 45% (v/v) methane, both Greenhouse gases (GHGs). This is supported by the
US EPA that 11% of global methane production is from landfills. Further, it is assumed that
landfills will always generate leachate and thus require some sort of end-of-pipe treatment
system. This is supported by the thousands of landfills worldwide which impact groundwater and
other resources. Lastly, improvements in other ISWM approaches, such as energy-from-waste
(EfW), plasma, and waste gasification technologies, would likely keep landfilling at the bottom
of the hierarchy.
A New Perspective on Landfilling
However, what if these hierarchies and assumptions regarding landfill were challenged? What
would be the impact if for example:
 If a new technology allowed a community to produce as much waste as it wants without
filling up their landfill to capacity? In other words, how could 10 million tons of waste fit
into a landfill built to hold only 1 million tons? Which “value streams” or how many
municipal departments would be affected?
 What if such an approach eliminated the need for a landfill closure and a permanent
composite landfill cap costing over $300,000 per acre?

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 What if this same approach avoided the production of odors? As well as methane, thereby
generating millions of dollars of new revenues from carbon credit sales? And applied at
both closed landfills and operating site?
 What if leachate production (100%) was eliminated, thereby not only lowering operating
costs but directly closing down an expensive a downstream remediation effort previously
caused by leachate leaking from the landfill?
 What would be the total life-cycle impacts of such a technology have on the landfill as
well as on the solid waste industry?
 What if both recycling and landfilling were not mutually exclusive, whereby recycling
activities could occur even after the waste was buried?
 How would the solid waste market react if the disposal/management cost per ton of waste
were significantly lowered, while at the same time, environmental risks were reduce as
well?
 Last, what impact would this have on the US EPA waste hierarchy?
Such actions would almost certainly not only change the manner in which landfills are viewed,
but could “disrupt” the manner in which the entire solid waste sector operates. Further, as
presented herein, a new types of DST would likely be needed, as compared to the ones currently
available, as there would likely be a multitude of impacts across many value streams.
Today’s Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM)
For years, ISWM has involved carefully evaluating local needs and conditions to determine
suitable options for many aspects of waste management, including generation, segregation,
collection, transportation, sorting, recovery, treatment, and disposal. Because it is based on local
needs and conditions, ISWM has been an effective policy tool in many cities, regardless of their
level of development and existing waste management practices.
Through careful planning and the use of decision support tools (DST), as discussed below,
ISWM has helped mitigate the influence of external stressors (e.g., economic and population
growth) on waste management, and contribute numerous benefits, including to human health and
the environment (HHE), climate change, and the economy. Further, ISWM results in other
benefits to society, including reducing bad odors and improving the quality of life for
communities as a whole.
Developing an ISWM Plan: Key Considerations
Developing an ISWM plan requires careful assessment of numerous issues. Key considerations
when developing an ISWM plan include:
• Analyze weaknesses, strengths, and capacities. Completing an analysis of the
weaknesses, strengths, and capacities of their waste management activities will help cities
identify the most suitable waste management options and effectively and efficiently
implement an ISWM plan.
• Conduct triple-bottom line assessment. A robust assessment of the economic,
environmental, and social impacts of waste management options can help inform
decisions about which options to pursue.
• Consider all aspects of waste. To maximize the efficiency of a waste management
program, an ISWM plan should account for all aspects of waste, including generation,
segregation, collection, transportation, sorting, recovery, treatment, and disposal.

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• Involve stakeholders. Involving all stakeholders, especially the public, in developing and
implementing an ISWM plan will enhance its efficacy (e.g., by engaging support for the
program).
• Select suitable waste management options. Waste management options should be based
on local needs and conditions. Cities should identify opportunities to use environmentally
preferable waste management options (e.g., waste prevention and reduction) whenever
possible.
• Coordinate with the national government. National governments play a key role in waste
management, especially in establishing and enforcing waste management policies. Cities
should work closely with national governments to clarify their respective roles and
identify opportunities for mutual support.
• Identify sustainable sources of funding. An ISWM plan must include reliable sources of
funding (e.g., user fees) to sustain waste programs. Incorporating the private sector into
waste management activities can offer a way to reduce the costs of managing waste while
also leveraging private sector expertise. This may include public/private partnerships
(PPPs).
“Disruptive Innovation” Impact on ISWM Planning
A disruptive innovation is “a business vehicle that creates a new market and value network,
which eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, and potentially displaces the
established leading firms, products and alliances.” The term was defined and phenomenon
analyzed by Clayton M. Christensen beginning in 1995. Examples include mobile phones that
can connect one to almost any place in the world as well as treat chronic diseases through remote
health monitoring. Also, almost every web user is aware that The Cloud serves as use of
computer hardware and software resources now over the Internet, and 3D Printing has had a
significant impact on today’s manufacturing. All of these have changed their respective markets
considerably.
Some would agree that, within the solid waste industry, recycling is probably one of its few
disruptive innovations, in that a recognizable amount of waste has been diverted from landfills
since the beginning of the 1990’s. However, disruptive innovations loom for the solid waste
industry. As presented below, not only will communities be able to completely re-think their
ISWM planning, but their sustainability efforts as well, Further, the communities who use these
innovations will increase transparency to the public and may play a role in shifting the solid
waste industry paradigm altogether.
The Aerobic Landfill Bioreactor System TM
Today’s landfills are an effective system for storing waste. However, the plastic liners and covers
beneath and over the waste, cause a “dry-tomb” effect, where the waste decays under
“anaerobic” (without air) conditions. These systems, which are required by law to protect the
environment, ironically increase risks to the public as they produce toxic leachate, foul odors,
and methane gas, which can leak or be released from these same systems. Further, under these
conditions, many landfills can take decades or hundreds of years to “stabilize” before it can be
used or redeveloped. In the meantime, millions of dollars are spent to monitor and care for it as it
settles and collapses. Millions more could be spent if leachate is released from liners into the
groundwater.

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Building on successful pilot testing over a decade in the US, Canada, Japan, and China (currently
at over 20 sites worldwide), the Aerobic Landfill Bioreactor System (ALBS) is an alternative to
operating landfills in the manner in which they are designed and operated today. Instead of
building landfills to bury and store waste for hundreds of years, the ALBS is attached to the
landfill and operated (injecting air and water) to rapidly treat and degrade the waste inside at a
rate up to 30x times faster than the normal anaerobic decay process, and complete the treatment
in approximately 3 to 5 years. The ALBS (blowers, pumps, instruments) is then detached and
either salvaged or reused at a later date. As the waste is now treated and safer to handle, it is
removed and separated from the inert materials such as soil, metal, glass, and plastic. These are
either reused or recycled along with non-landfilled recyclables. With the landfill emptied, the
cell is refilled and the ALBS process repeated.
Not only is the ALBS an alternate landfill operating scheme, but it is the only known landfill
biotechnology that directly addressing the problem with landfills- the buried waste itself. In other
words, it is not a technology that just treats the “downstream” or “left-over symptoms” of a
conventional landfill release, such as local soil and groundwater contamination, but instead it is a
pro-active, direct means of accelerating what nature is expected to do. Instead of using
techniques such as conventional approaches such natural attenuation, advanced groundwater
treatment, and chemical odor control (sprays) to address releases, the ALBS treats the waste in-
situ, addresses or preventing the problem sooner, without the long-term costs.
Similar to waste composting, the ALBS process is conducted on much larger scale treating
millions of tons of waste until the landfill waste is safe to remove. However, the ALBS system
resembles a conventional LFG collection and recovery system, consisting of vertical wells
installed through he landfill cover and into the waste. These wells are connected to PVC or
HDPE header piping and then to blowers and pumps. However, instead of pulling LFG from the
landfill under vacuum, the ALBS instead injects air and liquids into the waste. Immediately, the
respiring and facultative bacteria indigenous to the waste begin mineralizing the degradable
matter under aerobic conditions. At the same time, methanogens, microorganisms that were
producing methane as a metabolic byproduct, begin to die off as oxygen is toxic to them. As long
as there is oxygen, a moisture sources, and degradable waste to consume, the aerobic bacteria
will reduced methane production by over 90% as well as reduce carbon dioxide gas. Also, most
waste-borne pathogens are eliminated, many by 100%, due to internal exothermic (heat)
production, around 165 degrees F., which is controlled as part of ALBS operations.
While waste degradation is the key goal, the ALBS is also recognized by the US EPA as a “Tier
II” landfill gas (LFG) reduction approach. It is also is registered with the United Nations Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) as “Avoidance of landfill gas emissions by in-situ aeration of
landfills --- Version 1.0.1, Number AM0083” and is used as the basis for the Alberta (CA)
Aerobic Landfill Protocol. In addition, the ALBS improves leachate quality, as seen in many
aerobic wastewater treatment systems, for air also comes in contact with the leachate inside the
landfill. Last, the ALBS can reduce leachate volume due to the elevated waste temperatures that
are controlled. At many sites, 100% of the leachate that is generated is captured and used in the
ALBS process, thereby eliminating off-site leachate disposal.
Ex-post ALBS operations can include the redevelopment of the landfill into more useable
property as many of the hazards have been addressed. Here, construction materials can be
brought in and compacted over the stabilized site, readying the site for vertical development. At

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present, there are ALBS projects that are underway with a focus on redeveloping former landfills
into residential high-rise towers in China.
Landfill mining (LFM) has also matured over the past few years. To date, over 30 LFM projects
have been reported worldwide (e.g. Georgia, Florida, New York) being conducted for a number
of reasons, with increasing available airspace as one of the key drivers. Using LFM as well as
traditional screening and tromelling equipment, the ALBSTM
can be applied and waste mined
repeatedly in a cycle that extends the landfill’s capacity to receive waste for decades longer than
planned.
Known as a “Sustainable Landfill,” (SL), see Figure 2, millions of tons of waste can cross the
scales (adding new revenues) and loaded into the same volume that previous wastes once
occupied. Also, millions of gallons of leachate are either improved or eliminated (100% due to
the internal heat) and millions of dollars of carbon credits sold due to the long-term avoidance of
GHGs. More on the ALBSTM
can be found at US EPA’s website at
https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/aerobic.html
Figure 2: The Sustainable Landfill
As compared to many other technologies, the ALBSTM
epitomizes waste sustainability. Listed
below in Table 2 are several of the environmental, economic, and social inputs that would likely
be used as part of assessment of the ALBSTM
during an ISWM development effort.
Table 2. Summary of Potential ALBSTM Benefits and Key DST Factors
ISWM Element Description
Potential ALBSTM
Benefits/ Impact on Sustainability
and Other Value Streams
Landfill Operations The airspace is reused repeatedly whereby normal fill operations continue,
yet degraded waste removal is introduced as a new operation.
Less material and haul costs for daily cover (from borrow pit)
Potential for increases in cover settlement
Recycling Waste is treated aerobically reducing pathogens and VOCs. Thus, the waste
is safe to remove, handle, and can be blended into other recycling streams.

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Increased recycling lowers energy costs- further.
Cell Reuse Cell reuse extends landfill life and delays or minimizes the need for
extending or building new landfill sites in the future
Landfill
Footprint
Instead of filling up the entire permitted footprint, only 4-5 smaller cells, thus
a smaller operational, may be needed. This frees up the balance of land for
infill, greenspace, and/or urbanization efforts.
Closure/Post
Closure Care
(PCC)
If the landfill remains open longer, PCC and its 30-year costs are delayed or
avoided.
Lower risk to HHE, sets the case for relief from prescriptive PCC (less
frequent monitoring, fewer parameters)
Impact on
Natural
Resources
Waterways/
Lakes/
Groundwater
Reduced leachate production and improved leachate quality reduces
potential impact to groundwater and other water resources.
Reducing
Carbon
Footprint
Heavy equipment and truck emissions may increase due to new mining,
hauling, and recycling activities.
Improvements
in Air Quality
90%+ reduction in methane emissions; 50% less carbon dioxide emissions.
More efficient reductions as compared to LFG generation, collection and
destruction.
Built
Environment
Commercial/
Industrial
Property
Reduced leachate and odor production as well as less risk to groundwater
improves potential for site redevelopment, infill and urbanization initiatives.
Residential Fewer odors complaints.
Land Planning Less landfill footprint used, fewer landfills needed makes more land available
for more useful purposes.
Wastewater Treatment Less reliance on leachate treatment at WWTP is avoided as it reapplied to
the waste as part of liquids requirement for ALBSTM
operations.
Quantity Up to 100% elimination due evaporative effects of ALBSTM
Quality Lower BOD, VOCs, arsenic, lead, metals (due to neutral pH)
Sludge
Disposal
Sludge disposal into landfill increases ALBSTM
effectiveness as it adds more
organics and nutrients to the waste and thus the decay process.
Treatment
Capacity
Increases volumetric availability for premium users (industrial)
Less BOD, VOCs reduces WWTP treatment load and surcharges,
Energy Reliance on
LFG Users
Decreased as methane production is avoided. Good news for landfills with
insufficient volumes of LFG or not economical/ practical
Renewable
Energy (Solar)
More industrial room for solar farms. See Land Planning.
Operations Increased recycling lowers energy costs further.
Recovered BTU materials can be used as energy supply. (cement kilns)
Increased energy costs for blowers.
Budget Tipping Fees/
Market Impacts
Given the potential cost savings and new revenues, the life-cycle costs of
landfill operations could be less.
New Revenues
(carbon credits,
recycling)
Potentially more revenues per ton of waste as compared to LFG-to-energy
sales.
Risk Reduction Reduced leachate production, improved leachate quality, less odors reduces
potential impact to groundwater and associated costs of risk. (Insurance)

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Departmental
Costs (landfill,
WWTP)
Potentially lower tipping fees.
Increased competiveness for local waste.
Lower odor and leachate management costs.
Funding/
Grants
Many grants available for local, national, and global sustainability, recycling,
GHG reduction, biotechnology, research initiatives
Social Impact Odors/
Environmental
Impact
Fewer odors means fewer complaints?
Greenspace/
Healthy
Neighborhoods
Reduced risk from landfills could change public perceptions, increase land
values.
Civic
Engagement
Public hearings would introduce new solutions.
Confidence in
Government
Increased due to openness to new approaches,
Legislative Responds well to new ideas and approaches, especially if conducted in
compliance with existing regulations.
Education Workshops to learn about how biotechnology can help solid waste issues.
Employment Increased recycling, increases jobs.
Additional operator training on ALBSTM
Community Green landfills forms a community bond
Tourism Attractive to public and academia
Future
Responsibilities
Reduce potential of landfill remediation by future generations
In one sense the ALBS seems counter-intuitive. Landfilling is relatively less expensive in many
geographical locations, it can generate revenues from LFG-to-energy, and it can provide long-
term disposal solutions. Yet, looking closer at the ALBS benefits, a comprehensive assessment
of the ALBS could produce several interesting outcomes, as hypothesized:
 Landfill Reconfiguration and Operation. The ALBS may reduce the need for large
mountains of waste. Instead, low profile treatment cells could be built under current
design regulations but would be smaller). The aesthetics would likely be favorable to
many in the public.
 LFG Equipment Market- Instead of designing, suppling and installing conventional
equipment, the current workforce could be retrained to design and supply equipment for
ALBS systems.
 Reusable Liners. If a landfill cell is to be reused, stronger, more resilient floors and
sidewalls could be designed, including concrete or asphalt. Not only would this provide a
better operating surface for waste filling and removal and protect the environmental as a
stronger barrier than plastic liners, but the likely higher costs of these liners could be
amortized over a longer period of time since the landfill would stay open, and collect
fees, longer.
 Increase Labor- Increases in recycling can increase waste-related employment. Hiring
new waste spotters at the landfill gate can ensure less hazardous waste enters that could
interfere with ALBS performance.

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 Less Energy Use- Increases in recycling increases decreases energy consumption, per the
recycling industry, perhaps offsetting ALBS energy demands.
 Reduce Reliance on Subsidies. The avoidance of methane production would meet one
key aspect of sustainability. The revenues from the sales of carbon credits, the “new”
airspace value, and the reduction in operations and long-term care could preclude the
need to rely on energy subsides.
 Increasing Research, Design, and Development (RD&D) Projects. On its website3
, the
US EPA does not currently have a single model or tool for decreasing the level of
contaminants inside a landfill nor is there one that focuses on increasing the rate of decay
of waste in a landfill. Instead there are a number of commercially available software
companies, such as MULTIMED a steady-state model, that are instead used to predict the
migrating of contaminants after they have been released from a waste disposal facility via
the subsurface. Also, there are models which estimate the natural attenuation (self-decay)
of organic contaminants in groundwater due to the processes of advection, dispersion,
sorption, and biodegradation. Again, these address contaminants after they have been
released into the groundwater. With the ALBS, there will be new opportunities for
RD&D projects, models, and tools related to the aerobic treatment of wastes on soil,
groundwater, and air to better understand the relevant biokinetics to improve system
performance.
 Increased Research Funding. Being part of a disruptive innovation may yield additional
research dollars for ALBS process improvements, as compared to many other solid waste
concepts which do little to impact the current waste hierarchy.
 Increase WWTP User- Reduction of high-strength leachate can allow for new users and
lower-strength wastewaters, thereby reducing WWTP expansion.
 More land available for solar farms. Landfill footprint areas owned by the municipality
but not used for landfilling due to the less footprint requirements for the SL could be used
for build solar farms.
Potential Impact to Related Markets
At first glance, not only would most landfilling in the US be impacted, but the ALBS could
impact the entire communities ISWM planning process as well as several industries tied to
waste. As such, it could be argued that the ALBS is a disruptive innovation, as discussed above,
with respect to the solid waste, energy, wastewater and air pollution control markets, sectors, and
industries, as well as the engineering and technical support that would be needed to make such
changes.
The US has one of the biggest consumer markets, producing approximately 251 million tons of
trash every year. As such, the U.S. waste industry has an annual revenue of 75 billion dollars,
making it a large part of our economy.4
There are approximately 20,000 companies within it,
with eight of the largest waste management companies accounting for nearly half of the of
industry’s yearly revenue. The industry employs approximately 367,800 employees, most of
them being part of the private sector of the industry, generating approximately three-fourths of
the waste industry’s revenue. The balance are the public sector services. Looking closer,
although the biggest part of the waste industry, collection, accounts for approximately 55% of
the industry’s revenue, waste treatment and disposal is responsible for 20%, with the most
3
https://www.epa.gov/land-research/models-tools-and-databases-land-and-waste-management-research
4
http://www.gridwaste.com

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established waste treatment methods consisting of composting, incineration, landfill, and
recycling.
As waste management is a commodity that can be monopolized by big businesses, meaning
higher costs and subpar services rendered, many businesses and entrepreneurs spend enormous
amounts of energy and resources creating a competitive market for greater transparency, lower
prices, and better service.5
Another aspect to consider is the shrinking number of US landfills. This has been facilitated by
tighter regulatory controls, the establishment of large regional landfills, consolidation of
private waste management companies, and economies of scale. In the public sector,
municipalities that desire to retain control over their own solid waste operations and disposal
sites are increasingly looking to neighboring municipalities to develop larger regional solid
waste management sites in order to minimize costs and risks associated with the management
of a landfill. Even though landfills remain the primary disposal option for the majority of solid
waste, the assumptions and hierarchies that ISWM is based on push owners to consider
programs that are effective, yet sometimes more expensive. For example, many communities
are implementing programs to recover food scraps and other organic materials for composting
and anaerobic digestion. From 2008 to 2012, U.S. EPA estimates that the amount of food
scraps diverted from landfills has more than doubled from 0.80 million tons to 1.74 million
tons.
Other markets could be affected as well. The market for industrial water (including landfill
leachate) treatment technologies is set to expand by more than 50% over the next five years,
from an estimated $7 billion in 2015 to more than $11 billion in 2020.6
Where 100% of the
landfill leachate is used in the ALBS process, new methods for injecting water while
simultaneously injecting air will be needed.
Regarding new jobs, the ALBS’s impact on creating a demand for new engineering, science, and
recycling jobs would be signficant. Businesses and vendors which rely on building landfills in
the conventional sense would instead need to prepare for new designs where waste is instead
treated and removed, versus stored for decades. These could range from liner manufacturers to
engineering services.
In all of these regards, any potentially new disruptive innovation in ISWM would likely be
attractive to both private and public landfill owners and could have significant impact across
all value streams and their receptive markets. As such, the ALBS deserves a full and proper
assessment in terms of the various value streams.
5
A unique example of this is Grid Waste. This firm gives waste generators options and greater transparency through
reverse-auction bidding. Per their website, “Grid Waste’s grouping function allows users to form purchasing groups
with neighboring generators to trump monopolization in their neighborhood. By creating purchasing groups, more
waste management companies can penetrate a market. The bigger the purchasing group, the more fiscally viable for
smaller companies to service these monopolized areas.”
6
Rapid Growth Hits Industrial Water Treatment Technologies, Water Online, February 25, 2015
http://www.wateronline.com/doc/rapid-growth-hits-industrial-water-treatment-technologies-0001

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Example Case: City of Orlando and Orange County, Florida
The potential for impact could be most dramatic in major US cities as most of them with
populations of over 10 million generate the most waste on a per capita basis. Orange County,
Florida could be one such example.
Recycling
Driven by the State of Florida’s recycling goal of 75% by 2020, the City of Orlando hopes to
eventually become a “zero waste” community, eliminating all solid waste to landfills or
incinerators, with an intermediate target of 75% reduction by 2020. In 2012, the City Orlando
had a curbside residential recycling rate of 27%, switching to single-cart recycling to surpass the
US average of 34% recycled.
In line with US EPA’s solid waste hierarchy, up-front recycling of waste can create opportunities
for economic growth within both jurisdictions. Instead of paying to haul, treat and dispose of
solid waste in the OCSWMF landfill, this waste can become the raw material for sustainable
industries producing new products. In this way, the City “can become a leader in proving that
solid waste is a resource rather than an environmental liability.” In fact, City states that “strong
zero waste focused programs have spawned the growth of new businesses, creating new jobs and
more diverse local economies.”
Facing the same state-wide recycling goal, Orange County residential recycling rate is one of the
highest in the state, around 41% and single family participation in curbside is around 90%.
However, multi-family curbside recycling is only at 14% and commercials units are around 40%.
To improve their rates and reach the goal of 75%, the County has developed a Plan (Sustainable
Orange County, 2014) to help improve commercial recycling rates. Per this Plan, “strategies
could include evaluating residential composting, post-collection consumer sorting, and
enforcement of mandatory recycling requirements in the Orange County Code.”
Infill Development
The City of Orlando also supports the “eco- district” concept- livability, efficiency,
neighborhoods, stewardship and a sense of place, Per its 2013 Community Action Plan, the City
has begun to identify locations in Orlando where eco districts could thrive with the goal of
creating a connected network of eco districts throughout the City minimizing sprawl and
providing more services and options within walking distance to home and work. Similarly, one
of the County’s focus areas is supporting new growth in infill areas and on redevelopment that
does not require the extension of water, sewer, and road infrastructure or facilitate sprawl. Here
County Planning would assess infill and redevelopment potential based on a susceptibility to
change for vacant or underutilized land within the County.
Greenhouse Gases
Per the City’s Plan, buildings are the number one contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions and energy use, so ensuring new construction takes advantage of green building
technology and aggressively pursues energy efficiency upgrades on existing buildings will have
a large impact on sustainability goals. The City already realizes $1 million in annual energy
savings through its various green building and efficiency programs. In addition to municipal
buildings, there are approximately 100 certified green buildings in the City, along with hundreds
of residential homes that have received some level of energy efficiency upgrades through though
Federal, state and local programs.

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Altogether, the City’s goal is reduce GHG emissions by 90% from 2007 levels by 2040, with
reductions by 25% by 2018. To do this, the City intends to:
• create a market-based program that offers incentives for buildings to meet green
standards;
• develop financing programs for community-oriented energy efficiency upgrades and
solar installations.;
• implement policies and technologies to take advantage of the local utility’s smart grid
investments, focusing on EcoDistricts and market-based innovations;
• establish an energy benchmarking and disclosure policy; and
• develop a roadmap to position Orlando as the solar leader in the Southeast United States.
The County GHG’s reduction goals include the collection of landfill gas (LGF) and digester gas,
and using it for energy purposes.
OCSWMF Landfill
Located east of Orlando, the Orange County Solid Waste Management Facility (OCSWMF), the
largest publicly owned municipal solid waste landfill in Florida, began operations in 1971 and
currently accepts approximately 2,000 tons of waste per day. The landfill site encompasses 5,000
acres and accepts Class I (putrescible) waste, Class III (construction and demolition) waste, yard
waste, and waste tires. In addition to the landfill, Orange County operates two transfer stations
and 25 transfer trucks to facilitate garbage disposal for residents while also reducing road traffic.
The landfill footprint is approximately 252 acres, comprising of Cells 9 through 12.
The OCSWMF disposal areas are in different
stages of LFG generation. The majority of the
LFG is currently generated where the active
Cells 9 and 10 are located. Cells 11 and 12 are
planned in the near future after the disposal
capacity of Cells 9 and 10 is depleted. It is
predicted that the peak LFG generation will be
approximately 11,550 scfm occurring in 2031.
New Technologies
Along with phasing in commercial and multi-
family recycling standards programs, one of the
key waste management strategies proposed by
the City, for example, is to “support the
development of technolog[ies] that make it
easier to recycle materials.”
As the City recognizes that policies and
education alone will not achieve a 100% waste diversion goal, they also believe that “emerging
technologies will enable communities to recover recyclable materials before they are buried.”
As such, the City’s Plan proposes that it and its key partners implement innovative technologies
that “mechanically extract recyclables from landfill-bound solid waste streams and utilize
organic waste for energy production.” Moreover, the Plan also places an emphasis on advancing
composting. Lastly, the City recognizes that older landfills have impacted soil, groundwater, and
surface water “as material leaks out of the landfill and into these areas” and that these landfills
do not meet today’s standards. Although not specifically discussed in the Plan, both the City and
the County are exploring options for mitigation these impacts.

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From this, it is evident that both governments have similar goals and interests, and since the City
is one of the County’s largest landfill customers, it may be beneficial for the County and the City
to work together in re-assessing their respective ISWM plans, advancing technologies, such as
the ALBS, and waste operations using a comprehensive DST that would fully highlight the
advantages, disadvantages, costs, revenues, and overall impact across multiple value streams.
Presented in Table 3, is a summary of the potential impacts an ALBS/Sustainable Landfill
application, as described above, may have on the County interests when taking into account just
some of the suitable programs they want to develop. (No DST has yet been applied.)
Table 3. Estimated Economic Benefits from ALBS/ SL Application- Orange County
Description
Status
Quo
($M)
Using
ALBS/SL
($M) Notes
Permitted Airspace Value
$825 $4,125
Assume 22M tons @ $37.50./ton
Assume SL reuses airspace 5x
Increased Revenue from GHG sales
$0 $396
Assume $3/ per ton CO2Eq x 5 reuses
(22M tons x 1.2 x $3/Co2Eq x 5)
Avoided Capping Costs ($93) $0 Assume 31 acres x $300,000 per acre
Avoided PCC Costs ($86) ($43) Assume 50% reduction ($86M/2) over 30 years
Sale from Recycled Materials
Baseline
Baseline +
20%
Assume 20% increase in sale of recycled goods
Value of Land not used for landfilling
$0 $63
Permitted Footprint is 252 acres. Assume 50% is
used for SL.
Assume surrounding land worth $0.5M per acre
Once an appropriate DST is applied, not only will municipalities, such as Orange County be able
to completely re-think their ISWM planning and sustainability efforts, but they may play a
critical role in shifting the solid waste industry paradigm and facilitate moving landfilling up the
US EPA waste hierarchy.
Decision Support Tools (DSTs)
Assessment methods and decision-support tools (DSTs) are common in decision-planning for
businesses, in the production of products, and the implementation of services. Within waste
management, they have been used to help communities achieve practicable waste management at
an acceptable cost, balancing environmental, economic, technical, regulatory, and other social
factors. Over the last decade, there has been a growing emphasis on address sustainability as well
as in regard to industrial ecology, carbon cycle management, life cycle assessment, and earth
systems engineering and management.
In one 2014 study7
of the various DST’s that were used for solid waste management, the tasks
that were recommended when assessing waste management systems included using (i) a mass
balance approach based on a rigid input–output analysis of the entire system, then a (ii) a goal-
oriented evaluation of the results of the mass balance, which takes into account the intended
waste management objectives; and finally (iii) a transparent and reproducible presentation of the
methodology, data, and results. However, this same study reported that only a small number of
the DSTs evaluated social aspects. Further, the choice of system elements and boundaries varied
significantly among the studies; thus, assessment results were sometimes contradictory.
7
Allesch, A and Brunner PH(2014) Assessment methods for solid waste management: A literature review. Waste
Management & Research,Vol. 32(6) 461– 473

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With this mind and as the ALBS may be a disruptive innovation, several questions to be asked to
municipalities such as Orange County emerge:
 What is the proper DST(s) to use as part of ISWM planning?
 How would all the important aspects of sustainability be accounted for?
 How would current ISWM or sustainability plans be impacted?
 How would the outputs be normalized?
At first glance, it appears that multiple DSTs would be needed, as described herein. However,
each DSTs would need to consider what metrics would be used in regard to a number of
potential impacts, for example:
 re-purposing a portion of the permitted landfill footprint in light of advancing
community urbanization initiatives;
 amortization of airspace costs if the landfill capacity is extended by reusing the airspace
5-10 times;
 assessing the contractual implications to both a municipality and LFG end-user whereby
LFG-supply contracts are modified or terminated because an approach was found that
eliminates methane from LFG and thereby reduces risk to human health and
groundwater;
 evaluating the impacts to a community’s wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that no
longer is required to take in and treat landfill leachate as the landfill no longer produces
leachate;
 recycling marketable portions of the waste that has been removed from a landfill;
 modifying land development codes to encourage sustainable development; and/or,
 monetizing the impacts to financial incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment.
Moreover, what DSTs would be used regarding social, environmental, and economic impact of
conducting current actions with an eye on future outcomes; for example, the life-cycle aspects
savings if the potential for future cleanup costs are minimized by removing the risk in the
present-day?
Also of social importance, municipal leaders can take credit for removing the burden on future
generations by accounting for it in their ISWM planning. This, and similar actions, may be
important if, for example, should future efforts by the federal government, for example, seek to
develop extended producer responsibility (EPR) requirements, whereby a manufacturer is
required by law to integrate environmental costs into the current price of the product. Is there a
measurement for this?
Lastly, although PCC and costs are generally accepted to be 30 years, there are today landfill
owners who are looking at having that care period extended because the environmental
regulators believe that the landfill still poses a longer-term threat. Even more so, some regulators
are talking in terms of “perpetual” care, having no real grasp on what the total costs would be.
Which DST is available to assess the present-day removal of that risk?
To better understand how a new DST could be developed, possibly integrating new analytics,
presented below is a review of some of the DST elements that have been used for conventional
ISWM planning. In addition, a holistic view of the impact the ALBSTM
might have on the
development of a new DSTs is offered in order to help assess future disruptive technologies
and/or innovations within solid waste. Also presented are several DST models and sustainability

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standards, such as ISO, that can guide such development. Lastly, an example case of what a
proper DST could yield is developed based on this discussion.
DST Elements
For most DSTs, economic aspects have probably been the most important factor because money,
in combination with available technology, is generally the limiting factor for a sophisticated,
properly functioning waste management system. Economic aspects can be discussed on a
business (micro-economic) level or on a public (macro-economic) level.
The purpose of considering environmental aspects in waste management (from waste generation
over collection, recycling, and treatment to the final disposal) has been to evaluate the impacts
on air, soil, and water, as well as on resource consumption. To protect humans, flora, and fauna,
it is necessary to know the environmental aspects of a service or a process. Studies using life-
cycle assessment (LCA) methodology often evaluate environmental impacts by examining the
following categories: global warming potential; stratospheric ozone depletion; acidification;
terrestrial eutrophication; aquatic eutrophication; photochemical ozone formation; human
toxicity; and ecotoxicity.
Social sustainability can be classified under three different perspectives: social acceptability (the
waste management system must be acceptable); social equity (the equitable distribution of waste
management system benefits and detriments between citizens); and social function (the social
benefit of waste management systems). Public health and safety are important factors within
society, with a close link to the economy and to the environment. Social aspects also refer to the
employment market, governance, ethics, security, education systems, and to culture.
Presented below in Table 4 is a summary of economic, environmental, and social impacts of
waste management that are typically considered.
Table 4. Summary of DST Considerations in ISWM
Economic Impact Environmental Impact Social Impact
 Function of the internal
market
 Investment costs
 Operating costs
 Administrative burdens
 Public authorities
 Property rights innovation
and research
 Economic effects on
consumers and
households
 Economic effects on
industry and business
 Climate
 Energy
 Air quality
 Biodiversity, flora, fauna,
and
 landscapes
 Water quality and resources
 Soil quality or resources
 Land use
 Renewable or non-
renewable
 resources
 Environmental
consequences
 of firms and consumers
 Likelihood or scale of
 environmental risks
 Animal welfare
 Employment and labor
markets
 Social inclusion and
protection of particular
groups
 Non-discrimination
 Individuals, private and
family life, personal data
 Governance, participation,
good administration, access
to justice, media, and ethics
 Public health and safety
 Security
 Access to and effects on
social protection, health,
and educational systems
 Culture

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Using these considerations, a number of DST have been developed, including life-cycle analysis
(LCA), Multi-criteria decision-Making (MCDM), and Risk assessment (RA). While several of
them focus on the impacts related to the production of goods, presented in Exhibit A is summary
of several types of DSTs that are used in ISWM planning which could be used wholly, in-part, or
as the basis for modifications to develop an appropriate DST for disruptive innovations. For
example, strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a method to provide a high level of
protection to the environment and to contribute to the integration of environmental
considerations into the preparation and adoption of related plans and programs, with an aim to
promote sustainable development by ensuring that an environmental assessment of certain plans
and programs, which are likely to have significant effects on the environment, is performed.
Review of Status Quo DST Studies (2014)
The 2014 study cited above reported that approximately 41% of the 151 DST studies that were
reported for ISWM used life cycle assessment (LCA) as the method to evaluate waste
management systems. Since 1990, attempts have been made to develop and to standardize the
LCA methodology (Burgess and Brennan, 2001), and since the publication of the guidelines for
LCA (ISO 2006), an international standard has been defined. (More below)
Many of these studies assessed entire waste management systems. Here, the life cycle of a
product ends with waste management, which includes the waste management system from waste
generation, waste collection, recycling, and treatment to final disposal. Therefore, the efficient
planning of waste management systems requires an accounting of complete sets of effects caused
by the entire life cycle of waste (Emery et al., 2007). One-quarter of the reviewed works assessed
either one treatment plant or compared different treatment options to determine the best available
alternative. In particular, the performances of incinerators or landfills were often the objects of
such investigations.
Comparing system boundaries with the object of investigation shows that studies evaluating
waste management systems, waste collection systems, and waste prevention options often used
geographic boundaries (country, region, or city). The reason is that these boundaries most likely
coincided with administrative boundaries. The functional unit to compare different treatment
options was primarily one unit of a specific waste stream, and the evaluation of single treatment
often referred to the inputs and outputs of the investigated plant.
Also, benchmarking methods were often used for assessing MSW management. However,
benchmarking does not seem common for investigations of single waste streams. Compared with
the other assessment methods, LCA, MCDM, and RA were more often performed for assessing
single waste streams.
Advanced DTSs
The creation of new DSTs and analytics is not new. For example, researchers who consider
carbon flows through landfills and WTE facilities, cite that it is important to factor in
global warming potential, energy offsets, and different timescales to have a full and accurate
picture of ISWM. Here they perform a statistical entropy analysis to quantify the power of a
system to concentrate or to dilute substances and to the basis for a simple lifecycle “net energy”
metric – encompassing the “lost energy” that would have been gained when high-calorific
materials are landfilled rather than combusted with energy recovery. As appropriate, it is
introduced to account for additional influxes of carbon when using landfilling as the primary
disposal method. When combining net energy calculations and long terms effects of landfilling,

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waste to energy (WTE) becomes a more attractive option for dealing with non-recycled
municipal solid waste (MSW).
In response to the increasing demand for sustainability assessments which consider adavances in
energy assessment, as well as spatial, thematic, and/or programmatic influences, a number of
new, now commercialized, DSTs have been developed, as illustrated in Figure 4 and Table 5. A
recent study shows that there are over 59 DTSs reported from 22 countries. They include rating
categories which range from nature conservation, local environmental quality, resource
recycling, and carbon dioxide absorption, to comprehensiveness, green space, cultural and
natural landscapes, urban living environment, and community participation. More detail on these
DSTs are provided in Exhibit B.
Table 5. Selected Commercial DST assessment methods with Rating Categories
DST Providers
CASBEE for Cities Institute for Bldg. Environment & Energy Conservation, Japan
Comprehensive Plans for
Sustaining Places
American Planning Assn, US
Eco-City Ministry of Environmental Protection, China
Eco-Garden City Ministry of Housing & Urban-Rural Development, China
Low-Carbon City National Development & Reform Commission, China
STAR Community STAR Communities, US
Sustainable Communities Audubon International, US (available internationally, and for Existing
Neighborhoods)
Envision Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, US
Global Sustainability Assessment
System for Railways
Gulf Organization for Research & Dev, Qatar
Green Mark for Infrastructure Bldg. & Construction Authority, Singapore
Greenroads Greenroads Foundation, US
INVEST U.S. Dept of Transportation, Federal Hwy Administration, US
IS Rating Tool Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia
PEER Perfect Power Institute, US
Walk Score Walk Score, US
Eco-City Ministry of Environmental Protection, China
H+T Affordability Center for Neighborhood Technology, US
Enterprise Green Enterprise Green Communities
Green Communities
Figure 4. Selected Commercial DST Used in 22 Countries

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In regard to these, a number of different inputs and influences were used, as shown in Table 6:
Table 6. Select DST Inputs and Influences
Scope & Scale
 Topical scope
 Physical scale
 Minimum elements
Usefulness
 Value proposition
 Efficiency: effort vs. benefit
Standards Conformity
 Tool development
 Rating criteria
 Tool maintenance
Maturity & Impact
 Years operating
 Ratings performed
 Tool versions
 National or intl. market
 Market uptake
 Empirical results
Tool Administration
 Business model
 Tool delivery method
 Staffing/support
infrastructure
 Languages
 Ancillary services (training,
credential)
Rating Procedure
 Responsible party
 Transparency
 Verification
 Local adaptability
 Monitoring/re-certification
Costs to Use
 Time
 Fees
 Documentation
 Process
 Rating Criteria
 Creation process
 Technical rigor
 Scoring & weighting
 Trade-off reconciliation
 Mandatory vs. optional
 Prescriptive vs.
performance
 Criteria maintenance
Users
 Households
 Businesses
 Neighborhood
organizations
 Designers
 Developers
 Local government
 Disadvantaged groups
Issues with Current ISWM DSTs
While many of these DSTs have similar rating categories, it is evident that many of them have
been developed for precise purposes or centered on specific themes. Few DSTs appears to have
been developed with a comprehensive focus on sustainability, account for disruptive innovation,
or have the appropriate metrics to measure as many important social, economic, and
environmental aspects, as possible, across multiple departments.
For example, US EPA’s Office of Research and Development, Air Pollution Prevention and
Control Division developed a life cycle DST that allows designer to examine factors outside of
the traditional MSW management framework of activities occurring from the point of waste

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collection to final disposal.8
Per US EPA, while this DST identifies and quantifies energy, water
and materials usage and environmental releases (e.g., air emissions, solid waste disposal, waste
water discharges), its main focus is to assess the potential human and ecological effects of
energy, water, and material usage and the environmental releases on the potential environmental
impacts associated with identified inputs and releases. However, this DST does not take into
account technical performance, cost, or political and social acceptance. Moreover, this DST is
based on the hierarchy of diverting waste material from the landfill and only considers the
wastestream characteristics. Therefore, it is US EPA recommends that this LCA not be used in
conjunction with these other parameters.9
In 2009, EPA developed a Waste Reduction Model (WARM), a tool which provides material-
specific emission factors for activities such as recycling, combustion, landfilling, and
composting. However, the focus of WARM is mainly on reducing GHGs. WARM compares the
emissions and offsets resulting from a material in a baseline and an alternative management
pathway in order to provide decision-makers with comparative emission results. For example,
WARM could be used to calculate the GHG implications of landfilling 10 tons of office paper
versus recycling the same amount of office paper. With respect to recycling, WARM focuses on
redesigning products to use fewer materials (e.g., lightweighting, material substitution); reusing
products and materials (e.g., a refillable water bottle), extending the useful lifespan of products,
and avoiding using materials in the first place (e.g., reducing junk mail, reducing demand for
uneaten food).
But what if a disruptive innovation allowed for significant increases in recycling, thus lower
energy usage, as compared to both reduced landfill costs and GHG emissions? What if another
type of analysis indicated that as a result of lower overall net costs (thus more available revenue),
the higher cost of lightweighting and material substitution. (e.g. aluminum) could be avoided,
and that the more GHG-producing material, e.g. steel, would have no net impact on GHG
emissions, especially in areas of the country such as Pennsylvania where re-hiring the labor force
is politically and socially important? Here, both LCA approaches may not be able to provide
many of the answers needed to address important social, economic, and environmental aspects,
in different parts of the county or across multiple departments.
DST Modification Factors
As described by Allesch and Brunner (2014), a simplistic approach to new DST development
may first be needed before the impact of disruptive innovation can be assessed.
1. Goals are important and first be must clearly stated. This concerns two types of goals:
a. First, the objectives for waste management, as provided by the legislative
framework, policy statement, or regional guideline, must be considered.
It is important to focus on these objectives because these objectives can be
manifold and even contradictory and because these objectives have a determining
influence on the methodology that must be chosen for the evaluation.
8
Application of Life-Cycle Management to Evaluate Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management Strategies,
United States Office of Research and Environmental Protection Development May 2006 Agency Washington, DC
20460
9
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE by Scientific Applications International
Corporation (SAIC), May 2006

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b. Second, the purpose, scope, and the goals for the assessment must be clearly
defined, considering the addressees and the objectives of waste management
stated in (i). It is important to select a preliminary assessment method, or, most
often, a set of assessment methods, that is capable of addressing all the criteria
necessary for characterizing the goals established in the first step. To meet these
expectations, numerous studies have been published.
If only a part of the goals are to be considered, for example environmental protection such as in a
LCA, this consideration must be clearly stated to allow for the comparison of different studies.
According to the purpose of the assessment, it may be also necessary to address additional
issues, such as the value of previous investments and of existing waste treatment components. It
is evident that such a comprehensive evaluation is a demanding task requiring reliable
methodologies, sound data, and experienced evaluators.
2. Often, waste management systems are assessed by evaluating the impacts caused by
selected single outputs, for example emissions. A comprehensive evaluation must
consider all direct and indirect impacts. Waste management should be perceived as a
‘throughput economy’, with inputs from the market and with outputs to the market and to
the environment.
Taking this view, the complexity of the economic system is apparent. It becomes evident that
sophisticated assessment methods are required, especially for disruptive innovations. Only such
methods are able to evaluate the economic, ecological, and social effects of a waste management
system. The choice of the starting point and end point of an assessment can have a decisive
impact on the results. The scope and system boundaries have to be selected carefully, because
changing the boundaries can have a key influence on the results.
Particularly in the case of recycling, it is important to consider not only emissions but also all the
risks. The fate of hazardous substances that are not released to the environment, but that are
retained in the recycling goods, must be followed as well. If not, then an ‘after-care-free’ waste
management cannot be established because these hazardous substances will have to be managed
after x cycles (Velis and Brunner, 2013).
Hence, when recycling processes, or even landfilling, are assessed, waste composition, process
characteristics, emissions, and recycling product qualities must be known. In summary, inputs
must be linked with outputs.
3. The application of the mass balance principle is crucial for an impartial, comprehensible
evaluation. Assessment methods can be divided into two groups: methods that are based
on the mass balance principle and other methods that do not require this strict
precondition. The establishment mass balances of the total waste management system is
recommended as a base for any subsequent evaluation step.
Such mass balances on the level of goods and substances represent required and highly
useful tools for evaluation because these tools allow the cross-checking plausibility of
available information (Brunner and Rechberger, 2004). When evaluating waste
management systems, data availability and data quality are often limiting steps. Wastes
contain many products that are made from complex mixtures of elements and that are
composed of countless substances, yielding highly heterogeneous combinations. In fact,
wastes may contain everything because their content cannot be completely controlled.
Thus, to analyze waste inputs over longer periods for real situations is a non-trivial, time-
consuming, and costly endeavor. A more effective means is output-oriented analysis. If

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inputs and outputs of waste treatment systems are monitored and balanced, then the law
of conservation of matter allows the comparison of information concerning material
flows from the input side with the output side. Hence, data can be crosschecked,
deviations can be detected, and additional investigations can be performed, if necessary.
The products of waste treatment are generally more homogenous and easier to analyze,
and the accuracy of waste composition data calculated from the products of waste
treatment is usually higher (Brunner and Ernst, 1986). This advantage becomes even
more pronounced when, in addition to the level of goods, the level of substances is
considered. Mass balances on the level of goods ensure that the total input (wastes) and
total output (products, residues, emissions) match.
Substance balances go one step further; these balances ensure that inputs and outputs
correspond on the level of individual elements or chemical compounds (e.g. carbon or
CO2). Thus, if an array of valuable and hazardous substances is balanced together with
the flow of inputs and outputs of goods, then the resulting information serves as a reliable
and comprehensive base for subsequent evaluation steps. Hence, a mass balance
approach based on a rigid input–output analysis of the entire waste management system
should be taken. Well suited for this purpose is material flow analysis, a systematic
assessment that considers all processes, flows, and stocks in a defined system, delivering
a complete and consistent set of information concerning a waste management system
(Brunner and Rechberger, 2004).
4. Assessments must be reproducible, comprehensible, and transparent regarding
methodology and data. Methods based on mass balances must be favored and applied that
promote these characteristics. Good, impartial, and reliable data sources with known
uncertainty are crucial. Objectivity, transparency, and confirmability are not only
necessary during the assessment step; these qualities are also of key importance when the
results are presented, for example policy decisions.
Politicians, stakeholders, and decision makers generally require results that these
individuals can grasp with little effort. If informative and convincing text, figures, and
tables are produced in a transparent and reproducible manner, then the results of the
assessment are likely to have a larger impact.
As a framework for waste management decisions, assessment methods depict the strengths and
weaknesses of different management alternatives. An approach based on mass balances or on a
goal-oriented evaluation of impacts is a powerful means to ensure comprehension, objectivity,
rigidity, and transparency. Applying this approach for assessing waste management systems will
result in better and more comprehensive support for decision makers.
Accounting for Disruptive Innovation
To account for disruptive innovation, the new DST can be assessed based on one of four
according to a community’s ISWM aims.
1. ‘Scenario-based’: an evaluation of different scenarios to find the best scenario for a single
project/community or for a whole waste management system.
2. ‘Comparison-based’: a comparison of countries/cities/regions or companies to determine
the best in a defined category.
3. ‘Performance-based’: an evaluation of the performance of a single project (e.g. treatment
plant) or strategy (waste management system) with the goal to increase efficiency.

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4. ‘Goal-based’: an evaluation of the current status of a project or strategy concerning
provided goals or regulations.
In the cited 2014 study of conventional DST approaches used, approximately 60% of these were
‘scenario-based’. Often, three or four scenarios were compared; however, the range of the
considered scenarios in the reviewed studies was from one to 19. One-third of the studies used
the ‘performance-based’ approach, and approximately 10% were ‘comparison-based’. Only four
studies compared the efficiency of current waste management systems with provided goals or
laws.
The scales (boundaries and functional units) used in the study were (i) one unit of a specific
waste stream (e.g. 1 tonne organic household waste), (ii) the entire waste input and output of a
treatment plant, or (iii) the waste management system of a city, country, or region. In a few
cases, household waste or waste generated through the demolition of buildings was investigated.
Only approximately one-fifth of the reviewed studies used the mass balance principle (Brunner
and Rechberger, 2004) to identify the inputs and outputs of the investigated system. More
commonly, only the outputs of the systems were considered.
Each scenario has its benefits. However, it is proposed that the DST should first map out the
internal value-adding processes, as these processes make the final product (or service) more
valuable to the end consumer (or constituent) than otherwise it would have been. The difference
between the traditional supply or value chain and the value stream is that the former includes the
complete activities of all the departments involved, whereas the latter refers only to the specific
parts of the municipality that actually add value to the specific service under consideration. As
such the value stream is a far more focused and contingent (dependent) view of the value-adding
process.
For example, if a community could generate as much plastic waste as it wanted, completely
disregarding the US EPA’s waste hierarchy, yet still met its recycling goals (75%) through the
application of an SL and blending of recovered recyclables into the communities existing
recycling program, which departments would be affected? Would every department that
generated waste then be able to reduce its own waste (and costs) as extraction from the landfill
would now replace inter-departmental recycling? Here, the DST would need to identify direct
and indirect value streams within the departments that impact the outcome, based upon internal
and external situations, versus the municipality as a whole.
Another example, is where municipalities seek to modify land development codes to encourage
sustainable development as well as provide financial incentives to encourage infill and
redevelopment. Mapping the internal value-adding processes would be beneficial to the DST
processes, whereby landfill property that is not used for building such a structure could be
monetized and management differently, as compared to other properties.
Resources, Standards, and Models
To aid the development of a new DST, there are a number for resources and standards that are
available to the designer. Presented below are just a few.
ENVISION
Different than Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification for buildings,
Envision recognizes that infrastructure has different challenges. Buildings are under the control
of a single owner or entity, where one can readily optimize the building systems. Yet, for
infrastructure, there is no single responsible entity. There are multiple departments with different

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issues, agendas, schedules, budgets, customers and integration needed at the city/community and
regional levels.
In the Envision rating system there are five main categories:
1. Quality of Life specifically addresses a project’s impact on communities from the health
and well-being of individuals to the well-being of the larger social fabric as a whole.
2. Leadership is comprised of the tasks that demonstrate effective leadership and
commitment by all parties involved in a project including meaningful commitments from
the owner, team leaders, & constructors.
3. Resource Allocation measures the use of renewable and non-renewable resources for the
project. Benefits of managing resources needed will allow a longer life as we know it.
4. Natural World allows project teams to assess the effect of the project on the
preservation and renewal of ecosystem functions. This section addresses how to
understand and minimize negative impacts while considering ways in which the
infrastructure can interact with natural systems in a synergistic and positive way.
5. Climate and Risk looks at two main concepts: minimizing emissions that may contribute
to increased short- and long-term risks and ensuring that infrastructure projects are
resilient to short-term hazards or altered long-term future conditions.
Envision also helps clients and communities define what broad terms like sustainable, resilient,
and smart mean to them. For example, Envision contains sixty credits, each one representing an
indicator of sustainability, such as:
• Stimulate local growth and development
• Improve public health and safety
• Take into account stakeholder views and concerns
• Last longer
• Reduce energy needs
• Protect farmland
• Withstand climate change threats
Lastly, Innovation Points are assigned in each of the five categories for both exceptional
performance beyond the expectations of the system and the application of methods that push
innovation in sustainable infrastructure. Innovation credits act as bonus points that are added to
the project score. Examples include a project where job development and training far exceed the
restorative level and fundamentally revitalize a community’s economy, or a project where the
stormwater management system is a community-wide resource for capturing stormwater,
preventing erosion, and treating stormwater prior to release back into natural hydrologic systems.
In addition, Envision can be used in choosing materials. One can ask, is a community using
recycled materials? This can reduce the load on the landfill. We cannot just consider the cost of
taking material to the landfill – what about the future cost?
The questions are answered, the points tallied, and projects are then scored, planned and
executed, only to be assessed by Envision to ensure quality control.
Using Envision for ISWM Modifications
Envision is flexible because of the diverse range of projects it addresses and that there are no
“prerequisites” or “must-dos” like in other rating systems. Lastly, Envision incorporates
sustainable philosophies into discreet infrastructure projects. While these and other benefits

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arguably help expand how project teams look at sustainability to encourage more creative ways
of solving infrastructure and solid waste challenges, there are some limitations inherent within
Envision that the user should know which can lead to an improper scoring and/or outcome.
For example, the merits of applying Envision to two Texas water infrastructure projects that
were specifically designed to enhance supply resiliency were assessed by retroactively rating the
San Antonio Water System (SAWS) Twin Oaks Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR).10
In this
review, the authors described that the novelty and innovation inherent in the ASR was largely
overlooked by Envision, which often does not evaluate sector-specific concepts.
Here, several important aspects of groundwater sustainability were omitted: aquifer-wide
monitoring programs, sustainable yield, groundwater regulations, and public awareness of water
resource limitations. To address this, an effective water resource sustainability index was
proposed to include system principles and simultaneously assess both surface and subsurface
water supplies. Per the authors, Envision’s focus was more on project implementation and less
on what a project does on a large scale. If Envision were used in conjunction with a groundwater
specific sustainability index, the authors argue, both the water system and the individual water
project could be reviewed together in a truly holistic manner.
Using the Twin Oaks Envision rating as an example, five important aspects of the Envision
system should be noted when apply is as a DST for a disruptive innovation in regard to ISWM
planning:
1) Conflation of project purpose and project design
2) No weighting of points based upon local needs
3) Project-oriented focus omits systems scale
4) Uneven weighting of three sustainability pillars
5) Positive scoring overlooks negative aspects of projects
6) Established hierarchies (e.g. waste) can be challenged and thus affect scoring
In the case of the ISWM planning, Envision also builds on the assumption that while landfilling
has a huge impact on the sustainability of the community, siting a new landfill not only costs
money, it has many social impacts that have a cost. Yet, its developers admit that it too may be
difficult to assign a value to it. Other assumptions include:
 As much waste or materials as possible should be avoided from landfills;
 Priorities are given for the production and/or use of renewable energy;
 Landfills will always produce methane; and
 Energy consumption is fixed as part of landfill operations.
Potentially Applicable Standards, Principles, and Models
International Organization for Standardizations (ISO)
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the world's largest developer of
voluntary international standards which facilitates world trade by providing common standards
between nations. Nearly twenty thousand standards have been set covering everything from
manufactured products and technology to food safety, agriculture and healthcare. ISO 9001, for
example, has been shown to improve sales, customer satisfaction, corporate image and market
10
Using Envision to Assess the Sustainability of Groundwater Infrastructure: A Case Study of the Twin Oaks
Aquifer Storage and Recovery Project. Article by Cody R. Saville, Gretchen R. Miller * and Kelly Brumbelow,
Texas A & M University, 2016

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share (Manders 2014 ) and ISO 14001 (discussed below) has been shown to have a positive
impact on environmental performance worldwide (de Vries et al, 2012 ) In the UK standards
account for an $8.2bn annual growth in GDP, while in Canada, the use of standards has injected
over $91bn into the economy since 1981.
When developing a new DST, applicable and salient ISO standards should be used. With respect
to disruptive technologies such as the ALBS, the ones listed in Table 7 may apply: (More detail
is provided in Exhibit B)
Table 7: Description of Selected ISO Standards Applicable to the ALBS
ISO Category
14001 Environmental Management Systems
14040 Environmental management - Life cycle assessment
14064
14065
Climate Change
14064 Water Protection
18091 Quality Management Systems in Local Government
37101 Sustainable Development in Communities
50001 Energy
Capacity, Management, Operations, and Maintenance Programs (CMOMs)
Strategic tools to support the most effective and efficient use of a utility's resources have become
critically important to a utility's planning process. Using the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's capacity, management, operations, and maintenance program (CMOM) as a guide,
utilities such water and wastewater prepare performance management plans to address the
challenges of rapidly growing populations and stretched water resources.
Originally developed for wastewater utilities, CMOM can addresses many aspects of a
municipality’s organization, with specific focuses such as water utility management and
operations, financial considerations, water treatment maintenance issues, public health
protection, regulatory compliance, and safety. For example, in Orange County, Florida, the
County’s Water CMOM program showed the gaps in the utility's organization, provided a
method to prioritize and implement gap closure projects, and aligned the final recommendations
of the assessment with the utility's goals and mission statement. The program created a
repeatable process that can measure how the utility is performing, re-analyze the utility
periodically, show gaps in performance, develop plans to close those gaps, and remeasure the
utility using performance indicators and industry-accepted metrics.
Climate- Based Efforts
The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-lived Climate Pollutants (CCAC) is a
partnership of governments, intergovernmental organizations, the environmental community, and
other groups that is dedicated to catalyzing rapid reductions in SLCPs to protect human health
and the environment now, and to slow the rate of climate change within the first half of this
century.
One of the CCAC’s focal areas is the Mitigating SLCPs from Municipal Solid Waste Initiative,
where the CCAC works to enable cities, with the support of their regional and national
governments, to move along the waste hierarchy in a coordinated and cohesive manner in order

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to mitigate methane and black carbon emissions. Information on actions that cities can take to
improve waste management and reduce SLCP emissions is available through the CCAC MSW
Knowledge Platform (http://waste.ccac-knowledge.net).
LEAN
A “Lean” organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously
increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value
creation process that has zero waste. The core idea is to maximize customer value while
minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.
To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate
technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services
through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments
to customers.
Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that
need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far
less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies
are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and
with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more
accurate.
DST Software and Models
EASEWASTE
Commonly used software tools for LCAs include EASEWASTE and SimaPro software
programs. EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technology)
is a LCA-based DST which calculates waste flow, resource consumption and environmental
emissions from waste management systems. It also provides an impact assessment in terms of
potential global warming, ozone depletion, photochemical ozone formation, acidification,
nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity and human toxicity. The model also possesses two impact
categories: Spoiled Groundwater Resources and Stored Toxicity. The model is flexible, user-
friendly and provides default data for waste composition, collection, transport, various treatment
processes, landfilling, use on land, recycling, utilization as well as upstream and downstream
processes (for example electricity consumption and heat production).
As such programs are mechanized, they can be readily modified. For example, EASEWASTE
assumes that time periods are long, and as such, waste materials and substances are left in the
waste at the end of the set time period. In the conventional landfill case, the organic waste may
be somewhat degraded, but the landfill can still contain significant amounts of materials and
substances that can support leaching for long time.
In order not to forget what is left in the waste after the time period in focus, EASEWASTE
includes an impact potential called “stored toxicity.” This metric basically keeps account of how
much is left of each toxic substance in the waste at the end of the normal decay period and
ascribes each substance the characterization factor for ecotoxicity to water and to soil, 50% each,
an arbitrary assumption that half of the toxic substances end up in the water compartment and the
other half in the soil compartment. However, this model can be modified using empirical ALBS
data, including results which show less impact remaining, than assumed. This ties directly to
long-term care of the landfill after closure and costs.

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TOPSIS
Over the last decade, sustainability experts and modelers have proposed more advanced DSTs
and method, for example a sustainability measurement and scoring system for assessing the
efforts of organizations at meeting sustainability targets. Using a “technique for order preference
by similarity to ideal solution” (TOPSIS) as the basic framework, this method proposes to
incorporate all three sustainability dimensions – economic, environmental and social – to
establish a threshold below which an organization is considered to have failed a sustainability
test. In addition, time-independent thresholds are proposed to enable a clearer comparison of
performance of organizations over time. Such proposed methods include plots for visualizing the
sustainability performance of organizations under review.
In this example case, the proposed method first assigns target values to a hypothetical
organization. TOPSIS is then used to generate composite scores in which the score of the
hypothetical organization is set as the threshold below which organizations are deemed to have
failed a sustainability test. Using the square of the closeness coefficient of TOPSIS, the final
composite score is decomposed into three components to reflect the contribution of the three
dimensions of sustainability to serve as a guide to determining which dimension to focus on for
improvement. A relative comparison score is then proposed to track the performance of
organizations over time.
While such proposals appear more advanced than other sustainability assessments, it is important
to know that such methods are available when either disruptive innovations or more complex
interrelations are at stake as part of ISWM planning.
Humanitarian Standards
The Sphere Project
The Sphere Project http://www.sphereproject.org/ is a voluntary initiative that brings a wide
range of humanitarian agencies together around a common aim - to improve the quality of
humanitarian assistance and the accountability of humanitarian actors to their constituents,
donors and affected populations. The Sphere Handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum
Standards in Humanitarian Response, is one of the most widely known and internationally
recognized sets of common principles and universal minimum standards in life-saving areas of
humanitarian response.
The Sphere Project is structured very loosely, without any membership or sign-up process for
organizations. Yet, its aim is that agencies use Sphere minimum standards to the benefit of
affected populations. While focused more on international efforts, there are elements of Sphere
that can be integrated into sustainable ISWM.
Sustainability Assessment & Measurement Principles (Bellagio STAMP)
A growing number of organizations have been involved in the development of indicator systems
around the key socio-economic and environmental concerns of sustainable development within
their own context. In order to provide guidance and promote best practice, in 1997 a global group
of leading measurement and assessment experts developed the Bellagio Principles. The Bellagio
Principles have become a widely quoted reference point for measuring sustainable development,
but new developments in policy, science, civil society and technology have made their update

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necessary. The Principles founders state they are responding to widespread calls for greater
harmony with the natural environment and for measures to secure the wellbeing of current and
future generations. http://www.sustainabledevelopment2015.org
The Bellagio Sustainability Assessment and Measurement Principles (BellagioSTAMP) have
been developed through a similar expert group process, using the original Principles as a starting
point. Intended to be used as a complete set, the new BellagioSTAMP includes eight principles:
(1) Guiding vision; (2) Essential considerations; (3) Adequate scope; (4) Framework and
indicators; (5) Transparency; (6) Effective communications; (7) Broad participation; and (8)
Continuity and capacity.
Overall, while the BellagioSTAMP process focus is mainly the eradication of poverty through
sustainable development, the Principles are designed to help any group assessing societal
progress, considering policy options or advocating change: community bodies, academics, non-
governmental organizations, corporations, governments and international institutions.
BellagioSTAMP helps realize the full potential of sustainability assessments by guiding them in
these areas:
• Content – Questions that should be answered in assessments
• Process – The way in which assessments should be carried out
• Scope – Range of assessments across the dimensions of time and geography
• Impact – The way to maximize the impact of assessments on the public and policy
makers
These principles are interrelated and are intended to be used as a complete set and its framework
supports communities revisiting of how they assess progress as a key lever for sustainable
development. Therefore, they can used as a learning tool. Further, high level principles can help
guide measurement and assessment system design. Lastly, BellagioSTAMP principles cover both
the content and process of measurement and assessment.
Conclusion
Incorporating "green infrastructure" practices within large urban areas can effectively and
affordably complement traditional infrastructure. Yet, integration of disruptive innovations, such
as the ALBS, can make sustainability and ISWM planning challenging. As presented herein,
there are a number of available resources and standards to help planners develop new DSTs, yet
they should consider that community goals and regulations are important, and first be must
clearly stated. Further, waste management should be perceived as a ‘throughput economy’, with
inputs from the market and with outputs to the market and to the environment. Also, assessment
of any ISWM must be based on waste composition, process characteristics, emissions, and
recycling product qualities, and inputs must be linked with outputs. Lastly, DST assessments
must be reproducible, comprehensible, and transparent regarding methodology and data.