Step 3: Incineration and Landfill
Overview of the process to determine the shares of incineration and landfill out of the domestic waste generated.
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Overview of the process to determine the shares of incineration and landfill out of the domestic waste generated.
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This section of the model focuses on determining the amount of plastic waste, by polymer and category, that ends up in one of the other "properly disposed" fates: incineration and landfilling. The overall percentages of waste allocated to these fates are sourced from external data, including Eurostat, Census reports, national statistics, and scientific publications.
If sector-specific data (e.g., for packaging) is available, these percentages can be applied directly to the different polymers and categories, in proportion to the amount of waste remaining for each combination. By this stage in the model, we have already accounted for the quantities of waste that have been recycled, exported, or littered (further explained in the next section). Therefore, the remaining waste for each polymer and category is calculated by subtracting these three fates from the total waste.
However, detailed sector-specific data is often unavailable, and available data typically pertains to municipal solid waste (MSW), which includes packaging, textile, and household waste. In such cases, before assigning incineration and landfilling percentages to the different polymers and categories, we must first estimate the portion of MSW that comes from packaging as opposed to other sectors.
To achieve this, we distribute the total incinerated (or landfilled) MSW across sectors in proportion to the waste generated by each sector. Since recycling, exporting, and littering quantities have already been allocated by sector, sectors with higher recycling rates — such as packaging — will receive proportionally smaller amounts for incineration and landfilling.
At the end of this step, the quantities of waste destined for incineration and landfilling are assigned to each specific polymer and packaging category combination.
