Economic Value of Municipal Solid Waste

The management of municipal solid waste requires consideration of the comparative cost of various available management options, such as recycling for recovery of material values and recycling for recovery of energy values by resource recovery. The incineration of municipal solid waste in resource‐recovery plants with subsequent generation of electricity provides a basis for the determination of the fossil‐fuel equivalent value for municipal solid waste. A method for determining the economic value of the recoverable energy content of municipal solid waste is proposed. The method is used to determine the equivalent fossilfuel energy value of municipal solid waste and some of the common combustible components found in municipal solid waste. The equivalent fuel values are then related to some of the most commonly used methods for managing municipal solid waste. The results indicate that recycling of the combustible fraction of municipal solid waste, for material values, may not be economically justified for most combustible components. Additionally, there appear to be few long‐term environmental benefits with which to justify selecting recycling for material values over the recycling of energy values by resource recovery.