Abstract:

The necessity of establishing sustainable solid waste management (SWM) systems has become apparent in the light of detrimental effects of existing SWM systems on the environment. As a result of the growing pressure for environmental protection and sustainability, the State of Florida has established an ambitious 75% recycling goal, to be achieved by the year 2020. Advanced thermal solid waste management (ATSWM) technologies can push Florida closer to this goal by drastically reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills. However, a comprehensive top-to-bottom assessment of technologies as well as their comparison against one another is crucial prior to the consideration of their implementation. The goal of this study was to evaluate emerging ATSWM technologies for Florida using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results indicated that gasification was ranked the highest while pyrolysis ranked the lowest among the three alternatives examined. However, the weights of criteria used for evaluating the technologies varied among the groups of counties. The implications of the findings for sustainability are also discussed.