Life Cycle Assessment of Perishable Wastes from Koyambedu Market

Abstract

India is the second largest country having highest population which leads to generation of large sum of wastes. Municipal solid waste generally consists of household and commercial waste. Most of the wastes are collected and dumped in the landfill sites but in certain cases these wastes are dumped in nearby empty places which causes environmental pollution and also leads to spreading of various diseases. Koyambedu Market situated in Chennai, Tamil Nadu is one of the largest markets in Asia having a total area of 295 acres with different shops selling vegetables, fruits, flowers and meats. Around 300 tons of wastes are generated in a day from the entire market. The collected data are analyzed using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to know the impact caused by the wastes that are disposed from Koyambedu. The methodology of LCA makes modelling simpler, gives more clearly defined system boundaries, and reduces the amount of data that is required in comparison to the conventional method of independently comparing two different criteria. The use of LCA is more feasible in order to find the life cycle of the wastes and to find which waste produces more harm to the environment. With the analyzes it was found the emission of methane is more in vegetable waste than in other wastes that are collected from the market. The electricity consumed by landfill is less compared to the biogas plant. It is suggested that small biogas plants can be built near the markets to extract the gases that are produced from the wastes.