Cost-benefit and greenhouse-gases mitigation of food waste composting: A case study in Malaysia

Abstract

Waste generation nowadays is rising in the world and it seems hard to prevent it. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) has been a major problem worldwide, especially in the fast growing cities and towns in the developing countries. This study aims to estimate the cost benefit and mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by converting the on-campus food and green waste generated in Universiti Teknologi of Malaysia (UTM) campus to compost. This study calculated the costing which includes the transportation, operating and equipment costs if green and food waste were converted into compost. The analyses were made with the basis of the pilot scale operation in Phase I operation. Extrapolation was made to project the further four phases of composting with higher amount of waste to estimate the potential profit. The results obtained from this study indicated that composting has the potential to generate a significant profit of Malaysia Ringgit (MYR)1.6 M/y based on 2,700 t/y of food and green waste composted. At the same time, the total solid waste supposedly to be sent to the landfill can be reduced by at least 47 %. Moreover, this study revealed that the composting process is able to reduce the GHGs emission rate by 90 %, i.e. the GHGs produced by the composting process is shown to be only 10 % of the total GHGs produced by landfill dumping given the same amount of solid waste to be disposed at the landfill site.