**5. Literature review**

The LCA literature on waste treatment can be found in [3]. According to [28], the annual total solid waste generation worldwide is approximately 17 billion tonnes, and it is expected to reach 27 billion by 2050 [1, 17]. Based on [29] in this amount, about 1.3 billion tonnes are currently municipal solid waste generated by world cities, which are anticipated to generate up to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025 primarily due to population growth, increasing urbanization and socio-economic development of low- and middle-income countries [1]. The waste management problem in the EU is characterized by increasing per capita production of waste materials, the need for high levels of investment in physical infrastructure (incinerators, recycling facilities and landfills), institutional barriers, a wide range of stakeholders and a dynamic policy arena.

In this section we describe several studies with numerous examples demonstrating the waste management. Ref. [3] illustrates development of the regionalised municipal solid waste incineration model in France, which can be adapted to regional characteristics and incineration conditions in order to provide the best representation and most accurate predictions of MSW incineration in a given geographic area [3]. The world's largest center for urban waste by 2007, according to [30], was operational in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. This includes the city's sewage treatment plant and the expanded waste-to-energy plant for solid waste (SW) [30].

Details about Latin America, as a region strongly affected by the lack of equality in income distribution and big differences in the quantity of the waste generated daily and in its composition, can be found in [26].

 Moreover, according to work presented by Savino [26], the regional assessment report on municipal solid waste management (MSWM), published by Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 2005, says: "The composition of waste in Latin America, although it varies among the different centers of population, maintains a strong component of foodstuff waste, with average values from 50 to 70% in weight, while around 25% of waste components is made up of paper, cardboard, metal, textile, leather, rubber and wood." According to studies carried out by national member International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) in Argentina, presented in [26], the percentages are as follows:

*Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Modeling of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management Systems… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84347*

The composition of waste in Buenos Aires is presented and shown in **Figure 7**. The case of the sanitary landfill in Buenos Aires is illustrated in **Figure 8**.

In paper [31] a systemic approach for MSWM at both the household and the non-household level has been developed. It summarizes state-of-the-art available tools and compiles a set of guidelines for developing waste management master plans at the municipal level, and it provides a framework in the MSWM field for municipalities in Greece and other countries facing similar problems under often comparable socio-economic settings [31] [ZOTOS]. Moreover, the Hellenic State has defined sufficiently the legislative and political framework for MWSM, in frame of related EU legislative approaches, and the 4R (reduce-reuse-recycle-recover) concept is well promoted by the "National Planning of SWM"(Hellenic) constituted of two Joint Ministerial Decision, legislated in 1997 and 2000, respectively [30]. It is interesting to note that SWOT analysis is performed for MSWM (e.g., [31]).

In China landfill density cannot be as high as in developed countries because its population distribution and economic development are quite different [32]. The amount of MSW collected by local authorities in China has increased in parallel with rapid urbanization. The average rate of increase in the amount of MWS collected annually is about 6% [32]. Moreover, the overall status of

**Figure 7.**

*Composition of waste in Buenos Aires (source: [26]).*

**Figure 8.**  *Sanitary landfill Norte III in Buenos Aires (source: [26]).*

**Figure 9.**  *Landfill site in Beijing City (source: [32]).*

MSW treatment in China is still at the developing stages, with waste collection going from incomplete to complete collection and waste treatment going from decentralized disposal to sanitary landfilling [32]. Landfill site in Beijing City is presented in **Figure 9**.