Estimating Environmental Damages Due to Solid Wastes’ Open Burning Using Endpoint Approach in Life Cycle Assessment

Open burning of solid waste represents one of the most important pollution problems in developing countries. In Iraq, the lack of an integrated solid waste management program had led to a situation where the practice of open burning of solid waste becomes the common disposal method. Solid waste’s open burning is associated with high pollution problems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an emerging methodology to test environmental burdens associated with processes. The Southern Governorate of AlMuthanna was taken as a case study and a life cycle inventory of inputs-outputs from technical publications related to open burning of solid waste in the Governorate was conducted. The endpoint approach in LCA was able to show that an annual loss of 901 (±607) DALY in human life and 2.31 (±1.60) species in ecosystems may occur due to the open burning of solid waste in the Governorate. Climate change affecting human health, human toxicity, and particulate matter formation are the major impact categories related to solid waste’s open burning. This relatively high level of damages requires an urgent strategy to stop or reduce these damages. Increasing the portion of recycled materials and energy can highly reduce the damages and alter the burdens. Information resulted from this study can be used by environmental activists to raise pressure towards sustainable solid waste management.