Life cycle assessment application for the medical waste management in Algeria

Abstract

Our study aimed to assess environmental im-pacts of a medical waste (MW) management sys-tem in using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodol-ogy in Algeria. We use standardized CML2 method to ana-lyze the environmental impacts resulting from one scenario’s MW management system for One kilo-gram of MIW disposed, including: production raw material of the MW, transportation, MW incinera-tion and MW ash storage. Seven impacts categories were taken into ac-count: Abiotic depletion (AD), Acidification, Eu-trophication, Global warming (GWP100), Ozone layer depletion (ODP), Human toxicity (HT) and Fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity (FAET). The data was obtained from Bachir Montouri hospital, the ECFERAL company, ecoinvent data-base and the literatures. Our study showed that all impact categories had significant values, except for ODP. The MW-Transportation contributed to the majority of im-pacts category. The highest impact category of the MW process was the eutrophication about 51% resultant of the fiber cotton production (38%). Despite significant emissions of dioxins, the BTEX and heavy metals which contributed for both HT and FAET impact, the MW incineration process contributed the least for AD, acidification, eutroph-ication, GWP100 after the MW ash storage. Our findings provide a useful tool to guide pol-icymakers in their choice of environmental perfor-mance indicators for disposal of MW.