< Back to previous page

Project

Geïntegreerde beoordeling van innovatieve ontginning van stortplaatsen.

Assessing societal impacts is a challenging task. Social conditions vastly differ throughout the world and depending on the involved stakeholders, distinct emphasis is set. In the context of enhanced landfill mining (ELFM), i.e. resource recovery from landfills through the use of innovative technology, some of the major stakeholders involved include landfill owners, governmental institutions, technology providers, local communities as well as energy and material companies. While environmental and private economic factors in the field of ELFM have gotten some scientific attention, societal impacts have generally not been assessed. To fill this research gap, we propose an anticipatory approach, integrating stakeholder values and including uncertainty through the use of prospective modelling tools and multiple social perspectives. To identify the different perspectives taken on ELFM and elicit specific stakeholder needs, semi-structured interviews were conducted. The results show that the perspectives lead to different and sometimes contradicting implications for ELFM implementation. Five stakeholder archetypes for ELFM have been developed and 23 stakeholder needs identified. In a consequential step, the derived societal impacts will be quantified through prospective modelling. The basis for this step is provided societal life cycle costing (sLCC) and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methods and will be adapted to fit the processes of ELFM. To accomplish the PhD research four publications are planned, of which two have been submitted to peer reviewed journals. The fourth year of the PhD research will comprise the integration of societal, economic and environmental assessment models into a holistic approach. This is planned in close cooperation with two other PhD researchers from UAntwerp and KU Leuven. The developed model will be tested on the Remo landfill, located in Houthalen-Helchteren, in Flanders, Belgium.
Date:15 Jul 2019 →  14 Jul 2020
Keywords:ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT
Disciplines:Agricultural and natural resource economics, environmental and ecological economics