MSW is a mixture of different kinds of waste materials that cannot
be easily sorted, reused or recycled. It may contain materials
that could theoretically be recycled, if they were perfectly
separated and clean, but most of the times these materials are
too contaminated for recycling to be economically or practically
feasible. An innovative treatment process is proposed and evaluated
in terms of its costs and benefits by means of the life cycle
assessment method. The process consists with an upgrade module
to the conventional MBT plants in order to make them capable to
operate with much higher efficiency even in those situations of
urban systems (unfortunately a large number of them) in which
pre-sorting of inorganic and organic fraction is not accurate or is
too expensive, thus leading to the loss of valuable resources and
to a poor performance of waste management. The results of such
innovation is the possibility to select a very pure organic fraction
that can be converted to electric energy in combined heat and
power plants (CHP), a valuable fraction of ferrous and nonferrous
metals to be recovered by smelters with indirect energy
savings, and finally the possible destination of a residual fraction
of still unsorted waste to a WtE plant, for additional electricity
generation. Innovative technologies can therefore help recover still
valuable resources from urban waste and convert them into energy
and reusable materials to be feedback to the urban systems. Nevertheless,
it is important to point out that the possibility of energy
recovery in the investigated plant does not decrease the efforts to
overcome the range of barriers to also capturing and recycling
other material resources. It is equally important that while those
barriers do exist, energy from waste is used effectively to ensure
those materials are not lost and that their recovery is beneficial.
Of course, this implies a change of perspective, namely waste disposal
versus energy and material recovery. The two perspectives
are not opposite to each other and may instead offer synergic
advantages for better and more profitable management. LCA and
other biophysical environmental assessment methods represent
very valuable tools to complement usual monetary evaluations,
for a better understanding of benefits and costs of management
policies. In so doing, the information provided by LCA may improve
transparency about management choices, in so supporting participatory
decision-making processes and promote conflict prevention
regarding technical choices.