Municipal biowaste management: A literature review of case studies, best practices, and life cycle assessments

Effective management of municipal biowaste is critical for sustainable urban development and for generating environmental, economic, and social benefits from waste valorisation. To evaluate the environmental impacts of biowaste management practices, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely applied. However, due to the diversification of waste treatment methods and a large body of LCA studies, scholars, especially practitioners and decision-makers, may be challenged to select a suitable model to be implemented. There are many review studies on LCA for waste management, yet they still have limitations, such as either not focusing directly on biowaste, the sample selection not being comprehensive, or not identifying best practices. This paper employs systematic and bibliometric literature review approaches to analyse a total of 195 articles identified from the Scopus database. The results indicate that research on LCA in biowaste management has drawn much attention from scholars in the last decade. Waste Management is the most productive journal, and most of the collected publications are contributed by authors from China and developed countries. Anaerobic digestion and composting are the two most popular case studies, followed by incineration and landfilling. The combination of anaerobic digestion has been identified as one of the best solutions to manage biowaste due to its environmental benefits. Generally, this paper can contribute to a deeper understanding of the current state of biowaste management and provide a foundation for future research directions aimed at achieving more efficient and environmentally sound waste management practices in urban areas.