RESUMO
The climate impacts of biowaste collection and utilisation were assessed based on data from two regional pilots. The EU's waste legislation will require biowaste source separation and collection from detached houses in communities with over 10,000 inhabitants starting from 2024 onwards. Two novel biowaste collection approaches were piloted in two Finnish case regions. One with biowaste collection to larger biolinks with a van and another with composting biowaste bins. The biolink approach reduces the need for waste truck driving, while composting biowaste bins enable an extended collection period. A life cycle assessment method was applied to assess the climate impacts of biowaste collection options and utilisation compared with current practices. The results show that source separation of biowaste and direction to biogas production leads to lower overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the system level compared with the current waste incineration option. Waste logistics has only a minor role in total GHG emissions, but a system based on biolinks and biowaste collection using a van led to the lowest GHG emission levels. Therefore, from a GHG emissions perspective, encouraging people to source separate their biowaste should be made as easy and encouraging as possible, no matter how the actual logistics is provided. However, novel and improved approaches for source-separated biowaste collection provide the potential for additional GHG emissions reductions.
RESUMO
The coronavirus disease COVID-19 has spread worldwide since early 2020, and it has impacted mobility emissions due to mobility restrictions and e.g. increased remote work. This creates a good opportunity to assess how mobility emissions have reduced due to COVID-19. This research is based on data related to mobility distances and modes that have been automatically collected by using a mobile phone application in the city of Lahti, Finland. The results show that mobility decreased in total by approximately 40% during the first wave of COVID-19 in spring 2020. The global warming potential decreased at the same time by approximately 36%. In addition, a considerable shift in modal shares could be seen. The relative modal share of passenger cars increased by 6 percentage points while the share of public transport decreased by 18 percentage points. Despite the considerable reduction, further reductions in emissions from mobility are needed to meet the 1.5 degree climate targets in the urban mobility sector. However, further reductions can be reached also by increasingly using renewable mobility energy sources.
