WESTE methodology for holistically evaluation of the waste management chain

The quantification of the sustainability degree of the waste management chain in a municipality or a region is essential to move forward a more sustainable scenario. This paper presents the WESTE methodology for holistically evaluation the waste management chain under an environmental, social, technical and economic (ESTE) perspective. The methodology allows benchmarking the sustainability degree of a case study, making comparisons among different case studies and tracking the developments over the time. As a result, 12 high level sustainability indicators have been defined and more than 50 intermediate and low-level indicators. 70% of the indicators are technical indicators describing the performance of the system such as the amount of waste collected or the kilometres per route. Social indicators cover the 14% of them describing mainly the behaviour of the citizens. Environmental and economic indicators account for the 16% of indicators describing the environmental impact and cost of the system.