Community composting: A multidisciplinary evaluation of an inclusive, participative, and eco-friendly approach to biowaste management

The problem of waste management continues to grow as landfilling and incineration face both environmental, social, and economic concerns. In this study, the implementation of community composting plant in a municipality is presented evaluating the effectiveness of participatory processes and practices of community composting to solve a common demand of bio-waste management. In a multidisciplinary approach, different methodologies to analyse the environmental and economic impacts, institutional feasibility and social acceptability of the process are applied. As in this municipal composting plant local communities and citizens are directly involved in generating socio-economic and ecological benefits for themselves, these benefits are quantified and made comprehensible to the local stakeholders and citizenship through Life Cycle Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis. The Delphi method was applied for exploring the institutional feasibility of the community composting plant and a direct inquiry to citizens was performed to evaluate their social acceptability. Results showed that the proposed model reduces the environmental impact, expressed as carbon footprint, respect to alternative landfill or incinerator scenarios, ensures the economic sustainability, also taking into account the possibility to obtain a compost appreciated by the market, meanwhile the social acceptability resulted strongly influenced by the level of information and knowledge of community.