Life cycle assessment for municipal solid waste management: a case study from Ahvaz, Iran Mohammad Amin Zarea & Hadi Moazed & Mehdi Ahmadmoazzam & Sajede Malekghasemi & Neemat Jaafarzadeh Received: 14 April 2018 /Accepted: 28 January 2019 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract This study assessed the available status of waste management system in Ahvaz and its impact on the environment, as well as seven other scenarios in order to quantitatively calculate potential environmental im- pacts by utilizing the life cycle assessment (LCA) meth- od. These scenarios were as follows: scenario 1: landfilling without biogas collection; scenario 2: landfilling with biogas collection; scenario 3: composting and landfilling without biogas collection; scenario 4: recycling and composting; scenario 5: composting and incineration; scenario 6: anaerobic digestion, recycling, and landfilling; scenario 7: anaerobic digestion and in- cineration. Emissions were calculated by the integrated waste management (IWM) model and classified into five impact categories: resource consumption, global warming, acidification potential, photochemical oxida- tion, and eco-toxicity. In terms of resource consumption and the depletion of non-renewable resources, the third scenario showed the worst performance due to its lack of any recycling, energy recovery, and conversion to energy. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the effect on global warming, scenario 1 and scenario 2 showed that disposing the whole amount of waste resulted in the most amount of greenhouse gases produced. Moreover, 50% gas and energy recovery from landfills, in comparison with the non-recovery method, reduced the index of global warming by 12%. Finally, scenarios which were based on producing energy from waste showed a reason- ably positive performance in terms of greenhouse gases emissions and the influence on global warming. Keywords Life cycle assessment . Municipal solid waste . Waste management . Ahvaz city Introduction In recent decades, urbanization and world population growth, especially in developing countries, have created some problems for the environment and public health (Barton et al. 1996; Guerrero et al. 2013; Haupt et al. 2018). Consequently, to improve urban management in metropolises, environmental and economic Environ Monit Assess (2019) 191:131 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7273-y M. A. Zarea : H. Moazed Faculty of Water Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran M. Ahmadmoazzam : N. Jaafarzadeh Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran M. Ahmadmoazzam Student Research Committee, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran S. Malekghasemi Department of Civil Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran N. Jaafarzadeh (*) Environmental Technologies Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran e-mail: n.Jaafarzade@yahoo.com