Modeling the leachate flow and aggregated emissions from municipal waste landfills under life cycle thinking in the Oceanic region of the Iberian Peninsula Ana Camba a , Sara González-García a, * , Alba Bala b , Pere Fullana-i-Palmer b , Maria Teresa Moreira a , Gumersindo Feijoo a a Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela, E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain b Cátedra Unesco de Ciclo de Vida y Cambio Climático (ESCI-UPF), Escola Superior de Comerç Internacional, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Pg. Pujades,1, 08003 Barcelona, Spain article info Article history: Received 13 June 2013 Received in revised form 27 October 2013 Accepted 4 December 2013 Available online 18 December 2013 Keywords: Landfill LCA Leachate Municipal solid waste Rainfall area abstract The most extensively used option for the management of municipal solid waste in the Iberian Peninsula is landfilling. Due to the impossibility of distinguishing emissions from the different types of waste with direct measurements, models have to be developed. A mathematical method to determine the leachate composition from different types of landfilled wastes was proposed according to a life cycle assessment approach. The model was specially designed to foresee the average generation of leachate in Iberian facilities through the application of a water balance. However, according to climatic differences related to rainfall and temperature, the entire territory is not homogenous and it should not be modeled jointly. Among the different regions, this research work was focused on the worst case scenario with landfills located in the highest rainfall area (the Oceanic region), where a large production of leachate is expected. With the only requirement of waste composition as data entry, the resultant model provides an estimation of pollutant release and the average leachate production in the Oceanic region. The appli- cability of both parts of the model was successfully verified with three case studies. The validation was carried out not only through the comparison of field data with the sum of the estimated individual emissions, but also through the contrast of aqueous effluent collected in landfills against the medium value calculated for the Oceanic territory taking into consideration regional weather information. It also enabled to identify those waste fractions responsible for greater environmental impacts. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Landfill disposal remains as the predominant option for the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) not only in the Ibe- rian Peninsula but also worldwide (Frändegård et al., 2013; Jones et al., 2013; Kaartinen et al., 2013; Kollikkathara et al., 2009). Landfills have been used for the disposal of nearly all types of MSW as well as industrial waste for decades (Kaartinen et al., 2013). This alternative has been applied for waste which cannot or should not be recovered or treated in another way. Though waste is kept in a long-term safe way and landfilling is controlled by a strict regula- tory framework, this alternative is a potential source of pollution and hazardous substances (Frändegård et al., 2013). Despite the general effort to decrease the percentage of landfilled waste in the European Union (Directive, 2008/98/EC), this management option was applied to 52% and 62% of the MSW generated in 2009 in Spain and Portugal, respectively (APA, 2010; MARM, 2011). The landfill can be considered as a complex environment where many interacting physical, chemical and biological processes take place (Ozkaya et al., 2006). The degradation process of MSW in landfills is a long-term event (Belevi and Baccini, 1989; Camobreco et al., 1999; Finnveden, 1999). Therefore, emissions will have to be managed for hundreds of years, contradicting the principles of sustainability (Fellner and Brunner, 2010). The gaseous and liquid streams generated from waste decom- position, landfill gas and leachate, constitute the sources of the main environmental impacts associated to this practice (El-Fadel et al., 1997). In the absence of any collection or treatment, landfill derived methane contributes to climate change on a global level, * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sara.gez.garcia@gmail.com, sara.gonzalez@usc.es (S. González-García). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.013 Journal of Cleaner Production 67 (2014) 98e106