Melanie Haupt

ETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering

Plastics consumption continues to steeply increase worldwide, while resultant waste is currently mostly landfilled, discarded to the environment, or incinerated. This significantly contributes to global warming and causes negative health and ecosystem effects. Increasing the circularity of plastics can reduce these impacts. This study investigated...

Industrial ecology (IE) methodologies, such as input/output or material flow analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA), are often used for the environmental evaluation of circular economy strategies. Up to now, an approach that utilizes these methods in a systematic, integrated framework for a holistic assessment of a geographic region's sustainable...

According to the waste hierarchy, waste prevention is environmentally superior to recycling or recovery, hence its inclusion in government policy. The assessment and prioritization of waste prevention strategies are impeded, inter alia, by ambiguous definitions and the lack of a sound environmental assessment method. In this study, a systematic app...

Plastic recycling can provide environmental benefits by avoiding the detrimental impacts of alternative disposal pathways and enabling the substitution of primary materials. However, most studies aiming at increasing recycling rates have not investigated how the resulting secondary materials can be utilized in product manufacturing. This study asse...

A material flow analysis of the main plastic types used and arising as waste in Switzerland in 2017 is conducted, including consideration of stock change. Seven main plastic application segments are distinguished (packaging; building and construction; automotive; electrical and electronic equipment; agriculture; household items, furniture, leisure...

This study assesses the environmental performance of the municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration bottom ash (IBA) treatment plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, a large-scale industrial plant, which also serves as a full-scale laboratory for new technologies and aims at an optimal recovery of metals in terms of quantity and quality. Based on new mass-flo...

Circular economy is increasingly promoted as a solution to decouple economic growth and environmental impacts. To design a circular and sustainable system, a structured approach is needed. In this study, we suggest to follow a 3-step approach. First, the status quo is evaluated using environmental assessment methods. We determine current circularit...

“What gets measured gets managed” - this quote by Peter Ducker reveals a pitfall for the targeted transition towards a more sustainable, circular economy. Today, mass-based indicators, such as recycling rates, are used to assess the circularity of individual products, firms and of entire countries. These indicators, however, fail to cover the envir...

This report is the result of the second transdisciplinary Case Study (tdCS) in the Seychelles. It reflects a continuation of an activity on solid waste management (SWM) in the Seychelles, which started in 2016.

The international community has set ambitious goals for global prosperity and protecting the planet, including the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and environmental conventions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention t...

Much is at stake as global society approaches the final decade before the Sustainable Development Goals are fixed to be realized in 2030. The international community has set high ambitions for global prosperity, the protection of our biological diversity and land resources, and limiting global warming. Progress towards these ambitions is within our...

Multiple international and supranational organizations call upon changes in current waste management practices to play a key role in developing more sustainable economies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular method used to assess the sustainability of future waste management options. The uncertainties about future energy systems and waste comp...

To allow for an up-to-date and geographically specific life cycle assessment, updated and regionally specific life cycle inventories are crucial. This data article present up-to-date life cycle inventories of several collection, sorting and recycling processes of municipal solid waste fractions for life cycle assessments of waste management systems...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly applied to examine the environmental performance of waste management systems. The system boundaries are, however, often limited to either one tonne of material or to specific waste treatments and are, therefore, lacking a systems perspective. Here, a framework is proposed to assess complete waste management s...

Material recycling often leads to environmental benefits when compared to thermal treatments or landfilling and is therefore positioned in the waste hierarchy as the third priority after waste prevention and reuse. To assess the environmental impacts of recycling and the related substitution of primary material, linear steady-state models of physic...

A material flow analysis of the 2012 Swiss waste management system is presented, highlighting the material content available from waste. Half of municipal solid waste (MSW) is materially recycled and the other half thermally treated with energy recovery. A key component of an industrial ecosystem is increasing the resource efficiency through circul...

In electric arc furnaces (EAFs), different grades of steel scrap are combined to produce the targeted carbon steel quality. The goal of this study is to assess the influence of scrap quality on the recycling process and on the final product by investigating the effect of the scrap mix composition, and other inputs, for example, preheating energy, o...

Background: Food consumption has a large influence on global warming. Although we must not forget that the main role of food is nutrient provision. This study develops an indicator to integrate the carbon footprint (CFP) and nutritional values of diets to facilitate sustainable food consumption. Methods: To provide a non-subjective weighting, the n...

Conference report from the 55th Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment on April 11th 2014 in Zürich Switzerland, titled 'Abiotic resources: new impact assessment approaches in view of resource efficiency and resource criticality'

In Switzerland many kinds of waste, e.g. paper, metals, electrical and electronic equipment are separately collected and recycled to a large extent. The residual amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) has to be thermally treated before final disposal. Efforts to recover valuable metals from incineration residues have recently increased. However, the...