Abstract

As society becomes more affluent and urbanized, communities become more congested and waste composition becomes more complex, making it problematic through continued dumping. As a typical scenario of waste mismanagement and negative environmental impacts from the landfill waste in Pabna city, reducing GHGs emissions from landfilling and developing renewable energy supplies is essential. This study sets its objectives to assess the perceptions and preferences for waste management in Pabna, evaluate differences between landfilling and Waste-to-energy (WTE) in terms of economic and environmental costs and benefits and explore the range of parameters that support the feasibility of WTE. This study carried out both the secondary data and household interviews (n=301), followed by a structured questionnaire and used the First Order Decay Model, cost-benefit analysis and sensitivity analysis to generate an empirically supported assessment. Provision of tipping fees, waste tax, willingness to pay for waste collection and electricity bills for using electricity generated from the waste can help improve waste transformation into an energy project in the Pabna city. This study considers specific and relevant transformation ways of waste into energy to generate empirically supported explanations, identify the negative impacts of open dumping of waste and formation of waste policy in the Pabna city of Bangladesh. The findings of this study will provide a robust basis for policymakers, planners, researchers, government and development partners for further research, project implementation of the transformation of waste into energy, developed specified policies to lessen the emission of GHGs, building resilient and sustainable waste management and establish a low carbon society.