Life Cycle Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Management Scenarios in Jujuy (Argentina): Environmental Implications of the Transition Toward Integrated Systems

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management remains a major sustainability challenge in developing and emerging regions, where open dumping, uncontrolled disposal, limited recovery, and incomplete infrastructure are still widespread. This study applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate five configurations of the MSW management system in Jujuy, Argentina, from a disposal-oriented baseline toward progressively integrated and recovery-oriented scenarios. The functional unit was the annual amount of MSW managed in the province (139,757.5 t yr−1), and the assessment was performed using SimaPro 9.3, Ecoinvent 3, and ReCiPe 2016 at midpoint and endpoint levels. Relative to the baseline, expanded integrated management reduced Climate Change impacts by about 45–46% and potential Human Health damage by about 70–71%. The initial transition scenario produced a substantial reduction in the ReCiPe Human Health endpoint despite an almost unchanged Climate Change result, showing the value of a multi-impact interpretation. The complete midpoint profile also revealed category-specific trade-offs. Overall, the results highlight the importance of replacing uncontrolled disposal, increasing separate collection and recovery, and optimizing logistics. The small difference between composting and anaerobic digestion refers specifically to the low organic diversion rate modeled and should not be generalized to higher-diversion systems.