Global Accounting of Reactive Nitrogen in Municipal Solid Waste

We apply compositional Bayesian regression on municipal solid waste (MSW) data, in order to produce a panel dataset of waste generation with composition and treatment categories for every country for the period 1965-2100.

We estimate stocks and flows of reactive nitrogen in landfills and dumps based on this data, using carbon and nitrogen degradation processes. This is of particular importance for countries with open dumps, where leachate is not accounted for in current inventories. Much uncertainty exists around MSW nitrogen accounting, also regarding N2O emissions.