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Ecology in Urban Planning: Mitigating the Environmental Damage of Municipal Solid Waste

Author

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  • Mindaugas Staniunas

    (Department of Urban Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius 10223, Lithuania)

  • Marija Burinskiene

    (Department of Urban Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius 10223, Lithuania)

  • Vida Maliene

    (School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK)

Abstract

The principles of well-known indices of sustainability—the Ecological Footprint (EF) and the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)—have been compared to discuss the essence of attitude, substantial differences and transferability into urban planning. An overview indicates that ideologically the EF is a more appropriate tool for ecological tasks due to its clear background of natural limits and the ability of “leakage” tracing. Furthermore the European Common Initiative is discussed as it proposes feasible indices monitoring actions towards local sustainability that could be considered in urban planning. Taking two Lithuanian cities as an example, integration of part of one index (regarding municipal solid wastes) into the ecological section of urban planning is presented. It has been estimated that in 10 years an average Lithuanian should generate an amount of municipal solid waste whose ecological impact will be equal to 19,900 kg of CO2-eq in 20 years time. Lastly considering urban planning scope and the EF practice, two opportunities are discussed: (1) tree planting and (2) waste incineration.

Suggested Citation

  • Mindaugas Staniunas & Marija Burinskiene & Vida Maliene, 2012. "Ecology in Urban Planning: Mitigating the Environmental Damage of Municipal Solid Waste," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(9), pages 1-18, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:9:p:1966-1983:d:19685
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. White, Thomas J., 2007. "Sharing resources: The global distribution of the Ecological Footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 402-410, December.
    2. Bohringer, Christoph & Jochem, Patrick E.P., 2007. "Measuring the immeasurable -- A survey of sustainability indices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-8, June.
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    6. Fiala, Nathan, 2008. "Measuring sustainability: Why the ecological footprint is bad economics and bad environmental science," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(4), pages 519-525, November.
    7. Siche, J.R. & Agostinho, F. & Ortega, E. & Romeiro, A., 2008. "Sustainability of nations by indices: Comparative study between environmental sustainability index, ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(4), pages 628-637, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Gaodi Xie & Wenhui Chen & Shuyan Cao & Chunxia Lu & Yu Xiao & Changshun Zhang & Na Li & Shuo Wang, 2014. "The Outward Extension of an Ecological Footprint in City Expansion: The Case of Beijing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(12), pages 1-16, December.

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