Abstract

Waste management constitutes a key element of a country’s sustainability. Environmental experts agree that the goals set for the waste utilization rate will never be achieved without energy recovery. Thus, the question is what technology is best for energy generation from waste? In order to answer this question, it is important to establish criteria for measuring the efficiency and sustainability of technological alternatives. The aim of this work is to select the best waste to energy (WtE) alternative within the framework of sustainable development. The methodology is based on a set of indicators that assess WtE, considering the four dimensions of sustainable development outlined by the World Commission on Environment and Development: environmental, economic, social, and institutional. This methodology takes into account each community’s differences by enabling, for each particular context, the construction of specialized sets of indicators. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to identify indicators for each context using the experts’ opinion from various fields. This allows for the transparent selection of sustainable alternatives for WtE and contributes to making strategic decisions based on the characteristics of the various possible scenarios.