Waste-to-Energy (WtE) serves as an important source to meet the growing energy demands of the world in a sustainable manner. It can help in the reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions, lower the risk of environmental pollution and contribute towards the establishment of a circular economy. By generating steam or electrical energy, WtE helps avoid the CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel based electrical generation.  But it requires further improvements within the area of waste management. One of the key objectives of waste management is to improve the source separation of Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) generated by households and Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The increase source separation of waste, positively impacts the WtE process. To achieve high source separation, the presence of pro-environmental behaviour and the appropriate waste collection infrastructure is important. In this thesis, the impact of these factors on the waste separation rate and the energy generated from OFMSW is evaluated by constructing an Agent-Based Model.  The results of this thesis show that combined influence of Pro-environmental behaviour, higher ratio of households to SMEs, large bin size and choice of an efficient WtE technology to treat source separated waste, resulted in an 16.24 % increase in the energy generated from OFMSW and a 25.32% increase in the CO₂ abated.

Within the Netherlands, approximately 8.5 million tonnes of solid waste are produced annually. Being the capital city with the most populated district in the Netherlands, higher municipal solid waste accumulation in Amsterdam is in existence. A substantial portion of the municipal waste in Amsterdam is categorized as organic waste, with a percentage of 36%. By far, the waste separation in Amsterdam is further less than the national average, especially for organic waste where its separation rate does not even reach 0.1%. Eventually, most of the organic waste is often commingled with residual waste and being incinerated collectively. A wide range of solutions is proposed to preserve as much value of organic waste as possible such as through bio-digestion and composting. A project called ReStore contributed to this by developing a measurement method on centralised and decentralised organic waste management options. However, it is not yet known the extent to which the outcome of this model can be accurately interpreted. An evaluation and comparison within a systematic approach is needed by considering different attempt in the modelling, conceptualization, and approach in order to gain a far-reaching and thorough interpretation. Furthermore, the typical configuration, feature, infrastructure, and process design made up the unique characteristic of organic waste management. Thus, there is a need for detailed analysis that is capable of considering specific waste properties and process characteristics through a chain perspective. Taking the ReStore method as a point of departure, this study seeks to investigate the carbon footprint of composting, bio-digestion, and WtE using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and finally point out how both models can complement one another. To that end, a literature review was firstly carried out along with the ReStore model conceptualisation. Next, an environmental impact modelling was performed following the LCA methodology, building on the model characteristics and framework from ReStore. Through comparative analysis, the outcome of the LCA study was then compared with the outcome from the ReStore model. Finally, recommendations were formulated on how the concept of LCA helps in providing suggestions on modelling waste management for the ReStore model and vice versa. The results demonstrate a close outcome between the LCA model and the ReStore model, either from the order of impact or from the hotspot dispersion. The results vary along the chosen allocation method, yet, all of these results show that neither bio-digestion nor composting are seen as the preferably option towards WtE. Though differences between both models are not really prominent, the knowledge of LCA embraces essential contributions towards performance improvement for ReStore to model better organic waste management scenarios. It helps ReStore to be more aware with regard to multifunctionality issue and its solutions. Moreover, the wide-range impact categories included in the LCA will help in defining a more extensive result interpretation through different impact point of view. Furthermore, LCA provides thorough and systematic result evaluation that will contribute to a more conclusive analysis. While the LCA model and its concept shares imperative roles to the ReStore model, the LCA model model could also learn from the ReStore model to be more specific with regard to the modelling and analysis. The ReStore model has inspired the LCA model with regard to the flexibility in handling changes in the waste composition. Finally, LCA that is known as a complex and resource intensive tool may learn from ReStore in terms of its accessibility.

The increase in consumption of resources has led to more waste being generated, which then needs to be managed at the end of their life-cycle as waste. Current practices of waste management are not efficient as they lead to a release of emissions and a loss of value that is present in the resource, which is discarded as waste. New legislation for efficient waste management practices has been established, however, adopting them is hampered by factors, one of which is the high cost of these solutions. However, incentive-based approaches can be used to address this problem. This research explores the role of institutional incentives in the form of property rights bundles for such cases. Property rights are a set of formal and informal rules that define how resource allocation is done, while property rights bundles are the set of one or more property rights tied together. As per academic literature, a clear allocation of property rights leads to an economically efficient distribution of costs, benefits, risks and responsibilities associated with a resource. Based on these aspects, this research explores the influence of property rights bundles in the case of collective ownership of waste processing infrastructure by companies. Through collective ownership of the infrastructure, the investment cost would be distributed among those using the resource, thereby reducing the share of investment per company and addressing the challenge of high investment costs. Furthermore, in this situation of collective ownership, property rights need to be defined clearly so that there are no conflicts among the participants at later stages. The research is based on a case study of a few companies in Amsterdam, who are attempting to set up an initiative to improve the waste management practice in the region. For this purpose, they plan to invest collectively in a waste-processing infrastructure. This research thus explores the role of property rights in this regard. The literature on property rights forms the theoretical foundation of the research, along with the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which is the behavioural theory chosen to analyse the decision-making of the companies. The case study was analysed using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. An agent-based model was built based on the insights obtained from these concepts to capture the interaction between the property rights and the characteristics of the companies, such as the amount of waste generated by them, the amount of budget they hold, etc. The influence of property rights bundles was analysed using the attributes of property rights: robustness, strength, duration and excludability. The results obtained were analysed using the defined Key Performance Indicators: Joining Ratio, Number of Participants and Number of times the initiative is started. It was found that for the case of the Amsterdam Zuidoost initiative, providing property rights bundles of claimants and proprietors as incentives leads to an increase in the number of participants that join the initiative. However, due to lack of statistical significance between the distributions, we cannot determine which of the two has a higher influence. Furthermore, the influence of the other property rights bundle could not be verified due to lack of statistical significance in the distribution. From the perspective of general results, it was concluded that maximum participants join when incentive 3 (property rights bundle of Proprietors) is provided, followed by when all incentives (all property rights bundles in an increasing order) are provided, and finally when property rights bundle of Claimants is provided. The influence of property rights bundle of Authorised Users could not be verified. However, the influence of property rights bundles for the selected model and agent parameters is unknown, and more research is required to determine this relationship. One of the foremost recommendations comes from the model outcomes that more research is required to explore the influence of property rights bundles with respect to the model parameters considered. This research does not take into account the property rights bundle of owners and it is recommended that future research includes this bundle to understand the influence of this bundle from a quantitative perspective. Furthermore, as property rights have not been studied from a quantitative perspective before, alternative approaches could be used to obtain more insights of this concept.

In the Netherlands 2 million tons organic bio-waste is not fully sorted and ends up burned or landfilled. This process is unnecessarily harming the health of people, animals and our planet every year. With our waste quantities only increasing, this is an important topic on the European agenda.

The creation of user-driven, self-organising, and decentralized networks is supported to make better use of the remaining value in bio-waste. The behaviour of people in these networks is critical for its environmental impact and long-term survival. This research proposes a quantitative set-up to increase the bio-waste separation rate of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To research the potential environmental benefit in a symbiotic network for bio-waste separation the following research question was posed:

What is the influence of different groups of human behaviour and policy interventions in the development of bio-waste sortation networks for environmental benefit in symbiosis?

The Value-Belief-Norm theory is a social theory that is based on the altruistic intentions that drives people to behave in the interest of the planet, rather than their own benefit. The set-up offers a new approach to combine the Value-Belief-Norm theory with Industrial Symbiosis. This approach is applied in an agent-based simulation model and case study of the NDSM wharf Amsterdam.