ABSTRACT
The 2018 revision of the Waste and Landfill Directives established that, by 2035, the preparing for re-use and the recycling of municipal waste must be increased to a minimum of 65% by weight and the landfilling of municipal waste to a maximum of 10%. Given the risks that Portugal faces of not meeting these new targets, three possible scenarios for MSW management were developed and analyzed with a MSW Allocation model to determine what would it take to meet EU waste management targets. Results show that compliance will require very high sorted collection rates, around 75–90% for all waste types, nearly zero residuals from sorting operations and waste to energy capacity to ensure that residuals are not landfilled. Falling behind in a single waste type will force unrealistic sorted collection rates in the remaining ones. These conclusions hold even with successful waste prevention actions.
