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Abstract
By 2050 the world is expected to generate about 3.4 billion tons of waste. A large part of this waste stream could be reused or recycled, however without an active effort to do so, most of this waste will end up dumped or in landfills or incinerators. The reuse, recycling and use of waste to substitute for virgin chemicals, energy and animal feed materials can contribute to more sustainable, efficient and integrated bio-based economy. In this paper we focus on developing the methodology to include a waste management system in a CGE modelling framework and on building a database to operationalize the new waste module within the global CGE model - MAGNET. It includes introducing municipal solid waste generated by households and various options of dealing with waste by including new waste treatment sectors like landfills, waste to energy, recycling and composting sectors. We distinguished 5 types of waste materials: food, garden, glass, paper and other waste. Depending on the waste material, waste will be treated. Recycled glass and paper, compost and biomass are generated and used as a substitute for virgin materials in the relevant sectors. In the developed system there is now a direct link between waste and bio-economic sectors in the model, thus making possible the feasibility studies for analysing circular economy.