UC Irvine

Waste management systems are increasingly expected to satisfy environmental, climate, and resource recovery objectives, yet engineering analyses remain constrained by limited empirical characterization of facility operations and infrastructure networks. Although regulatory databases contain extensive information on material flows, they generally do not report the operational activity responsible for energy consumption and emissions, forcing many inventories to rely on representative facilities or generalized emission factors. This dissertation develops an engineering framework for estimating the energy consumption and emissions of California's post-collection waste management system by integrating empirical facility classification, statewide transportation network modeling, and facility activity estimation. The analysis demonstrates that administrative facility categories frequently obscure substantial operational heterogeneity and therefore provide an inadequate basis for engineering emissions modeling. A flow-based classification derived from observed material inflows and outflows produces more representative facility archetypes for assigning process parameters and estimating activity. Using these classifications together with statewide routing analysis and facility-specific operating characteristics, this dissertation develops California-specific estimates of transportation activity, fuel consumption, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and criteria pollutants across major components of the post-collection waste management system.The results further demonstrate that emissions inventories depend critically on infrastructure configuration. Transportation demand, equipment activity, and processing requirements emerge from the interaction of facility operations, material routing, and network structure rather than from fixed assumptions regarding transport distances or representative facilities. Consequently, meaningful evaluation of waste management policies requires integrated consideration of transportation, processing, and disposal rather than analysis of individual components in isolation.Beyond producing a statewide emissions inventory, this dissertation establishes an empirical framework for transforming incomplete administrative records into defensible engineering estimates of system activity. The resulting methodology and inventory provide a baseline for future infrastructure planning, climate policy evaluation, and analysis of evolving waste management strategies in California.