Are functional fillers improving environmental behavior of plastics? A review on LCA studies

Abstract

The use of functional fillers can be advantageous in terms of cost reduction and improved properties in plastics. There are many types of fillers used in industry, organic and inorganic, with a wide application area. As a response to the growing concerns about environmental damage that plastics cause, recently fillers have started to be considered as a way to reduce it by decreasing the need for petrochemical resources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is identified as a proper tool to evaluate potential environmental impacts of products or systems. Therefore, in this study, the literature regarding LCA of plastics with functional fillers was reviewed in order to see if the use of fillers in plastics could be environmentally helpful. It was interesting to find out that environmental impacts of functional fillers in plastics had not been studied too often, especially in the case of inorganic fillers. Therefore, a gap in the literature was identified for the future works. Results of the study showed that, although there were not many and some differences exist among the LCA studies, the use of fillers in plastics industry may help to reduce environmental emissions. In addition, how LCA methodology was applied to these materials was also investigated.

Fillers for Packaging Applications

“…The addition of natural fibers to partially substitute polymers may also be an opportunity for reducing the environmental impact especially because they come from renewable sources, but again an LCA analysis is necessary for confirmation due to the production burden of raw materials [40]. It is important to highlight that LCA studies should include not only the resources used to produce that specific type of packaging but also the after-use impact.…”

Using life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental benefit of upcycling vine shoots as fillers in biocomposite packaging materials

“…Biocomposites are thus generally presented as eco-friendly materials. However, most of the time, the environmental benefit is not quantitatively proven (Civancik-Uslu et al 2018). It is thus necessary to ensure that the biocomposites are actually capable of mitigating the abovementioned environmental problems, as the use of bioplastics and natural fillers to produce biocomposites does not automatically make them sustainable.…”

“…Its main limits are the collection of data, which can be difficult, and the initial assumptions that need to be justified. Most of the LCAs carried out for biocomposites focus on the comparison of natural fillers with synthetic fibers (Kim et al 2008;Le Duigou et al 2011;Civancik-Uslu et al 2018), especially for applications in the automotive industry (Joshi et al 2004;Duflou et al 2012;Boland 2014). Generally, natural fillers tend to have a better environmental performance than glass fibers, notably thanks to the weight reduction of the composites and their low energy demand for production (Joshi et al 2004).…”

Effects of inorganic filler on performance and cost effectiveness of a soybean‐based adhesive

“…Inorganic fillers with various compositions and structures could reduce the cost and improve the properties of the modified polymeric matrix, such as its processability, density, thermal expansion, thermal conductivity, flame resistance, optical changes, electrical and magnetic properties, and mechanical properties . In particular, nanoscale inorganic fillers could significantly improve some performance measures of the resulting nanocomposites .…”