Environmental and economic life cycle analysis of plastic waste management options. A review

Abstract

Analysis on 3RWB model (Reduce, reuse, recycle, and waste bank) in comprehensive waste management toward community-based zero waste AIP Conference Proceedings 1855, 040011 (2017) Abstract. In recent years, rising worldwide plastic consumption led to the generation of increasing amounts of plastic waste and to the awareness of the importance of its management. In that framework, the present work describes how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and economic assessment methodologies can be used for evaluating environmental and economic impacts of alternative plastic waste management systems. The literature on LCA of plastic waste management systems is vast and the results reported are generally consistent, showing that recycling has the lowest environmental impact on Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Total Energy Use (TEU) impacts. On the other hand, the literature addressing the economic assessment of plastic waste, namely the various End-of-Life (EoL) treatments, is rather limited.Other methodologies, such as integration of LCA and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) of plastic products, are almost never addressed. In any case, the overarching conclusion is that plastic materials usually have environmental and economic advantages over conventional materials throughout their Life Cycle, with or without consideration of the EoL stage.

Solutions and Integrated Strategies for the Control and Mitigation of Plastic and Microplastic Pollution

“…Recycling plastics, especially originating from consumer waste, still is limited by (a) high cost of recycling process compared to the low-cost of virgin plastics [33]; (b) degradation and contamination of plastics that limits its uses and number of recycling cycles [39,108]; and (c) low recyclability of some plastic products such as textiles, flexible packaging, or laminated plastics [37,102]. Recycling of plastics is usually not economically feasible but may generate economic returns in closed-loop systems [109,110]. Conversely, manufacturers need a constant supply of raw materials of standard quality—sometimes hard to achieve with recycled plastic.…”

“…Considering the environmental impacts, recycling is the preferred method of waste management [110,111,112,113,114]. For example, recycling PET and PE only require half the energy necessary to produce virgin polymers [111].…”

Technology advancing polymers and polymer composites towards sustainability: A review

“…Research investigating the benefits from recycling with respect to environmental considerations (energy costs and savings) can identify the full value of recycling [45,46,47]. For composite waste, several studies have been published focussing on mechanical recycling [48,49] and a comparison of mechanical recycling and chemical recycling [50].…”

Study of the Technical Feasibility of the Use of Polypropylene Residue in Composites for Automotive Industry

“…In 2015, only 9% of plastics produced worldwide were recycled, 12% incinerated and the rest buried in landfills [9]. Recycling causes less environmental impact, as reported by Bernardo et al [10], who assessed recycling in terms of global warming and total energy use, concluding that plastic materials generally display environmental and economic advantages over conventional materials throughout their life cycle, from raw material extraction to synthesis, transformation, transport, use, recovery and destination. Duval and Maclean [11] also found a decline in greenhouse gas emissions and energy required during recycling [12].…”