Abstract
PurposeMarine litter, mostly plastics, is a growing environmental problem. Environmental decision makers are beginning to take actions and implement regulations that aim to reduce plastic use and waste mismanagement. Nevertheless, life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool commonly used to assist environmental decision making, does not yet allow for considering the consequences of plastic waste leaked into the environment. This limits the application of LCA as a tool for highlighting potential tradeoffs between impact categories and the relative significance of their contribution on a specific Areas of Protection (AoP). A coordinated research effort to cover various parts of the marine litter impact pathway is required to ultimately produce characterisation factors that can cover this research gap. Here, we design a consistent and comprehensive framework for modelling plastic litter impact pathways in LCIA models. This framework is to support such coordinated research progress towards the development of harmonized pathways to account for impacts of plastic litter, specifically to the marine environment. The framework includes an overview of life cycle inventory requirements (leakage to the environment; a focus of other research efforts), and a detailed description of possible marine litter impact pathways, modelling approaches and data(-type) requirements. We focus on marine plastic litter and consider the potential contribution of different impact pathways to overall damage in the main operational AoPs, as well as recently proposed ones. Results and conclusionsThe proposed framework links inventory data in terms of kg plastic leaked to a specified environmental compartment (air, terrestrial, freshwater, marine) to six AoPs: ecosystem quality, human health, socio-economic assets, ecosystem services, natural heritage and cultural heritage. The fate modelling step, which includes transportation, fragmentation and degradation processes, is common to all included impact pathways. Exposure and effect modelling steps differentiate between at least six exposure pathways, e.g. inhalation, ingestion, entanglement, invasive species rafting, accumulation, and smothering, that potentially compromise sensitive receptors, such as ecosystems, humans, and manmade structures. The framework includes both existing, e.g. human toxicity and ecotoxicity, and proposed new impact categories, e.g. physical effect on biota, and can be used as a basis for coordinating harmonized research efforts.
Highlights
In life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), a species could be considered potentially affected at the environmental plastic litter con centration that results in a defined rate of entanglement events with specific detrimental organismal consequences occurring within an exposed population
The framework we present in this manuscript provides an overview of modelling steps and considerations for the development of charac terisation factors for plastic litter impacts
Our qualitative assessment of the literature indicates that elements of fate modelling, transport processes within the marine compartment, together with effect modelling related to micro plastic ingestion and to entanglement in macroplastic, have to date received most research attention
Summary
Anthropogenic litter is accumulating in the marine environment and is associated with impacts on marine biodiversity (Li et al, 2016). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for supporting environmental decision making that is designed to allow for the identification of these potential trade-offs between product alternatives e.g. a single use plastic cup versus a paper one, looking at a broad set of impacts on human health and ecosystems such as climate change, human and ecotoxicity, eutrophication and acidification. Whilst LCA is widely used in support of decision making, approaches for considering a number of existing marine impacts in LCA methods remain generally lacking (Woods et al, 2016; Ziegler et al, 2016) This absence of assessment methods has become apparent for marine plastic.
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