Analyzing the relationship between product waste footprints and environmental damage – A life cycle analysis of 1,400+ products

Abstract

A major problem for the circular economy is monitoring improvements in environmental sustainability. Measuring how much waste reduction efforts contribute to the decrease of environmental impact is difficult, because knowledge on whether life cycle waste amounts correlate with environmental damage is limited. In this article, product waste footprints are used to explore structural similarities and differences in associations with environmental damage. Using the waste flows linked to the production system of 1487 reference products from the Ecoinvent database, we found significant regression equations with R2 of 0.75–0.89 between product waste footprints and potential impact on ecosystem diversity, human health and resource availability using log-transformed variables. For each 1 % increase in solid waste, potential impact on the environment increased by 0.75–0.84 %. This strong association between pre-consumer waste and environmental damage is particularly important for advocating for circular economy efforts at the point of consumption, where life cycle waste is invisible to consumers.