Economic and environmental optimisation of mixed plastic waste supply chains in Northern Italy comparing incineration and pyrolysis technologies

Abstract

In the quest for sustainable plastic waste management, understanding economic and environmental implications enables optimal selection of treatment technologies. This study presents a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming framework to optimise the supply chain for mixed plastic waste in Northern Italy. Two technologies are considered: incineration and pyrolysis. Results offer quantitative insights into economic and environmental performance, balancing trade-offs between maximising gross profit and minimising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Economic optimisation favours incineration for treating mixed plastic waste, resulting in the highest gross profit of 115 M€ per year, and the highest net GHG emissions of about 680 kt CO2eq per year. When the aim is environmental optimisation, pyrolysis is preferred due to its lower GHG emissions of 387 kt of CO2eq per year and yielding a gross profit of 54 M€ per year. Trade-off Pareto optimal solutions were analysed to identify reasonable trade-off configurations between the two objectives.