Abstract
Plastics are a challenge for the circular economy due to their overall low recycling rate and high dependency on primary resources. This study analyzes the EU demand for poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) packaging from 2020 to 2030 and quantifies the potential environmental and societal savings by changing the waste management and consumption patterns compared with business-as-usual practices. The results of the life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing show that a maximum of 38 Mt of CO2-eq and 34 kt of PM2.5-eq could be saved with a more efficient waste management system and a robust secondary material market while also avoiding 8.3 billion EUR2019 in societal costs (cumulative 2020-2030). However, limiting annual PET consumption growth appears to have a similar profound effect on improving the efficiency of waste management systems: 35 Mt of CO2-eq, 31 kt of PM2.5-eq, and 25 billion MEUR2019 societal costs could be saved, simply by keeping EU consumption of PET constant.
Highlights
The development of plastics has progressed rapidly
We modeled three different recycling processes depending on the desired output of recycling: if the secondary material was used in polyester and strapping manufacturing, the plastic bales had to be sorted, washed, and shredded obtaining poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) flakes; if the target was PET tray manufacturing, an additional extrusion step was added to produce food-grade PET granules; if the target was PET bottle manufacturing, the extrusion was followed by solid-state polymerization (SSP) supplying food-grade granules with increased molecular weight
We modeled and compared the BAU with eight different future waste management alternatives: (I) High collection rate for bottles The collection rate for bottles gradually increases from 59.4% in the BAU to 77% in 2025 and to 90% in 2029, as expressed in the European Union (EU) Directive 2019/904,27 by incrementing the percentage of bottles collected via deposit systems from 23% in the BAU to 100% in 2029
Summary
The first synthetic material was invented in 1855,1 in 1963 we were already living in the “Age of Plastics”,2 and production increased from 1.5 Mt in 1950 to 348 Mt in 2017.3 Currently, the petrochemical sector accounts only for 14% of global daily oil consumption,[4] but it will account for more than 30% of the growth in oil demand in 2030 and almost 50% in 20505 due to the decreased oil demand in the energy sector. Plastics have been defined both as a “miraculous substance”[6] and one of the symbols of the negative anthropogenic impacts on the environment due to the high quantities found in many ecosystems[7,8] aligned with their low overall recycling rate and low degradability under natural conditions. At the same time, closed-loop recycling of plastic was promoted as a more environmentally friendly option than open-loop recycling
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