End-of-Life Options for Bio-Based Plastics in a Circular Economy—Status Quo and Potential from a Life Cycle Assessment Perspective

Abstract

The bio-based plastic market is forecast to grow in the next years. With a growing market share and product range, the implementation of circular thinking is becoming more and more important also for bio-based plastics to enable a sound circular economy for these group of plastics. Therefore, it is important to assess the environmental performance for different end-of-life options of bio-based plastics from an early stage on. This review presents a comprehensive overview on the current status quo of different end-of-life options for bio-based plastics from an environmental perspective. Based on the status quo and the corresponding impact assessment results, the global plastic demand as well as the technical substitution potential of bio-based plastics, the environmental saving potential in case of the different end-of-life options was calculated. The review shows that there is a focus on polylactic acid (PLA) regarding end-of-life assessment, with studies covering all end-of-life options. The focus of the impact assessment has been set on global warming potential (GWP). With respect to GWP, the analysis of a future global potential of PLA showed, for mechanical recycling, the highest saving potential with 94.1 Mio. t CO2-eq. per year in comparison to virgin material.

Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis of Resource Recovery from Waste Management Systems in a Circular Economy Perspective Key Findings from This Special Issue

“…Spierling et al [30] highlighted the importance of assessing the environmental profile of different end-of-life options of bio-based plastics from the early design on, to contribute to enabling sound CE models in such a widely used group of plastics. Tua et al [11] contributed to understanding that packaging reuse is, overall, an environmentally and economically effective practice to maintain the value of products as long as possible, in compliance with CE principles.…”

“…In all contributions, the authors explored several relevant aspects connected with this SI's research theme, so enriching the current state-of-the-art in the field of sustainable waste recovery systems for production of value-added commodities under a CE perspective. Some of the sectors where CE can be beneficial for enhancement of their sustainability performance were explored in this SI's paper collection: post-use plastics end-of-life [11,30]; waste heat recovery [31]; waste management [32,33]; electrics and electronics [34]; and olive oil [35].…”

“…-Midpoint Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) focussed upon a single Environmental Indicator (EI), as done by Spierling et al [30]; -Midpoint LCA of multiple EIs [11]; -Endpoint LCA of multiple EIs extended to other relevant issues [31]; -Life-cycle multicriteria analysis as a decision support tool [32]; -Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis combined with other environmental assessment methodologies [33]; -Questionnaire-based investigation [34]; -Questionnaire-based investigation combined with a SWOT analysis [35].…”

“…In their study, Spierling et al [30] carried out a comprehensive review of the current status of end-of-life options for bio-based plastics using the Global Warming Potential (GWP) as an environmental indicator. The review highlighted that a lot of attention is cur-rently given to Poly-lactic Acid (PLA), and all feasible end-of-life options are investigated in the literature.…”

“…Plastics are a group of versatile polymeric materials [30] that are increasingly dominating the market, as they lend themselves to application in a wide range of sectors-the leader amongst them is packaging. In this sector, recently there has been an upsurge in the interest for returnable packages from various industrial end-users like food and beverages, consumer goods and several others [11].…”