Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) Packaging Management Strategies in the EU

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.

Effects of Circularity Interventions in the European Plastic Packaging Sector

“…savings by recycling improvements alone. We also confirm an aspect reported by Bassi et al 24 for the EU PET system, specifically that increasing consumption with efficient waste management does not necessarily result in lower environmental impacts compared to lower consumption and weak recycling. As can be seen in Figure 3, the targets scenario decreased emissions roughly equivalent to the reference with packaging intensity reduction.…”

Cellulose-based natural nanofibers for fresh produce packaging: current status, sustainability and future outlook

“…95,96 Despite being lightweight, effective, and providing adequate product protection, multilayer plastic packaging is typically not recyclable. 97 Fig. 9 represents the three sustainability factors for food packaging.…”

Waste PET upcycling to conductive carbon-based composite through laser-assisted carbonization of UiO-66

“…We anticipate further studies using PET@LB-UiO-66 for desalination, vaporisation, and catalysis. 34,66…”

“…In addition to photothermal performance, other factors such as stability, mechanical integrity, and cost should also be considered for practical applications. 66 The composite formed from PET and impregnated graphene/ZrC should exhibit significant mechanical stability against abrasion and scratching. To evaluate the mechanical resilience of the material, we performed an abrasion test in a homemade vessel filled with sand for 24 h (Fig.…”

“…The developed methodology has a reasonable potential for further utilisation of PET on a large scale, considering the amount of waste PET. 67,68 For the scalability study, we repeated the procedure for the sample with a 5 cm 2 area (five times more than the common substrate). An optical image of the homogeneously carbonised materials is shown in Fig.…”