Quality of recycling: Urgent and undefined

Tonini, Davide; Albizzati, Paola Federica; Caro, Dario; Meester, Steven De; Garbarino, Elena; Blengini, Gian Andrea

doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2022.04.037

Cited by 52 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One side of the increasing complexity and pressure for the plastics industry comes from European legislation through increased recycling targets, as mentioned in the section above. Simultaneously, clear guidance and definitions around recyclability, recycling, recycling technologies, and quality criteria are missing [ 20 ]. For example, food contact material (FCM) obtained from recyclates is a legally very complex topic in European law [ 21 ].…”

Section: Complexity In Plastics Recycling and Scopementioning

confidence: 99%

Information-Based Plastic Material Tracking for Circular Economy—A Review

Rumetshofer

Fischer

2023

Polymers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

At the moment, it looks like the plastics recycling industry is skimming only low-hanging fruits of its business. To reach intended targets, a greater effort and disruptive innovations are necessary. Physical- or digital-information-based solutions for tracking plastic material can support the circular economy and help to overcome hurdles along the value chain. In this paper, the scientific literature and initiatives in four different technology areas for information-based tracking solutions are reviewed and analyzed. Physical markers can improve sorting efficiencies on short notice but adhere some technical difficulties. Blockchain as a new concept promises high transparency and security, with the drawbacks of energy-intense verification and technical uncertainties. As a third group, the digital product passport claims a combination of physical and digital solutions with open questions on data ownership. The fourth and last group includes standards and certification systems that aim for maximum consensus with slow market implementation. To enable an integrated circular economy of plastics, plastic material tracking solutions must experience broad acceptance by all players along the value chain in the plastics industry and they should additionally be supported by society.

show abstract

Section: Complexity In Plastics Recycling and Scopementioning

confidence: 99%

Information-Based Plastic Material Tracking for Circular Economy—A Review

Rumetshofer

Fischer

2023

Polymers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Even if recent progress were done to assess impacts of resources dissipation, none of these methods allows yet to consider in a consistent way the resources use in the technosphere (and their substitutability for some services), their dissipation, the degradation of their quality and the way all those mechanisms together influence the deficit of services -even though these mechanisms are well documented in the literature (Gerst and Graedel 2008;Nakajima et al 2010;Nakamura et al 2012;Ciacci et al 2015Ciacci et al , 2016Reijnders 2016;Daehn et al 2017;Watari and Yokoi 2021;Tonini et al 2022).…”

Section: Main Features: How Are Resource Services Impacted?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An instrumental value-based framework for assessing the damages of abiotic resources use in life cycle assessment

Greffe¹,

Margni

Bulle³

2022

Int J Life Cycle Assess

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Introduction & literature review. Abiotic resources are extensively used in industrialised societies to deliver multiple services that contribute to human wellbeing. Their increased extraction and use can potentially reduce their accessibility, increase competition among users and ultimately lead to a deficit of those services. Life cycle assessment is a relevant tool to assess the potential damages of dissipating natural resources. Building on the general consensus recommending evaluating the damages on the instrumental value of resources to humans in order to assess the consequences of ressources dissipation, this research work proposes a novel conceptual framework to assess the potential loss of services provided by abiotic resources, which when facing unmet demand, can lead to a deficit to human users and have consequences on human wellbeing. Results.A framework is proposed to describe the mechanisms that link human intervention on the resources in the accessible stock to competition among users. Users facing the deficit of resource services are assumed to have to pay to recover the services, using backup technologies. The mechanisms that are proposed to be characterized are dissipation and degradation. Data needed to later operationalize the framework for abiotic resources are identified. It also proposes a framework at the life cycle inventory level to harmonize life cycle inventories with the current impact assessment framework to fully characterize impacts on resource services. It regards ensuring mass balances of elements between inputs and outputs of life cycle inventory datasets as well as including the functionality of resource flows. Discussion and Conclusions.The framework provides recommendations for the development of operational life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods for resource services deficit assessment. It establishes the impact pathway to damage on the area of protection "Resource Services", data needed to feed the model and recommendations to improve the current state of life cycle inventories to be harmonized with the LCIA framework.

show abstract

“…From the MFA model results, the potential use of recycled plastic in different markets and applications is investigated. However, it is challenging to project future market uptake of recycled plastic production because of i) different quality of recycled plastic, ii) a breadth of technical requirements of various applications, and ii) market saturation of some applications (Demets et al, 2020;Huysveld et al, 2022;Tonini et al, 2022). In this study, two assumptions are considered to quantify the potential recycled plastic (in kt) and recycled content (in%) availability in 2030.…”

Section: Estimation Of the Recycled Content Availability In 2030mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…because of the difficulty to predict future market uptake (incl. potential market share of the intended applications) and the quality of recycling (Huysveld et al, 2022;Tonini et al, 2022;Hestin et al, 2017) at the time of writing the manuscript. Thus, it should be seen as a maximum uptake under optimal conditions and it is likely that the actual uptake will be lower.…”

Section: Estimation Of the Recycled Content Availability In 2030mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To further improve the capabilities of the developed MFA model, a more robust investigation should be carried out by taking into consideration not only the waste streams' characteristics but also the quality of the secondary products to better understand their potential market applications. Evaluation of quality includes legal aspects to use recycled plastics in certain application (e.g., as food contact material), technical characteristics of recycled plastic to meet market specification (e.g., processability of recycled plastics), and consider potential market uptake (i.e., to avoid market saturation that will reduce the uptake of recycled plastic) (Huysveld et al, 2022;Tonini et al, 2022). A study from De Tandt et al (2021) illustrates the importance to consider legislative requirements for the use of mechanical recycled plastic especially as food contact material.…”

Section: Limitations Of the Study And Future Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation