Schulte, A.; Kampmann, B.; Galafton, C. Measuring the Circularity and Impact Reduction Potential of Post-Industrial and Post-Consumer Recycled Plastics. Sustainability2023, 15, 12242.
Schulte, A.; Kampmann, B.; Galafton, C. Measuring the Circularity and Impact Reduction Potential of Post-Industrial and Post-Consumer Recycled Plastics. Sustainability 2023, 15, 12242.
Schulte, A.; Kampmann, B.; Galafton, C. Measuring the Circularity and Impact Reduction Potential of Post-Industrial and Post-Consumer Recycled Plastics. Sustainability2023, 15, 12242.
Schulte, A.; Kampmann, B.; Galafton, C. Measuring the Circularity and Impact Reduction Potential of Post-Industrial and Post-Consumer Recycled Plastics. Sustainability 2023, 15, 12242.
Abstract
Post-industrial recycling (PIR) and post-consumer recycling (PCR) are measures to sustain re-sources by improving materials’ circularity and sustainability. Currently, circularity is mostly measured as the degree of reutilization of a material from 0 to 100 % at product or company lev-el. This lacks in assessing the resources’ usage over multiple product life cycles. Therefore, we propose to assess circularity as (i) the frequency resources are used in products (effective circu-larity eC) and (ii) a vehicle to reduce virgin resource use and environmental impacts (environ-mentally efficient circularity eeC). Besides, to compare the environmental impacts of using recy-cled materials from PIR or PCR, we analyse their impact reduction potential (IRP) indicating the environmental benefits of recycling in relation to virgin material put onto the market. We demonstrate the suggested indicators for a case study material: polypropylene. For this polymer type, the eC ranges between 0.93 and 9.08 uses of the resource on average depending on collec-tion, sorting, and recycling rates. Likewise, the eeC ranges between 0.31 and 1.50 uses per kg of CO2 equivalents emitted. PCR has a higher IRP regarding climate change impacts than PIR in all analysed scenarios. The results reveal the relevance of PCR and PIR beyond the product life cycle.
Keywords
Life cycle assessment; LCA; Circular Economy; Indicator; Polypropylene; Recycling; global warming impact; climate change; efficiency; effectiveness; PCR; PIR; environmental assessment
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
