Part 2: illustrative case studies
The European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy includes actions aimed at investigating and better understanding the lifecycle impacts of using alternative feedstocks for plastics production. The Joint Research Centre has thus elaborated a Life Cycle Assesment (LCA)-based method (the “Plastics LCA” method) to consistently evaluate the potential environmental impacts of plastic products relying on different feedstocks and derived materials. The method was built upon and fully conforming to the EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method, with the aim of enabling as much as possible consistent, robust, reproducible, transparent and verifiable LCA studies of plastic products at the EU level. The development was supported through a number of illustrative case studies, conducted to evaluate and demonstrate the applicability of the method, and to assess reliability of results. A participatory process was followed, involving interested stakeholders at different key steps. This report describes a selection of the originally developed case studies, which were revised and updated according to the final version of the Plastics LCA method, taking into account relevant comments from stakeholders. The main lessons learnt and bottlenecks are also discussed, and recommendations for improvement are provided. Overall, the case studies are expected to facilitate application of the procedural, methodological and modelling rules of the Plastics LCA method by companies and other interested users.
NESSI Simone;
SINKKO Taija;
BULGHERONI Claudia;
GARBARINO Elena;
GARCIA-GUTIERREZ Pelayo;
GIUNTOLI Jacopo;
KONTI Aikaterini;
ORVEILLON Glenn;
SANYE MENGUAL Esther;
TONINI Davide;
PANT Rana;
MARELLI Luisa;
ARDENTE Fulvio;
2022-08-16
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC127175
978-92-76-52958-3 (online),
978-92-76-52959-0 (print),
1831-9424 (online),
1018-5593 (print),
EUR 31085 EN,
OP KJ-NA-31085-EN-N (online),
OP KJ-NA-31085-EN-C (print),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC127175,
10.2760/655230 (online),
10.2760/234548 (print),
