Operational framework to quantify ‘quality of recycling’ across different material types

High-quality recycling of materials is needed to advance the transition to a circular economy. Many pledges and legislations are putting recycling targets forward without clearly defining the quality of recycling. Striving to close this gap, the current work presents an operational framework to quantify quality of recycling. The framework consists of three dimensions, namely the Total Substitution Potential (TSP), the Long-Term in-Use Occupation (LTUO), and the Environmental Impact (EI). The TSP indicates to which extent a secondary material can substitute virgin material in different applications; the LTUO indicates how much of a certain material is still functional in society over a certain time horizon; and the EI is a measure for the environmental impact of a recycling process. The three dimensions are aggregated by plotting them in a distance-to target dimension. Illustrative examples show that closed-loop mechanical recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) bottles back to bottles has the highest quality of recycling, but that for PET trays, chemical recycling provides a higher quality of recycling. For glass recycling, re-melting of flat glass to flat glass has the highest quality. Thus, this paper puts forward an operational basis to quantify quality of recycling and, hence, to steer developments in the transition to a more circular economy for materials and resources.

ROOSEN Martijn;  TONINI Davide;  ALBIZZATI Paola Federica;  CARO Dario;  CRISTOBAL GARCIA Jorge;  SAPUTRA LASE Irdanto;  RAGAERT Kim;  DUMOULIN Ann;  DE MESTER Steven; 

2023-12-21

SCIENCE ALERT

JRC132892

1994-7887 (online),   

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c03023,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC132892,   

10.1021/acs.est.3c03023 (online),