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Assessing scaling effects of circular economy strategies: A case study on plastic bottle closed-loop recycling in the USA PET market
Resources, Conservation and Recycling ( IF 13.2 ) Pub Date : 2020-07-07 , DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105013
Geoffrey Lonca , Pascal Lesage , Guillaume Majeau-Bettez , Sophie Bernard , Manuele Margni

The Circular Economy (CE) movement is inspiring new governmental policies along with company strategies. Thisled to the emergence of a plethora ofindicators to quantify the “circularity” of individual companies or products. Approaches behind theseindicators builds mainly on two implicit assumptions. The first is that closing material loops at product level leads to improvements in material efficiency for the economy as a whole. The second assumption is that maximizing material circularity contributes to mitigate environmental impacts. We test these two assumptions at different scales with a case study on the circularity of PETin the USA market. The Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) reveals that closing the material loops at the product level increasesmaterial circularityin one brand and in the USA plastic bottle marketbut not in the USA PET market as a whole. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results reveal that increasing closed loop recycling of PET bottlesis environmentally beneficial from product-level assessment scope. When expanding the scope to the whole PET market, recycling PET into film, fiber and sheet industrial sectors results being more material efficient and environmental preferable, unless the postconsumer reclamation rate is significantly improved. Thus, we demonstrate that adopting a systemic approach for CE assessment is essential ; instead of looking at one particular product and seeking the best circular case with respect to a specific material content, we suggest to looking at the whole set of products served by the specific material, and to seek the best material market-wide circular case.



中文翻译:

评估循环经济策略的规模效应:以美国PET市场中的塑料瓶闭环回收为例

循环经济(CE)运动正在激发新的政府政策以及公司战略。因此,出现了许多指标来量化单个公司或产品的“流通性”。这些指标背后的方法主要基于两个隐含假设。首先是,在产品层面上闭合物料循环可提高整个经济的物料效率。第二个假设是,最大化材料的圆形度有助于减轻环境影响。我们以美国市场上PET的流通性为例,对这两个假设进行了不同程度的检验。材料圆度指示器(MCI)显示,在一个产品级和在美国的塑料瓶市场上,关闭产品级别的材料环路会增加材料的圆度,但在整个美国的PET市场上却不会。生命周期评估(LCA)结果表明,提高PET瓶的闭环回收率在产品级评估范围内对环境有益。当将范围扩展到整个PET市场时,将PET回收到薄膜,纤维和片材工业领域的使用将带来更高的材料效率和环境可取性,除非大大提高了消费后的回收率。因此,我们证明采用系统方法进行CE评估是必不可少的;而不是查看一种特定的产品并针对特定的材料含量寻求最佳的圆形案例,

更新日期:2020-07-07
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