The growing production of plastic materials causes a significant waste flow for which the environmental implications are often debated. Because of this important issue, this study focused on the environmental advantages of two recycled plastic packages, one recyclable after use and one not, using the LCA approach. The results indicate that the choice of a comparative LCA application is an effective solution to investigate how much an innovative recyclable package is environmentally preferable than an alternative package that is not recyclable.
The sensitivity analysis conducted helped to understand the effect of the methodological choices on the outcomes and confirmed that the assumptions made do not change the relative rank order, with nearly all categories preferring the recyclable product despite the additive composition, the end-of-life scenarios and the end-of-life recycling allocation. However, the employment of a different assessment method led to an opposite relative rank order with regard to specific categories such as carcinogens and terrestrial ecotoxicity.
For each package analysed, the uncertainty analysis conducted led to the identification of the impact categories in which the environmental advantages of the PET tray over the multilayer tray is clear and of the other categories in which this benefit can be considered absent, namely, terrestrial ecotoxicity and natural land transformation.
It should be noted that in this study, the main assumptions concern the end-of-life scenarios. These assumptions could be improved to verify whether, in other cases, the preference rank order between the two analysed packages changes and the investigation of a different electricity grid mix of other countries should be employed to highlight the impacts associated with both trays processed elsewhere in Europe