Further work should be done if land use change and waste collection steps have to be considered.
However, this preliminary study shows that chemical recycling of PLA, which was already shown to
have an environmental benefit as an end-of-life scenario, is also beneficial when considered as a LA
production process. According to Vink [3], the steps leading to LA from corn growing account for about
60% of fossil energy use in the life cycle of first generation PLA. When the impact of PLA (in the
EcoInvent database) is calculated as a single score using Eco-indicator 99, it can be seen that the
corn accounts for 40% of the global impact of the PLA granulate at plant. It is hence obvious that
reducing the impact of the LA production stages in PLA production can be meaningful and using the
LOOPLA technology for producing second generation PLA could therefore enhance significantly the
overall environmental sustainability of PLA. This benefit increases when the impact of waste collection
and selection is minimized (this impact is not considered in Figure 2).