After service life, packaging has to be recovered. Recycling
depends on the inherent characteristics of the packaging material
such as recyclability or compostability and the available
waste management systems in the regions where the washing
machines were delivered. Washing machine distribution data
were matched with the corresponding country's statistical data
(see Section 2.3) on MSW management (Eurostat, 2010), in order
to define realistic scenarios on the EoL of EPS packaging and the
compostable packaging. This allowed an estimate of the expected
real fate of both packaging systems by reducing the
number of assumptions. For the prototype, thanks to its compostability
(Alcaraz et al., 2013), it was assumed that it would be
disposed with the bio-waste produced at household level and
recovered through a composting process (i.e. 41.3% of the waste
stream).