4. Thermopress compressing method was carried out by a device
that is able to compress PET bottles in one fifth of the original
volume using electricity as input (Maty as, 2008 ). This technology
was modelled both as private (at home) and public bottle
treatment in supermarkets.
An attempt was also made toward estimating the potential advantages
of refill bottles. Equation (1) was used to estimate the
amount of new refillable bottles depending on distinct parameters.
It was the basis of a parameter variation between 1 and 20 refills.
After the given number of refill as well as in case of breakage or
refuse of bottles the packaging material was recycled by the related
EoL process of the model.
Y ¼ ðn 1Þ Bnew þ
B
n (1)
Where,
Y ¼ required number of new bottles made from primary
resources
n ¼ number of refilling
B ¼ amount of the bottles needed to pack the drink (pcs) (in
present case 1000 L beverage undefined)
Bnew ¼ number of new bottles had to re-produced due to
breakage other rejection or inefficient collection.
Further description can be found in the Supplementary material
(see Equations S1eS4)
The delivery and collection of refillable bottles were assumed to
be transported by the same vehicle. The LCA model based on fixed
distances of transport scenarios (see Tables S2 and S3). The delivery
route also had 250 km fixed distance for distribution of beverages
and for collection of empty refillable bottles as well as the collection
system also operated with fixed distances. However, the transport
distance as a variable parameter may remarkably effect the results
(Cleary, 2013; Detzel and Monckert, 2009 € ).
The system boundaries of the waste treatment covered the
recycling of selective collected packaging into secondary materials.
Furthermore, incineration or landfill of bulky collected waste were
also included. The recycling system produced the following secondary
materials: secondary aluminium, secondary PET-granulate
(re-granulate e rPET), secondary glass, recycled paper, recycled