Integrating High-Resolution Material Flow Data into the Environmental Assessment of Waste Management System Scenarios: The Case of Plastic Packaging in Austria.

The environmental performance of the waste management system of plastic packaging in Austria was assessed using a combination of high-resolution material flows and input-dependent life cycle inventory data. These data were used to evaluate different configurations of the waste management system, reflecting the system structure as it was in 1994 in Austria and still is in some of the new EU member states, as well as a situation achieving the increased circular economy targets to be met by 2030. For the latter, two options, namely single-polymer recycling and mixed-polymer recycling, were investigated. The results showed that the status quo achieves net benefits for 15 out of 16 impact categories evaluated. Regarding the alternative scenarios, for most impact categories these benefits increased with increasing recycling rates, although for four impact categories the highest net benefit was achieved by the status quo. For many impact categories the marginal environmental benefit decreased at higher recycling rates, indicating that there is an environmentally optimal recycling rate below 100%. The results also highlight the importance of high-quality single-polymer plastics recycling from an environmental perspective because utilizing mixed polymer recycling to achieve circular economy targets would result in lower environmental benefits than the status quo.

Determining the amount of waste plastics in the feed of Austrian waste-to-energy facilities.

Although thermal recovery of waste plastics is widely practiced in many European countries, reliable information on the amount of waste plastics in the feed of waste-to-energy plants is rare. In most cases the amount of plastics present in commingled waste, such as municipal solid waste, commercial, or industrial waste, is estimated based on a few waste sorting campaigns, which are of limited significance with regard to the characterisation of plastic flows. In the present study, an alternative approach, the so-called Balance Method, is used to determine the total amount of plastics thermally recovered in Austria's waste incineration facilities in 2014. The results indicate that the plastics content in the waste feed may vary considerably among different plants but also over time. Monthly averages determined range between 8 and 26 wt% of waste plastics. The study reveals an average waste plastics content in the feed of Austria's waste-to-energy plants of 16.5 wt%, which is considerably above findings from sorting campaigns conducted in Austria. In total, about 385 kt of waste plastics were thermally recovered in all Austrian waste-to-energy plants in 2014, which equals to 45 kg plastics cap-1. In addition, the amount of plastics co-combusted in industrial plants yields a total thermal utilisation rate of 70 kg cap-1 a-1 for Austria. This is significantly above published rates, for example, in Germany reported rates for 2013 are in the range of only 40 kg of waste plastics combusted per capita.

Material efficiency to measure the environmental performance of waste management systems: A case study on PET bottle recycling in Austria, Germany and Serbia.

Material efficiency measures, such as recycling rates, are often used to set circular economy targets to achieve higher resource efficiency and lower environmental impact. The aim of this study was to identify material efficiency indicators suitable to reflect the environmental performance of waste and recycling systems using PET bottle waste management in three European countries with diverse waste management structures and recycling performance levels. Material flow analysis and life cycle assessment were performed to assess the material efficiency and environmental impacts of each system as a basis to analyze the relation between these two dimensions. PET bottle waste generation was 5.4 kg/person and year (pa) in Austria in 2013, 6.0 kg/pa in Germany in 2017 and 6.9 kg/pa in Serbia in 2015. Out of this waste flow 41%, 91%, and 11% were directed into PET recyclate in Austria, Germany and Serbia, respectively. For all systems, higher material efficiency translated into lower environmental impact and vice versa. However, linear regression analysis between different material efficiency indicators and environmental impacts showed that indicators targeted at actual recycling, specifically at closed loop, were better suited to reflect environmental performance than input-based indicators. Therefore, whenever data are available, output-based quality-related indicators should be used to measure the material efficiency of waste and resource systems because they correlate best with the goals of increasing resource efficiency and decreasing environmental impacts.

Circular economy of plastic packaging: Current practice and perspectives in Austria.

Plastics, especially from packaging, have gained increasing attention in waste management, driving many policy initiatives to improve the circularity of these materials in the economy to increase resource efficiency. In this context, the EU has proposed increasing targets to encourage the recycling of (plastic) packaging. To accurately calculate the recycling rates, detailed information on the flows of plastic packaging is needed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the waste management system for plastic packaging in Austria in 2013 using material flow analysis, taking into account the used product types and the polymer composition. The results show that 300,000 ±â€¯3% t/a (35 kg/cap·a) of waste plastic packaging were produced, mainly composed of large and small films and small hollow bodies, including PET bottles. Correspondingly, the polymer composition of the waste stream was dominated by LDPE (46% ±â€¯6%), PET (19% ±â€¯4%) and PP (14% ±â€¯6%). 58% ±â€¯3% was collected separately, and regarding the final treatment, 26% ±â€¯7% of the total waste stream was recovered as re-granulates, whereas the rest was thermally recovered in waste-to-energy plants (40% ±â€¯3%) and the cement industry (33% ±â€¯6%). The targets set by the EU and Austria were reached comfortably, although to reach the proposed future target major technological steps regarding collection and sorting will be needed. However, the current calculation point of the targets, i.e. on the input side of the recycling plant, is not deemed to be fully in line with the overall objective of the circular economy, namely to keep materials in the economy and prevent losses. It is therefore recommended that the targets be calculated with respect to the actual output of the recycling process, provided that the quality of the output products is maintained, to accurately assess the performance of the waste management system.