TY  - JOUR
AU  - Meys, Raoul
AU  - Frick, Felicitas
AU  - Westhues, Stefan
AU  - Sternberg, André
AU  - Klankermayer, Jürgen
AU  - Bardow, André
TI  - Towards a circular economy for plastic packaging wastes – the environmental potential of chemical recycling
JO  - Resources, conservation and recycling
VL  - 162
SN  - 0921-3449
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - FZJ-2021-00520
SP  - 105010 -
PY  - 2020
AB  - Plastic packaging waste faces increasingly stringent sustainability targets such as recycling rates of 55% imposed by the European Commission. To realize the vision of a circular economy, chemical recycling is advocated as a large-scale avenue to decrease fossil resource depletion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this work, we develop a theoretical model for chemical recycling technologies assuming ideal performance. The theoretical model allows us to compute the minimal environmental impacts for chemical recycling technologies and compare them to real-case benchmark waste treatments. Thereby, we robustly identify chemical recycling technologies that will not result in environmental benefits, since their minimal environmental impacts are already higher than those of current benchmark waste treatments. In this way, we show that PET, HDPE, LDPE, PP and PS should not be recycled chemically to refinery feedstock or fuel products and rather be treated by mechanical recycling and energy recovery in cement kilns in order to reduce global warming impacts. In contrast, chemical recycling to monomers or value-added products could potentially reduce global warming impacts compared to all benchmark waste treatments by up to 4.3 kg CO2-eq per kg treated PET packaging waste. By analyzing 75 waste treatment scenarios for 5 environmental impacts, our analysis offers guidance to stakeholders involved in chemical recycling to identify the most promising as well as the least promising chemical recycling technologies.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000569614800006
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105010
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/889912
ER  -