End of life scenario

The DfE partnership will develop information to improve the understanding of the environmental and human health impacts of new and current materials that can be used to meet the fire safety requirements for circuit boards. Project partners include electronics manufacturers, component and board manufacturers, chemical companies, trade associations, environmental groups, universities and governments. The project will consider environmental and human health impacts that can occur throughout the life cycle of a material, from development and manufacture, through product use and end of life of the material or product. Stakeholders have expressed a particular interest in understanding the combustion products that could be formed during certain end of life scenarios. The list of active partners includes ... 

Thus, we can see that the studies published on bioplastics generally look at different impact categories, and rarely with the same computational methods. In addition, we need to take account of the fact that the goals and scopes of the studies are also variable, as are the functional units defined (simple lifecycle inventories as well as complete LCAs can be fonnd some studies are performed from cradle to factory gate for pellets or finished products, whereas other studies also integrate one or more end-of-life scenarios). In such conditions, it is understandable that it is not easy to write a coherent summary of publications relating to LCA of bioplastics in order to provide a simple response to the question Are bioplastics green plastics ... 

Figure 6.9. Comparison of environmental impacts of three end-of-life scenarios for three bioplastics [HER 11]...

FU2 lifecycle of a material as defined in Figure 7.1 (material, shaping processes, transport and end of life). The respective masses of the different materials for FU2 are given in Table 7.2. The masses of the bottle with the different types of plastics are considered to be identical (within 1 g). The data for the end-of-life scenario (household waste, in France) are taken from a study conducted by ADEME in 2009. 

It should be noted that biodegradation/composting represents only one end-of-life scenario for these materials. As is hue of most polymers, they ate, of course, recyclable. 

The ecological footprint of plastics can be reduced by decreasing the amount of plastic waste. It is possible to take action at several different levels, as Figure 10.5 shows. This pyramid representation shows that the earlier we intervene in the thought process about waste, the more effective that intervention can be - herein lies the cmx of the advantage to the eco-design technique outlined in this book (see Chapter 7). It is desirable to take an end-of-life scenario into consideration from the very moment when we choose the material to make a plastic article. 

Yet in practice, the boundary between the two classes is not quite so clear, because different combinations of these materials are possible. Indeed, we can veiy easily combine a cellulose biomatrix with biofibers of cellulose [SOY 09], biofillers with a recycled matrix [ADH 08], recycled fillers with a recycled matrix [ZRI07], or two or more recycled matrices with one another [GRI05]. All these combinations of ecoplastics may potentially be advantageous, but cioss-bio/recycled solutions pose the problem of choosing their end-of-life scenario recycling or composting, or finally incineration ... 

Table 11.1. End-of-life scenarios for some common plastics...

Apparel in general is reused until the end of its life in the sense that after the first user, it is donated or sold to a second user. In most Asian countries, it is still common that old textile garments are used by siblings (clothes of older ones in the family are then worn by the younger ones until they are tom). This is a scenario of reuse, which normally appears in end-of-life scenarios in LCA. This is not, however, the cmx of that which is dealt with in this chapter. 

The end-of-life scenario contributed 1—4% of the GWP of the Socks and Garment. Breakdown in anaerobic landfill resulted in higher emissions due to some carbon being released as methane. 

Eighty-six percent of cotton bags were assumed to be landfilled and 14% were incinerated, and the end-of-life scenarios were modelled with the aid of WRATE (LCA software developed by the Environment Agency). 

This has also been proven in several studies that compare the environmental impacts of different end-of-life scenarios of waste treatment for most of the cases, they show that landfilling is the least preferred option (e.g. Finnveden et al., 2005 Glew et al., 2012 Lanoe et al., 2013). 

Figure 16.1 Comparison of different end-of-life scenarios of cotton T-shirts and the potential saving of kg CO2 equivalent per tonne textiles during the life cycle (Fisher et al., 2011 Farrant, 2008 Morley et al., 2009).

Glew, D., Stringer, L.C., Acquaye, A.A., Mcqueen-Mason, S., 2012. How do end of life scenarios influence the environmental impact of product supply chains Comparing biomaterial and petrochemical products. Journal of Cleaner Production 29-30, 122—131. 

LCA can be used to determine the environmental effects of various end-of-life scenarios for plastic waste. A review of a number of LCAs found that when single polymer plastic waste fractions with little orgaiuc contamination are recycled, and replace virgin plastic at a 1 1 ratio, mechanical recycling has the lower environmental burden than incineration of MSW (Lazarevic et al. 2010). 

The LCA analysis included an eco-efflciency portfolio for each plastic part compared with a cost analysis. Plastics can be recovered as recycled plastics, used for energy source in a furnace, or sent to the landfills. The end-of-life scenarios included landfill, municipal incineration, cement kiln, blast fiimace, syngas production, and mechanical recycling. 

The LCA study evaluated the eco-environment portfolio and costs of sending the plastic waste to one of the end-of-life scenarios. The environmental burdens included considerations for 10 different environmental indicators including the following ... 

End-of-life scenario in the LCA includes 23.5% of the clamshells were sent to incineration and 76.5% of the clamshells were sent to landfill operations. 

TABLE 73 LCA of 1000 Clamshells with Transportation Including End-of-Life Scenarios ... 

Eive percent of the PLA clamshells are composted as an end-of-life scenario. 

End of Life Scenarios of Biodegradable Polymers 3.2.1 Biodegradation End Products... 

The EDIT programme has already anticipated international requirements. It will add filters to its SIGMA data to detect whether any of the substances contained in the material will make the component fail to meet national or international regulations and/or car manufacturers requirements in worldwide markets. The French project team is developing an additional tool that would enable tier one suppliers to draw up end-of-life scenarios. They could Ihen anticipate whether the material would lend itself to mechanical recycling or whether incineration for energy recovery would be preferable. 

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