Plastic plays a prominent role within circular economy, with many stakeholders promoting initiatives to increase plastic circularity during the manufacturing, use and end-of-life phases. Despite well-meant intentions, many initiatives are characterized by a lack of compliance with basic circular economy principles, implementation barriers, and limited effects on the intended long-term plastic circularity. This study provides a systematic evaluation framework for comparison of plastic initiatives, based on 17 criteria addressing key aspects of plastic circularity. A three-level likelihood ranking approach is applied to analyse the impact of 54 initiatives targeting plastic circularity in a European context. It was found that relatively few of these initiatives were readily implementable without considerable investments, e.g. in new waste management and recycling technologies, and changes in plastic production and product design. The results clearly suggest that current suggestions for circular economy initiatives targeting plastic may have limited effect and not lead to the intended impacts without the support of new regulations and change in plastic demand and consumption. The study stresses the importance of synergies and cooperation between stakeholders across the value chain to reach plastic circularity. The framework offers a consistent basis for decision-makers to identify critical barriers and enablers in relation to plastic circularity characteristics, but the approach may also be applied to other topic areas.

The recovery rate of construction and demolition waste (CDW) in the European Union (EU) is at 89 % and thus high relative to other waste streams. However, the relatively high figure can be misleading because it typically does not correspond to high-value material recovery but rather "poor" levels of circularity. From a life-cycle perspective, we assess the environmental impacts and costs of 12 CDW material fractions relying on alternative pathways and treatment technologies. The results indicate important trade-offs in the transition towards the circular economy. Indeed, recycling of concrete, bricks, gypsum, and ceramics and tiles represent the best environmental performance but also the most expensive pathway. However, when shifting from landfill to recycling the total societal costs in the EU are reduced mainly due to the lower external costs. Overall, recycling CDW in the EU with advanced technologies would save about 264 kg CO2-eq t-1 with a cost of 25 EUR t-1. The maximum potential for recycling under current technology in the EU would lead to an annual total reduction of about 33 Mt. of CO2-eq using 2020 as reference year. The fractions with the highest potential for improving current waste management practices in terms of environmental improvements are concrete and bricks. The economic and non-economic barriers for realising this potential at EU level are discussed in relation to the European Green Deal and the EU's circular economy objectives.

Plastic additives are as essential as polymers to the production and performance of plastic materials. Additive content can vary in composition and functionality depending on the product, producer, application, and production method. Such variation may be a barrier to achieving high-quality recycling and planning for plastic circular economy futures. Yet, as found in Part I, although there is increasing awareness of the importance of additives in plastics, they are often poorly disclosed or only briefly discussed in life cycle assessments (LCAs). In part II, we focus on the inclusion of additives in plastic processes in the database most used in plastic LCAs to date (Ecoinvent) and find that additives have historically been omitted from plastic granulate data and in production processes in the evaluated database. Thus, many practitioners will need to separately include additives in their models of plastic life cycles. To support practitioners in this endeavor, we then assess the availability of the 13,587 additives identified in the recent UN Chemicals in Plastics Report across the three major LCI databases (CarbonMinds, Ecoinvent, and LCA for Experts [GaBi]). We find that databases currently cover only 1,209 of these additives. Moreover, we assert that transparency regarding additive inclusion in plastics datasets, availability of additive datasets, and additive data completeness are major barriers to additive inclusion in plastic LCAs. Thus, we recommend focusing on the development of additive datasets, and we provide a tool for the identification of additive dataset availability and data gaps to improve the quality of plastic LCAs.

As the European Union transitions to the circular use of plastics, robust life cycle assessments are crucial in understanding and preparing for this new economy. Additives are essential to the production of all plastics but were reported as missing from life cycle assessments (LCAs) of plastic materials a decade ago. This study expands upon previous research by investigating if plastic additive impacts are now included in LCAs of recycled plastic materials or if they are still absent. In part I, we conduct a systematic literature review of 93 LCAs on plastics, including mechanical recycling pathways, and distinguish if plastic additive impacts are considered in (i) in-text discussions and (ii) the life cycle inventories (LCIs) of each study. We then compare the types of additive inclusion within the corpus to ascertain whether author knowledge or data availability dictates additive inclusion in plastic LCAs. We find that data disclosure and detailed discussions of specific additive impacts are missing across the corpus due to poor transparency in LCI disclosure or overly generic disclosures of additives. The lack of detailed and transparent discussions and disclosure indicates that additive impacts are missing from LCAs of recycled plastic materials, leading to incomplete analyses of their impacts. Until addressed, such a gap may lead to inaccurate or incomplete circular plastic material LCAs. In part II, we assess the quality of generic disclosures and explore how database quality and transparency have contributed to additive omissions in LCAs.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used in waste management for the last two decades and hundreds of journal papers have been published. The use of LCA in waste management has provided a much-improved holistic view of waste management including waste flows and potential environmental impacts. Although much knowledge has been obtained from LCA studies, there is still a need to use LCA models in integrated waste management. This paper describes six areas where LCA is expected to play a role in waste management in the future: 1) understanding an existing waste management system; 2) improving existing waste management systems; 3) comparing alternative technologies/ technology performance; 4) technology development/prospective technologies; 5) policy development/strategic development; and 6) reporting. Illustrative examples are provided for each application area.

The contribution of misplaced special waste (sWEEE, lamps, CRT, batteries, ink cartridges and cables) to environmental impacts from incineration of residual household waste was quantified through life cycle assessment (LCA)-modelling. Misplaced special waste was quantified to constitute less than I% of the net impact for most environmental impact categories, except for the toxic impact categories (4-28% of toxic impacts) and the impact on abiotic resource depletion. It was found that the main contributor (96%) to the toxic impact categories was related to the presence of mercury (Hg) from lamps and batteries. However as shown by sensitivity analysis, lack of good data on the transfer of rare and hazardous metals to the flue gas in the incineration process should receive further investigation before the environmental impacts from misplaced incinerated special waste can fully be concluded upon. Although the misplaced special waste is only 0.5% of residual household waste, it constitutes in the residual household waste the most significant fraction with respect to metal content when iron and aluminum are excluded. By extending the boundary of the LCA beyond the traditional "zero burden boundary", we were able to quantify the impact of abiotic resources not recovered from incineration residues. This appeared to be a significant impact category, and the special waste contributed about 96% of this category although it by weight makes up only 0.5% of the waste. Furthermore, enhancing the recovery of iron (Fe) and aluminum (Al) from the ashes would not affect the loss of abiotic resources significantly. Only by recovering elements as platinum (Pt), copper (Cu), gold (Au), and silver (Ag) would it be possible to reduce the loss of abiotic resources from the system. These elements are primarily found in misplaced special waste (sWEEE, lamps, CRT, batteries, ink cartridges, and cables). (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The composition of waste materials has fundamental influence on environmental emissions associated with waste treatment, recycling and disposal, and may play an important role also for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of waste management solutions. However, very few assessments include effects of the waste composition and waste LCAs often rely on poorly justified data from secondary sources. This study systematically quantifies the influence and uncertainty on LCA results associated with selection of waste composition data. Three archetypal waste management scenarios were modelled with the waste LCA model EASETECH based on detailed waste composition data from the literature. The influence from waste composition data on the LCA results was quantified with a step-wise Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) approach involving contribution, sensitivity, uncertainty and discernibility analyses. The waste composition data contributed significantly to the LCA results and the uncertainty associated with these results. The importance of 405 individual waste properties was evaluated in comparison with 345 technology parameters. Overall, less than 10 physico-chemical properties dominated the output uncertainty of the LCA results, although these properties had low sensitivity in the model. Moreover, the uncertainties associated with the physico-chemical properties were responsible for output uncertainties that spanned from impacts to benefits. The GSA approach applied in this study constitutes a valuable tool for systematically assessing the importance of waste composition and for consciously collecting and using waste composition data within LCAs of waste management systems.