Tsiliyannis Christos A
ANION Environmental Ltd, Athens Greece.
Waste Manag Res. 2005 Aug;23(4):304-13. doi: 10.1177/0734242X05056757.
It is shown that the conventional recycling rate fails to reflect environmental performance for packaging flows with both recycle and reuse. The reuse rate, the total number of reuse trips and the reuse- lifetime are also shown to be inadequate. A new rate index defined in terms of the total amount of packaging material reaching the consumer is proposed. It reflects immediate improvements in environmental impact according to specific criteria and it reduces to the conventional rate for systems with only recycle. Albeit this shortcut environmental assessment is not entirely comprehensive and does not unveil a full sustainability profile, it may be useful for immediate packaging flow evaluation and policy implementation. For given packaging production technology it reveals a specific maximum level on recycling, below which environmental impacts from processing are limited or reduced, even if production level grows. Cleaner technologies in reprocessing of recycled materials may elevate this maximum level while still limiting or reducing environmental impacts.
研究表明，传统的回收率无法反映同时包含回收和再利用的包装流程的环境绩效。再利用率、再利用总次数和再利用寿命也被证明是不够的。提出了一种根据到达消费者手中的包装材料总量定义的新比率指标。它根据特定标准反映了环境影响的即时改善，并且对于仅包含回收的系统，它可简化为传统比率。尽管这种简化的环境评估并不完全全面，也没有揭示完整的可持续性概况，但它可能有助于即时的包装流程评估和政策实施。对于给定的包装生产技术，它揭示了回收的特定最大水平，低于该水平，即使生产水平提高，加工产生的环境影响也是有限的或减少的。回收材料再加工中的清洁技术可能会提高这个最大水平，同时仍能限制或减少环境影响。
