Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Edificio Expo, Calle Inca Garcilaso 3, 41092 Seville, Spain.
Environ Sci Technol. 2022 Jan 4;56(1):501-511. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c00761. Epub 2021 Dec 7.
Plastics are a challenge for the circular economy due to their overall low recycling rate and high dependency on primary resources. This study analyzes the EU demand for poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) packaging from 2020 to 2030 and quantifies the potential environmental and societal savings by changing the waste management and consumption patterns compared with business-as-usual practices. The results of the life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing show that a maximum of 38 Mt of CO-eq and 34 kt of PM-eq could be saved with a more efficient waste management system and a robust secondary material market while also avoiding 8.3 billion EUR in societal costs (cumulative 2020-2030). However, limiting annual PET consumption growth appears to have a similar profound effect on improving the efficiency of waste management systems: 35 Mt of CO-eq, 31 kt of PM-eq, and 25 billion MEUR societal costs could be saved, simply by keeping EU consumption of PET constant.
由于整体回收利用率低且高度依赖原生资源，塑料对循环经济构成了挑战。本研究分析了 2020 年至 2030 年欧盟对聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET）包装的需求，并通过改变与传统做法相比的废物管理和消费模式，量化了潜在的环境和社会效益节约。生命周期评估和生命周期成本的结果表明，通过更有效的废物管理系统和强大的二次材料市场，最多可节省 3800 万吨 CO-eq 和 34000 吨 PM-eq，同时避免 83 亿欧元的社会成本（2020-2030 年累计）。然而，限制 PET 的年消费增长似乎对提高废物管理系统的效率具有类似的深远影响：仅通过保持欧盟对 PET 的消费不变，就可节省 3500 万吨 CO-eq、31000 吨 PM-eq 和 250 亿欧元的社会成本。
