University of Salento, Department of Innovation Engineering, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy; Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, S.P. Andersens vei, 5, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway.
University of Salento, Department of Innovation Engineering, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Dec 10;851(Pt 2):158256. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158256. Epub 2022 Aug 24.
Glass packaging gives rise to major environmental concerns because it develops more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic packaging and its improper discarding causes the loss of high-quality desired resources. The reuse and recycling of glass packaging reduces greenhouse gas emissions and the use of newly extracted resources sand and soda. To mitigate the environmental impacts of glass packaging, countries have set-up various collection and recycling systems, which are often organized and financed through extended producer responsibility schemes. The most common collection systems are deposit-refund systems (DRS), separate collection in drop-off containers and comingled collection with lightweight packaging waste. By the end of 2035 a minimum of 65 % of glass packaging waste must be prepared for re-use and/or recycled within the EU Member States and thus proper policies and solutions should be adopted to achieve this target. In this sense, the present study aims at verifying if deposit-refund systems and their different configurations affect glass packaging waste reduction and recycling/recovery. To achieve this aim, annual data regarding consumption and recycling/recovery of glass packaging for each European Economic Area/European Free Trade Association (EEA/EFTA) country were extracted over the time period 2010-2019. By using the selected European countries as units of analysis, a hybrid methodology was developed which includes the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and other descriptive statistics. Findings show that the different waste management systems affect neither the amount of glass packaging consumption nor the glass packaging recycling/recovery. In countries which adopt DRS, not more glass packaging per capita was retrieved than in countries which adopt other collection and management systems. In fact, it turns out to be a mechanism that allows for high quality glass packaging collection avoiding its ending up in landfills, but it does not influence consumption choices and the subsequent potential waste production. The adoption of DRS-based collections does not result necessarily in a successful management model for glass packaging. Since setting up additional drop-off collection points and recovering mechanically glass from municipal solid waste (MSW) does not result in glass qualities to be used in glass packaging, DRS represent still the sole progress towards a more circular economy.
玻璃包装产生了重大的环境问题，因为它比塑料包装产生更多的温室气体排放，而且如果处理不当，会导致高质量所需资源的流失。玻璃包装的再利用和回收减少了温室气体排放和新开采的沙子和苏打资源的使用。为了减轻玻璃包装的环境影响，各国已经建立了各种收集和回收系统，这些系统通常通过扩大生产者责任计划来组织和提供资金。最常见的收集系统是押金退款系统（DRS）、在投放容器中的单独收集和与轻质包装废物的混合收集。到 2035 年底，欧盟成员国必须至少有 65%的玻璃包装废物准备再利用和/或回收，因此应该采取适当的政策和解决方案来实现这一目标。在这方面，本研究旨在验证押金退款系统及其不同配置是否会影响玻璃包装废物的减少和回收/恢复。为了实现这一目标，我们在 2010-2019 年期间提取了每个欧洲经济区/欧洲自由贸易联盟（EEA/EFTA）国家的玻璃包装消费和回收/恢复的年度数据。通过将选定的欧洲国家作为分析单位，我们开发了一种混合方法，包括方差分析（ANOVA）和其他描述性统计。研究结果表明，不同的废物管理系统既不会影响玻璃包装的消费数量，也不会影响玻璃包装的回收/恢复。在采用 DRS 的国家，人均回收的玻璃包装量并不比采用其他收集和管理系统的国家多。事实上，它是一种允许高质量玻璃包装收集的机制，可以避免其最终进入垃圾填埋场，但它不会影响消费选择和随后可能产生的废物。采用基于 DRS 的收集并不一定能为玻璃包装带来成功的管理模式。由于增加了额外的投放点收集和从城市固体废物（MSW）中机械回收玻璃，并没有得到可用于玻璃包装的玻璃质量，DRS 仍然是迈向更循环经济的唯一进展。
