4.7 Article

Material flow analysis and sustainability of the Italian plastic packaging management

Journal

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
Volume 287, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125573

Keywords

Circular economy; Material flow analysis; Post-consumer plastic packaging; Waste management; Separate waste collection; Recycling rate

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The paper aims to measure the level of circular economy in Italian plastic packaging management in 2017 using material flow analysis, and compare the results with the other EU-28 countries. Italy has a good recycling rate, but there is still room for improvement, while other countries also face different challenges and opportunities.
The plastic management, specifically plastic packaging management, represents one of the main sectors responsible for environmental and health impacts. The European Commission, in 2018, released a Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy and a new Packaging Waste Directive for closing the loop of this management system, forcing member states to recycle 55% of plastic packaging by 2030. The level of circular economy in a supply chain can be measured with material flow analysis, a useful tool to help policy makers forecast the recycling capability and to provide suggestions for improving the plastic packaging management sustainability. Considering the gap in literature in this field, the principal aim of this paper is to apply material flow analysis to measure the level of circular economy in the 2017 Italian plastic packaging management, by using the software STAN 2.6. Particularly, it assessed its post consumer recycling rate, according to the new calculation method established by the Waste Directive. Secondly, this result is compared with that of the other EU-28 countries. The findings indicate that Italy has a good recycling rate, almost 44%, and that the energy recovery and landfill levels are about 40% and nearly 17%, respectively. There is room for making plastic waste management more efficient. Some of the EU-28 countries have wide margins of improvement thanks to large amounts of plastic packaging in landfills, whereas others, although they present good recycling rates, could tackle some problems in adopting the circular economy approach because they continue to burn plastic packaging in waste-to energy plants. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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