Choice of materials for takeaway beverage cups towards a circular economy

Life cycle assessment was performed for comparing a single-use bio-based beverage cup (polylactic acid) with single-use plastics (polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate) and multiple-use stainless steel alternative. The results reveal that the bio-based cups produced from sugarcane in Thailand exhibit lower global warming and fossil depletion impacts than the petroleum-based plastics but higher than multipleuse stainless steel cups. Over prolonged use, multiple-use cups show better environmental performance than the others. Increasing the use of recycled materials by 25 percent for example, helps to reduce environmental impacts in the range of 35-56 percent, indicating better performance in terms of global warming and fossil depletion impacts. However, consumer behavior is an important factor because they may choose not to use the same cup for long; using the multiple-use stainless steel cup more than 140 times can outweigh the impact of all single-use cups. Reuse and eventual recycling of materials supports the move towards the circular economy. In order to enable circular economy, government policies and infrastructure must be in place to support the recycling of materials as well as the use of recycled materials to keep resources in the system as much as possible to close the loop of the takeaway beverage cups lifecycle. (C) 2020 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.