Incentives for recycling and incineration in LCA: Polymers in Product Environmental Footprints

E*D and E*V are the environmental burdens of the disposal and virgin production avoided through In a CLCA the focus is instead on the consequences of using recycled material and of recycling the product after use. [...] Consequential approaches to the allocation problem often also generate additive results in the sense that the net environmental benefit assigned to the product recycled after use (Product 1) plus the benefit assigned to the product that use the recycled material instead of virgin material (Product 2) adds up to the total net environmental benefit of recycling (E*V+E*D-ER). [...] Using the default value B=0 in the energy substitution is equivalent to assuming that the waste treatment service is the determining function of energy recovery, i.e., that the volume of waste incinerated is determined by the quantity of combustible waste (cf. [...] ErecycledEoL is the specific emissions from the recycling process at end-of-life (EoL), E*V is the specific emissions from the acquisition and pre-processing of virgin material assumed to be substituted by the recycled material, QSout is the quality of the outgoing secondary material, i.e., the quality of the recycled material at the point of substitution and QP is the quality of the primary (i.e.. [...] This is because the CFF by default assigns the full incineration benefit to the product going to incineration, but only part of the recycling benefit to the product generating the recyclable waste.